 Today's Boston
Globe features further proof that we
are now officially living in a Petrocracy...
Under the energy bill, which
President Bush is scheduled to sign next week,
energy
companies
based
in Texas
will
be
eligible for
billions in tax benefits to encourage exploration and drilling for
new sources of oil, both on federal lands and offshore. More tax breaks
are
available for corporations -- including oil companies -- that invest
in natural gas pipelines, and still other tax incentives could encourage
the expansion of oil refineries. The benefits include the ability to write off some of
the costs of exploring for oil -- a provision that will cost taxpayers
$974 million over two years
-- as well as another $406 million in tax write-offs to expand refineries.
Industry officials say the tax incentives are needed to look for oil in places
where it may be hard to reach or of uncertain quantity.
Stop right there for a minute. Imagine all of the
BILLIONS of gallons of oil and petroleum by-products that are sold
every day,
around the world. The cumulative total of the entire planet's energy
consumption must produce a pretty hefty profit, eh? Well,
double it, because that's what has happened to the price of a barrel
of oil since Bush came into office. Actually, with
the latest run up, its closer to tripling that vast fortune. Every
day. This huge global tribute is being paid by every member of
humanity, according to their degree of addiction. An American,
the heaviest users ever, go through about 120 gallons a day for every
man, woman and child. A peasant in Guatemala might only use a gallon
or two. But everybody pays.
Where is this huge daily shakedown going? The contracts
that give the international oil companies the right to extract and sell
the oil were signed decades ago, and so the base cost of the oil in the ground is not going up. The
cost of extracting and refining may be creeping up due to market factors,
maybe even as fast as the rise in the cost of a good education, but no
way close to tripling. No, this huge, historic windfall is going directly
to the oil companies and their vassals, families like the Bushes, al
Sauds and Bin Ladens.
And on top of this they have the supreme gall to
ask for handouts from the federal government at a time when we are
at war,
spending innocent young lives to defend their right to rip off the rest
of the world! Incredible! Only Texans, of all your egomaniacal sects,
tribes or manipulative minorities, could have conceived of a plan so
bare-faced diabolical. Trust us on this one, we have lived among them,
and numerous other cutthroat cultures.
''The president is from Texas. The vice president lived
in Texas until he changed his residence -- and he was CEO of Halliburton," a
company based in Texas, said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat
of Malden and a negotiator on the energy bill. ''The majority leader
is from Texas; the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee is from
Texas, and the chairman of the energy subcommittee is from Texas. No
one is lonesome in the Lone Star State when it comes to energy policy."
As a sugar cane-growing state, Texas is one of four states eligible
for a provision to spend $36 million in loan subsidies to use
cane sugar
to make ethanol, a gasoline additive. And the Research Partnership
to Secure
Energy for America, a not-for-profit facility based in DeLay's
hometown of Sugar Land, Texas, is a leading contender to distribute
$1.5 billion
in government money to oil companies for deep-water offshore
oil drilling. They've got us coming and going. Maybe it's time for the rest of the world to sheepishly open our eyes and admit we've been royally bamboozled by a bunch of shit-kicking rednecks who are laughing thier asses off at our ivy-educated gullibility.... from the Boston
Globe |
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