Nationalize oil, use revenue to develop clean power

Everything about nationalizing oil seems like a sound approach, but what about the deregulation of speculation? How will the oil speculators unleashed during the Bush I administration by McCain's advisor, Phil Grahamm, make their money? They may not add ANYTHING but price to the finding, drilling, refining or shippingof oil, but by cornering future oil reserves, they have been able to make more than a nice living for themselves. What about them? Do we want oil speculators responsible for the present price of oil to turn to unemployment compensation from the nanny government they abhor while the rest of us use oil profits to pay down the national debt and get our fiscal house in order? YOU BET WE DO!!! Bring it on!

When has the government ever done anything well? It hasn't, just look at social security!

Mr Smith wrote:

When has the government ever done anything well? It hasn't, just look at social security!

Social Security would be ok if we would stop handing it to all the people in Peurto Rico. They do not congtribute, and I never understood how the hell they reap the benefits. One of my pet peevs against the govt.

This letter is chilling. You ARE being sarcastic, are you not? If not, your public school indoctrination is complete. Tack to the far left.

Little by little, it is opinion such as this that will eventually take us down. Like the proverbial frog in the pot of slowly heating water.

The government? Tell us all what it does well when it comes to welfare programs and management of industries. Can you imagine the graft and corruption. Let's make it quick and put the bozos from the PA Dem party in charge. Theyll know how to plow the profits "back in".

Idiotic

$10,000 hammers.$5,000 toilet seats. A department of education that has never educated a kid. Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.

What could possibly go wrong with letting them run oil?

I see your 30 days are up and here you are again Mark.
"Nationalize" so you are a socialist Mark. "Russia has once again emerged as a dominant power." Oh really Mark? How so? Gasprom is making money and the money is flowing to the military. Now the Russian military will not be a global power again for at least 20 years. Manpower problems, obsolete weapon systems, corruption, readiness issues abound Mark. They are far from a dominant power "once again."
Your idea of "nationalizing" is right from Marx, Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin. The russian people are still very poor, the corrupt government in Russia is now wealthy, it has not been "spread" like you think. I have first hand knowledge of this.
"In America, the oil profits go to an elite few." Sure Mark like stockholders. Oil profits are a third of what the government makes on a gallon of gas and oil profits are not even close to what cosmetic, soda, and other companies profits are. Your ideas are right from the communist/fascist economic textbook.
For that you are asshat of the day over at shoe-fly-pie dot blogspot dot com.

Mark,

Your propaganda piece in support of socialism is full of lies and falsehoods.

First, Russia does not share it's wealth with it's people. It only uses people to maintain it's illegitimate power. Russia today, is nothing more than a slave state. It's people are not free to have a say in anything. It is returning to a Communist state.

The hi oil prices that Americans pay goes overseas from where we buy most of our oil. It goes to help fund the war for our enemies in Iraq. That's why the OPEC cartel policies have cause the hi prices.

Another point is that oil companies do not get all those profits as you have indicated. That is plainly false. The fact is out of all the money Americans pay for gas only 8% goes to oil companies. Did you know that 15% goes to big government?

Most other nations, it is true, have nationalized oil companies. Places like Venezuela, Cuba, China, most European Socialist countries. But these are all socialists. Most free thinking Americans don't want to live is a socialist paradise.

The fact is the reason we pay hi taxes is not big oil, but big government. The fact is our government has an embargo against oil companies that stops them from acting like a big oil company should in our supposed free economy, and get us more oil that we know is there.

There is a Republican led bill in congress that has bipartisan support from rank a file Democrats. This bill will do much to assure that America is on the road to energy independence. This bill will revoke the existing embargo that the Democrat leadership in Congress is supporting. The Democrat leadership does not want America to be energy independent.

What the embargo does of course is to cause oil shortages here in America. The embargo causes us to pay more to finance America's enemies. The embargo supports the big oil cartels like OPEC. And what does the Democrat leadership support? The embargo.

So, contact your congressmen and stop the Democrat leadership led embargo on oil and other energy sources that we do have in America.

We have energy.

We need energy.

DRILL HERE!

DRILL NOW!

PAY LESS!

For Cross, Gun & Oil

Terminating liberals at will.

liberalismisasin.com

Sounds like a plan! Give the government something else to screw up! I am very tired of the socialists in this country comparing us to Europe and Russia! Look at those countries and then look here. Live there for a few months and decide if you miss the glorious RED WHITE AND BLUE! We have the greatest country in the world, STOP COMPARING US TO EUROPE AND RUSSIA!!

This is one of the most chilling and idiotic letters I've ever read here.
Comrade, read We the living by Ayn Rand, someone who lived this garbage first hand, and learn the truth about soviet russia. It's a crime they don't teach the truth about communism to our children in the government schools.

Dominant power? You must be talking about their government and the military.

My nephew is married to a Russian and he cannot believe the poverty in a country that was quote, "a super power" after seeing for himself his wife's homeland.

The minister of propoganda is alive and well in the Good Ole USA!!!!

It's kind of scary that this type of individual is out there spouting this trash, with no idea of the real meaning of what they are proposing. They should move to Cuba, Russia, or Venezuela for a few years to get a good taste of what they think they want, then come back and let us know how it turns out.

Yesterday's business page carried this story http://www.mcall.com/business/local/all-oil.6... about the oil companies devoting most of their profits to stock buy-backs and dividends rather than exploration. 55 percent of profit now goes to dividends and buybacks, up from just 1 percent in 1993. Big oil is in the process of liquidating itself--they know the oil exploration game is over, there is little new oil left to find, so they're rewarding themselves and their investors, hoping the public and the government don't catch on and impose a windfall profits tax. I prefer higher taxes on profits rather than outright nationalization. By the way, Norway nationalized its oil company. Norway has the highest standard of living in the world. But of course Norway is a decadent socialist European country, and we wouldn't want to live there. We prefer scrounging behind the sofa cushions for spare change for gas money, and having the freedom to decide if we are going to eat, pay the mortgage, or heat our homes this winter.

There's a major disconnect to the writer's oil nationalization plan. The countries (mostly authoritarian regimes) that have nationalized their oil also produce almost 100% of the oil they need. The primary beneficiaries in thee countries are the elite, not The People. The U.S., however, produces only a small portion of the oil it consumes, somewhere around 10-15%, I believe. The writer is talking about nationalizing oil company profits and taking their revenues which essentially means he espouses that the U.S. Gov't take over the business operations of Oil Companies. How stupid is that? Why don't we ask the gov't to take over operations at The Gap and Nike to prevent them from exploiting poor Vietnamese workers while we're at it.

To Moral Hazard's concern that oil company profits are going to a select few: what kind of drugs are you are? There are certain people and entities at the top of the financial food chain who reap huge profits. However, employee pension plans and institutional investors who offer IRAs & other retirements plans to the GENERAL PUBLIC are amongst the largest stockholders of Fortune 500 companies, like the deaded Exxon-Mobil and others of its ilk. When oil companies make big profits so does your retirement plan. That won't happen with nationalized oil.

The Lib Terminator wrote:

We need energy.
DRILL HERE!
DRILL NOW!
PAY LESS!
For Cross, Gun & Oil

Jerry, without nationalizing the oil industry, you can let them drill all over the U.S. and they can still turn around and sell it to whomever they want. And they'll sell it to China and India before keeping it here, as the demand is higher over there.

You see Jerry, oil companies are in business to make money. They could care less what Americans are paying at the pump.

I'm not saying I agree with the letter writer, because I don't. I just want you to understand the problem with your own ideas. Drilling offshore or in ANWR does not mean Americans will get that oil. Or that the price will go down either.

Norway? Norway? Nice country, but it has just about the highest gasoline prices on the planet. THAT is the example for managing the energy industry that you want us to follow? It also has huge gas, hydro, and geothermal energy reserves. There's just no way to compare it to the U.S. in any meaningful way.

moral hazard wrote:

Yesterday's business page carried this story http://www.mcall.com/business/local/all-oil.6... about the oil companies devoting most of their profits to stock buy-backs and dividends rather than exploration. 55 percent of profit now goes to dividends and buybacks, up from just 1 percent in 1993. Big oil is in the process of liquidating itself--they know the oil exploration game is over, there is little new oil left to find, so they're rewarding themselves and their investors, hoping the public and the government don't catch on and impose a windfall profits tax. I prefer higher taxes on profits rather than outright nationalization. By the way, Norway nationalized its oil company. Norway has the highest standard of living in the world. But of course Norway is a decadent socialist European country, and we wouldn't want to live there. We prefer scrounging behind the sofa cushions for spare change for gas money, and having the freedom to decide if we are going to eat, pay the mortgage, or heat our homes this winter.

Mr Smith wrote:

When has the government ever done anything well? It hasn't, just look at social security!

How soon the sheep Kool-Aid drinkers forget how ExxonMobilEnron put a man on the moon.

Man on the moon - you mean the lunar lander, built by Grumman? Or the command module, built by North American Aviation, Inc.? Or the Saturn rockets, built by several different companies now all part of Boeing?

rapubakin wrote:

<quoted text>
How soon the sheep Kool-Aid drinkers forget how ExxonMobilEnron put a man on the moon.

I guess Reagan didn't take out all the commies!

This is one of the most chilling letters I've read in a while.

Look at the Russian oil barons and the take they got. One of them flys around in his personal 767. The Russian people still live largely in poverty.

As it stands now, the US oil companies make about a 10% profit, which is in line with many other industries including most consumer goods. Exxon alone paid $50B in taxes last year. They run their business to keep costs down, maximize efficiency, and invest in future fields and equipment. If the US government ran them, they would be run to maximize political expediency and not efficiency.

Note that the percentage of oil that Exxon, Texaco, etc. get from the US vs. the oil that they buy is a small percentage. What would you be nationalizing? The purchase and refining of 3/4 of our oil from other countries? Does that make sense? How can you nationalize something that sends 3/4 of its work abroad?

The countries that nationalize oil are strong oil producers who produce the vast majority of oil in their own country. They nationalized oil to make sure that the country got paid their fare share for the oil coming out of the ground. And a look down the list reveals that most live in poverty or close to it, like in Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, etc.

All in all the argument to nationalize oil is a poor argument at best.