Obama's Fruitless War on Oil

Our President’s war on the oil industry may play well with his primary constituency but for the informed voter it is an exercise in futility. First of all, the $4 billion in tax breaks, or subsidies, or giveaways, or whatever he calls it, is peanuts compared to the $86M that the government rakes in from the oil and gas industry everyday! Yes, I said every day. He is using this as purely a political campaign ploy to make it appear he is really concerned about gas prices, when the truth is he is not. He believes that higher carbon-based fuel prices are good for his green energy agenda.
The fact is, your children, their children, and your children’s children, will primarily be using oil and gas for decades to come, long after Mr. Obama is history. His excursion into wind, solar, electric cars, etc. is pre-mature and wasting our money. These methods will best be developed by the private sector which can do the research necessary to eventually make them commercially viable. His political cronies are taking money from his national alternative fuel giveaway program with loan guarantees, tax breaks, and subsidies for investments that eventually fail for lack of a market, while they personally skim off the top and the government ends up paying the bill.
The reality is that fossil fuels are a gift from God! Not only are they a relatively cheap and excellent source of energy but also a source of chemical building blocks for most of the products that add value, benefit, and pleasure to our lives. Medicines, plastics, solvents, chemicals, building products, you name it, most anything we touch. The amazing thing is that we have loads of it, and are sitting on oil and gas reserves that will last us hundreds of years, if we have the will or desire to recover them.
Another ridiculous thing about this political ploy is that the $4B in “subsidies” is minor compared with the $35.7B in corporate taxes that the industry paid into the government in 2009 and every year, according to the Federal Energy Information Administration. In fact, the average effective tax rate for oil and gas companies was 41.1% in 2010. Most other manufacturers pay an effective rate of 26.5%. ExxonMobil reported that its profit in the 1st Qtr of 2011 for its retail gasoline operations was 7 cents per gallon. Gasoline taxes range between 26.4 cents per gallon in Alaska to 66.1 cent per gallon in California, and averages 48.1 cents/gal, which says that governments (federal and state) make at least 7 times the profit per gallon than the oil companies!
The oil companies really don’t care about the $4B in tax benefits; however, the fact that it is prejudicial to the industry is the issue. All other companies enjoy the same deductions so why should an industry that supports more than 9 million jobs in the U.S. be singled out because the President says “the oil industry is profitable enough without these tax breaks and that the money should be spent on alternative energy sources”. Since when does he get to decide whether Exxon, Apple, or any company is “making enough”?
Many taxpayers in this country have 401k’s that are invested in ExxonMobil and they like when its stock appreciates and it pays dividends to its stockholders. No single person, particularly one who never had a real job should decide the profitability limits of giant corporations, unless they live in China, Cuba, Russia, or Venezuela.