Talk about politicians with some big ones

[GeepNutt]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/11/10/state_is_sending_notifications_of_retroactive_taxe s/

[catbbq]

My favorite quote from the article: ''This is not just taking a windfall from rich people. It's hitting ordinary people, and it's not a good way to run government."

Apparently that guy thinks it ok to take a windfall from rich people.

Massachusetts: Land of getting punished for doing well, and rewarded for doing poorly.

[GeepNutt]

Kinda like the quote from the CEO of Exxon to the Senate in regards to price gouging....

He said the company's pricing policy after Katrina was "to minimize the increase in price while at the same time recognizing that if we kept the price too low, we would quickly run out of gasoline and have shortages."

Huh? So the price increase wasn't because of market shortages then? It was to prevent them....

[catbbq]

They are talking about special taxes on the huge profits the oil companies have made. I got no problem with that assuming they have provisions for special tax breaks when they have huge losses.

[TrailBate]

They just got another tax break as part of Bush's "energy plan"

[Mr_Cheeze]

I am also dubious of the oil companies' shaky defenses of thier record breaking quarterly profits, but I don't expect the government to do much about it considering that they rake in an astonishing percentage per gallon. Last I knew, gas excise taxes in MA total to about 22.5%. I believe CT and RI are even higher, something like 25% and 30% respectively. I also saw somewhere that oil companies make about a 7 to 8 percent profit per gallon. Now, consider their last quarterly total profits. Huge, right? Now consider, the federal government alone averages about 20% per gallon, at every gas station across the country. My brain cannot even compute what that totals to daily, nevermind annually. To where does this windfall go? I know where we are told to where it supposedly goes, but my city's streets have been way too shitty for way too long for me to believe it is all being properly accounted for. Is there any wonder how worker unions were able to scam their way to huge payouts from the big dig? How many other "Big Dig" type bigwigs are raking in gigantic salaries at our expense?

Point is, it's not just the oil companies that are raping us.

[off piste]

I am also dubious of the oil companies' shaky defenses of thier record breaking quarterly profits, but I don't expect the government to do much about it considering that they rake in an astonishing percentage per gallon. Last I knew, gas excise taxes in MA total to about 22.5%. I believe CT and RI are even higher, something like 25% and 30% respectively. I also saw somewhere that oil companies make about a 7 to 8 percent profit per gallon. Now, consider their last quarterly total profits. Huge, right? Now consider, the federal government alone averages about 20% per gallon, at every gas station across the country. My brain cannot even compute what that totals to daily, nevermind annually. To where does this windfall go? I know where we are told to where it supposedly goes, but my city's streets have been way too shitty for way too long for me to believe it is all being properly accounted for. Is there any wonder how worker unions were able to scam their way to huge payouts from the big dig? How many other "Big Dig" type bigwigs are raking in gigantic salaries at our expense?

Point is, it's not just the oil companies that are raping us.


http://www.lclark.edu/~levinger/History%20121%20web%20site/Web%20handouts/Execution-of-Louis-XVI.gif