The League of Conservation Voters is pushing for the end to Oil Subsidies.
That's an entitlement as well.
Not only has ExxonMobil enjoyed record profits, they've just unleashed another environmental disaster in the middle of one of our National Treasures, the Yellowstone River.
There have been issues of competency of course in their ability to clean up the spill, transparency and the full impact of this spill on the local ecology and health of the people who live near the river.
Of course, if you look through the headlines, I'm glad to see this one: Spill unlikely to hurt Exxon's earnings. God forbid ExxonMobil lose some money over a disaster like this.
Jobs lost by local tourism, bah! Who cares, but can't touch those earnings. But this spill could be seen coming since there had been concerns about the rising waters and the possibility of a leak, ExxonMobil had shut down the pipeline in May.
So, there are far too many "real entitlements" like the Capital Gains tax that has been discussed for years now.
Remember when Warren Buffett pointed out the absolute absurdity of his Secretary paying a much higher tax rate than he did because he paid a lower capital gains tax rate and she paid income tax? Yes, that was 2007 during the Presidential campaign.
Speaking at a $4,600-a-seat fundraiser in New York for Senator Hillary Clinton, Mr Buffett, who is worth an estimated $52 billion (£26 billion), said: “The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”
Mr Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent. Mr Buffett told his audience, which included John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley, and Alan Patricof, the founder of the US branch of Apax Partners, that US government policy had accentuated a disparity of wealth that hurt the economy by stifling opportunity and motivation.
The comments are among the most signficant yet in a debate raging on both sides of the Atlantic about growing income inequality and how the super-wealthy are taxed.
When the Taxed Enough Already crowed howls about being taxed too much, they really are talking about the wrong crowd here. Talk about having been taken to the cleaners. It's people like them, who don't have huge deductions who pay far more of a percentage of their income in taxes. NO wonder their so pissed off. Who wouldn't be?
And here is one more entitlement we need to end. Oil subsidies. You know what you can do? You can write Congress and ask them to stop them, NOW!
End Big Oil Handouts
Enough is enough.
ExxonMobil reported 1st quarter profits of nearly $11 billion. BP announced $5.5 billion in profits. Conoco Phillips earned $3 billion over the last three months.
Meanwhile Americans across the country are struggling with near-record prices at the pump.
The worst part is that, while the Big Oil companies rake in obscene profits, they’re also getting billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies. Over the next ten years, Big Oil will collect more than $40 billion in taxpayer dollars.
It’s time for this to stop. Tell Congress to end Big Oil handouts!
Then we can move on to other large corporate hand outs, like factory farming and other large scale food production that hurts small, organic family farms that would do a much better job of feeding us. But that's another story...
Anyone see Tim Pawlenty on Meet the Press? Yes, he totally dodged the issue that the President was willing to double the cuts for modest raises in revenue and yet the Republican Party wouldn't go there. He also said that revenues had been going up for years and we had been spending and spending. On what planet?
More lies from the right. The hits keep on coming. I guess he missed that massive tax cut that the Bush Administration gave out that's been the single most contributor to our deficit and the fact that tax revenues go down in a recession (Crazy talk, I know, it's not just spending that contributes to higher deficits, I wish Republicans understood BOTH sides of the equation).
And to end, I love the FDR quotes, they are priceless because they are true.
Don't forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.
Franklin D. Roosevelt