Did anybody else hear Bernie Sanders on the Senate floor just now?

[Joanne98]

He has an energy plan to address the short term crisis in gas prices.

Part A:
Create an excise tax for big oil windfall profits. I think he said 35%

Part B:
Take the money from the excise tax and pay for the gas tax holiday. Pay the bill for the fed and the states so they can forfit the revenue without losing the money for roads.

Part C: Close the Enron loophole. That allows exempts on-line trading from commodity exchanges oversite.

Part D:
Make Bush release oil out of the oil reserves. 20 million to 30 million barrels.

I think it's a great plan and it will work and I'd like to add, Maria Cantwell's idea to form a task force to investigate the oil markets for fraud.http://cantwell.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=296463 If Bush threatens to veto this plan, we can use the task force to threaten him back with.

What do you think. I think it's a great idea.

[ORDagnabbit]

1. gas tax holiday is bad econonics..... its like lowing the price of crack for a week to keep the

junkie buying through tough times.

[bigscott]

4. BINGO

this is one of the worst ideas out there - and I would save about 5 bucks a day in taxes too - short term non-solution to a long term problem

[gratuitous]

12. You buy 28 gallons of gas a day?

At $0.18 a gallon for the federal gas tax, you'd have to buy more than 27 gallons of gas a day to pay five dollars a day in gas taxes. If your vehicle got even a modest 15 mpg, you'd be driving over 400 miles a day, every day.

But the gas tax holiday is still the worst idea to come down the pike since the notion of invading Iraq was floated.

[Joanne98]

7. I agree it's a bad idea UNLESS we make the oil companies pay for it.

I don't have a problem with that at all.

[crimsonblue]

22. man I wish my dealer would do that....

:yoiks:

[madokie]

2. I didn't see it but if Bernie says, I like

When it comes right down to it I wish he was on a ticket for the whitehouse

[leftofcool]

3. This is exactly what Hillary has been saying

[ORDagnabbit]

6. which once again proves how wrong she is on most issues... short term answers to long term problems.

[Joanne98]

5. I found the plan on his website. Here it is....

Sanders: High Oil and Gas Prices a National Emergency -- 04/24/2008

WASHINGTON, April 24 – Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said today that outrageously high oil and gas prices that Vermonters and Americans are paying constitute a national emergency that requires a bold response from the White House and Congress.

Sanders said millions of workers are seeing a steep decline in their standard of living because of high gasoline pump prices that surpassed $3.50 a gallon nationwide. Many older Americans, he added, will not be able to heat their homes next winter unless heating fuel prices are lowered. He also noted that energy costs impact the entire economy, including rising food prices.

“While energy prices are soaring,” Sanders said, “big oil companies are reporting record profits and speculators at hedge funds and financial institutions are making billions investing in energy futures.”

Sanders is working with other senators on both long-term and short-term solutions to the energy crisis which include:

• Imposing a windfall profits tax on the oil and gas industry. Last year, Exxon-Mobil made $40 billion in profits, more than any company in history. Since President Bush has been in office, the five largest U.S. oil companies have made more than $500 billion in profits. Oil companies should be allowed to make a reasonable profit, but anything above that should be significantly taxed. This will take away the incentive of big oil companies to rip-off Americans at the gas pump. It is time that Congress and the President said “No” to the $213 million in campaign contributions that the oil industry has given to them since 1990 and “Yes” to consumers by taking this important step.

• Closing the “Enron Loophole.” Energy trading exchanges that were exploited by Enron and continue to be abused by other energy traders who are manipulating the price of oil should be re-regulated. Today hedge funds and speculators are making billions in an unregulated climate by bidding up the price of oil. Some experts believe that speculation is increasing the price of oil by 20 percent to 30 percent.

• Stopping the flow of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and immediately releasing oil from this federal stockpile to reduce gas prices. This has worked in the past. When President Clinton released oil from this reserve in 2000, the price of gasoline immediately fell by 14 cents a gallon. When the first President Bush released oil from the reserve in 1991, the price of crude oil dropped by $10 a barrel. The time has come to do this again.

• Breaking up OPEC. OPEC is an illegal price-fixing cartel that is clearly in violation of international free trade rules. The president must file a complaint with the World Trade Organization and demand the dismantling of OPEC. The ending of collusion with regard to oil production will result in increased production and lower oil prices.

• Authorize the president to impose price caps to stabilize prices in the event of market manipulation. Today, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has the authority to impose temporary price caps on electricity. When it used this authority to deal with the California energy crisis created by Enron, electricity prices fell dramatically. The president should have similar authority over gas prices.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=296743

[Joanne98]

8. I just sent him an email.. If you want to do the same here's the contact page.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/comments/

[Joanne98]

9. kick

[Joanne98]

10. kick

[historian]

11. bush and his oil men thugs

dont forget that turd face and his cronies are all with big oil and give a shit about us. They wont lift a finger to help the common person so if anyone has any illusions forget it.
If we get a dem president, then really heavy taxes should be imposed on such ridiculous cars as Hummers etc...
I own a prius at approx 50 to the gallon. I 20% of the population did that we could tell the arabs to kiss their oil asses.

[Vinca]

13. Part C would probably make the most difference.

The whole thing has "veto" written all over it.

[Usrename]

14. Why not enforce our anti-trust laws instead?

Or nationalize the oil companies.

[warren pease]

15. His plan needs one more element, I think ...

The proceeds from the windfall profits tax should be put into a separate fund to be used exclusively to subsidize alternative energy R&D. This would be similar to the tamper-proof SS trust fund, or how it used to be until the goddamn GOP started stealing from it to fund their wars and make the deficits seem less outrageous.

Companies looking into everything from alternative propulsion fuels to complete off-the-grid turnkey packages would be eligible for government funding. Better still, it's boosted from the obscene profiteering of the bastards who are currently gouging consumers around the world while doing everything they can to perpetuate the industrialized world's addiction to burning fossil fuels.

The petroleum giants and their shareholders would go nuts over this proposed tax, of course, and watching them lose it in public would be a big part of the fun.

And when this massive investment in non-fossil-fuel technologies starts to pay off and real products become available, the fund will become available to licensed contractors and consumers to subsidize the costs of implementing these systems.

The only downside I can think of would be having to listen to continuous whining and sniveling and poor-mouthing from the disgustingly overpaid execs at various fossil fuels companies, their slaves in congress, institutional shareholders and demented libertarians.

Actually, their anguished bellowing would probably sound more like the music that sanctimonious bullshitters make when forced to check back in with reality. What's not to like about that?


wp

[lonestarnot]

16. Is that like a lockbox? LOL

[warren pease]

19. Yup. Just like the SS one with the lock destroyed and the hinges all bent out of shape...

... from too many instances of GOP thievery.

And that's the one problem with the SS fund analogy. If an alternative energy R&D fund could be truly tamper-proof and impossible for some sleazy senator to dip his corrupt hands into it, then there's nothing wrong with the overall thesis.

If that can't be guaranteed, however, it'll end up like one more political football -- used as intended when managed honorably; doled out to other kleptocrats if it ever gets redirected into the general fund, and some republican asshole will always be preaching about investing in the stock market for greater return.

But maybe better yet is another post calling for the oil companies to be nationalized. This is clearly a case where the so-called free market has failed, in large part because congress and the DoJ refuse to have anything to do with anti-trust cases these days.

So Exxon, one of the world's largest corporations on its own, gets to marry into the Mobil family. And the result is a mega-corporation with more money than most countries and economies of scale that created margins that generated the largest single after-tax quarterly profits in the entire history of the world.

Now that's a monopoly you can be proud of.

Still, breaking them into their components is the only alternative to nationalizing them. And then breaking them up again because this total horizontal and vertical integration business model they've developed is also a monopolistic practice.

And if they're still behaving like jumped up versions of feudal lords, break them up some more until they're forced to compete rather than collaborate with each other to fix prices and divide up the planet into spheres of influence.

I'd go for stocks and rotten fruit in the public square, but things could get a little out of hand if an oil company CEO had to face the wrath of the American motorist when armed with a bucket of rotten tomatoes and an hour to kill.


wp

[lonestarnot]

20. I bet someone could sell that!

"... things could get a little out of hand if an oil company CEO had to face the wrath of the American motorist when armed with a bucket of rotten tomatoes and an hour to kill."

[warren pease]

24. I've never spent a night in line to buy the first tickets when the box office opens, but...

... this might be the time.


wp

[lonestarnot]

27. Can you save me a spot in line?

[Hydra]

18. I'm for the alternative energy fund

As long as you bar some of the BS programs like ethanol, clean coal and nuclear from getting the funds.

[warren pease]

23. Yeah, there'd be some interesting decisions on those kinds of issues...

... and you can see where the whole thing would really get political in a hurry, which would pretty much kill the program before it started.

An Iowa governor fighting for ethanol funding. The Peabody coal company wanting to strip mine the rest of Kentucky and on into Tennessee, too. I think nukes are dead because nobody will insure them. Of course, Cheney can always sell a couple of zillion dollars worth of Treasury junk bonds and make the feds the insurer.

I think the only way to assess the validity of grant proposals would be to run them by a panel composed of actual scientists with specific experience and knowledge of the various disciplines involved in sustainable energy and the products and technologies that would make the whole thing work on a large enough scale to be affordable for normal people.

And you'd have to specifically exclude politicians, junk science peddlers, anyone who draws a paycheck from a fossil fuels company, paid bogus science shills, global climate change deniers and probably a whole other bunch of sleazebags I can't think of right now.

That, along with subsidies and tax credits for buying and installing the equipment, would make the thing economically feasible -- at least in theory. It's when those damn facts start getting in the way that all hell breaks loose.


wp

[IDemo]

17. Not sure how much effect, if any, a one day supply of oil from the reserve would have

The last figure I recall (and it's been awhile since I checked) was about 22 million bpd for US consumption.

[Subdivisions]

21. It's up to 25-26 million barrels per day, according to various sources. n/t

[eridani]

25. I prefer price controls to a tax holiday myself. n/t

[krkaufman]

26. I think the windfall profits tax would suffice.

And it looks like we may need to consider one on other scarce resources, grain. Rampant speculation should not be allowed to starve some while others get fat.