OPEN MOUTH AND PUT FOOT IN IT!

AS anyone who has the rudimentary knowledge of economics understands that business and government all require money to operate. Without a source of money the business and a government will go bankrupt. s evidence of this fact we can look at the implosion of the once powerful Soviet Union. Try to keep up with the "Star Wars" arms race that President Reagan began was the undoing of a powerful and threatening regime.

Now comes a Congresswoman from California with a degree in Sociology. who with a slip of a tongue during a Congressional hearing indicated her desire to Nationalize the Oil Industry.

The following is an excerpt from an article written by Lance Thompson for The New Media Journal that illustrates the Leftist members of Congress are willing to "cut their nose off despite their face"!

"Sensing another opportunity to posture and pretend they are relevant to national events, members of congressional committees in May called oil company executives to hearings about high oil company profits and even higher gas prices. This would all have been quite forgettable but for Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ revealing slip of the tongue that laid bare the liberal agenda for private industry–nationalize it and replace it with government bureaucracy.

During the hearings in the House, Shell Oil Company president John Hofmeister charged that Congress bore some responsibility for high oil prices because of the severe limitations on exploration and drilling in Alaska and along the coasts. He further stated that prices were likely to rise further if these restrictions weren’t lifted. Congresswoman Maxine Waters answered with an angry, and barely controlled, threat that the government would retaliate for higher prices by taking over the oil companies".

It is not surprising that Ms.Waters made a threat to the Shell Oil executive, she has had similar outrageous incidents, such as dedicating the Impeachment Center in Los Angles. And it is notable that she like her fellow traveler Jesse Jackson, are exemplary as people who can intimidate and are extortionists in their operations.

Never the less, Ms. Walters should think before she puts her foot in her mouth. Free enterprise is the grease that runs the wheels of our government. The Oil Industry contributes billions of dollars in taxes each year to grease the government machine we call Congress, and the millions who work within it!

Exxon's tax payment in 2007 of $30 billion (that's $30,000,000,000) is a record, exceeding the $28 billion it paid last year.
By the way, Exxon pays taxes at a rate of 41% on its taxable income!
[Update: The $40.6 billion and $39.5 billion figures are after-tax profits. For 2006, Exxon's EBT (earnings before tax) was $67.4 billion, it paid $27.9 billion in taxes (41.4% tax rate), and its NIAT (net income after tax), or profit, was $39.5 billion.] .AND THIS IS JUST ONE OIL COMPANY!

In other words, just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people! Further, the tax rate for the bottom 50% is only 3% of adjusted gross income ($27.4 billion / $922 billion), and the tax rate for Exxon was 41% in 2006 ($67.4 billion in taxable income, $27.

Maxine Waters and her leftist cohorts better think twice about destroying "the chicken that lays the eggs"!

Nationalizing private industry has a long track record in communist countries, and the petroleum industry is a common target. Dictators such as Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, and Saddam Hussein have all nationalized their energy industries and funneled the profits to themselves. Waters has always occupied the extreme left of her party, and evidently the ways of totalitarian regimes appeal to her.