wackos in Waco [RE-wrenches]

[Antony Tersol]

I can't find the exact reference for this, but I read recently that we
spend $50 billion a year on Mideast oil, and $50 billion a year on the
portion of the defense budget for the troops and ships, etc, in the
Mideast.  So even before the hidden subsidies, the true cost is already
double what people see at the pump or (if oil-fired) on their power
bill.  That is no accident.  The corporations know that demand is
elastic and responds to price.  Hide the true cost so that people will
consume more.  


The following are facts as documented in the references (the research I
copied from a paper whose reference I have misplaced, but I think from
the Energy Foundation www.ef.org):

The federal government expended $217.4 billion for incentives to
stimulate
energy production in the 50 or so years between the First World War and
the
early 1970s. Of this, almost half (46.6%) went to the oil industry; the
second
largest amount was spent to expand electricity generation.

- Battelle Report, “Analysis of Federal Incentives Used to Stimulate
Energy Production,” 
Pacific Northwest Laboratory, February 1980 (Revision #2), p. 276.


Virtually all energy tax legislation enacted in recent times includes
some
form of tax benefit for the oil industry.

- Lazarri, Salvatore, Congressional Research Service, Library of
Congress, “Energy Tax Policy,”
September 19, 2001, p. 46.


Today, the effective tax rate for this industry is 11%, compared to an
average tax rate for non-oil industries of 18%.  In 1991, for example,
by avoiding the higher tax bracket, the oil industry saved $2 billion in
payments to the U.S. government.

- Hwang, Ronald, Union of Concerned Scientists, “Executive Summary,”
Money Down the Pipeline, 1995.


Between 1918 and 1980, the government spent $268.5 billion for
incentives
to the oil industry (1999 dollars), by far the largest share of
incentive
funds for all types of energy.

- Battelle report, Op. cit., p. 4.

 


“Dependence on the Middle East
entails the risk of a repeat of the
international crises of 1973, 1979,
and 1990—or worse. This growing
reliance on Middle Eastern oil not only
adds to that region’s disproportionate
leverage, but provides the resources
with which rogue nations support
international terrorism and develop
weapons of mass destruction and the
ballistic missiles to carry them.”

- Senator Richard G. Lugar and R. James Woolsey,
“The New Petroleum” Foreign Affairs,
January/February, 1999.


Other articles of interest, available at www.ef.org:

America, Oil and National Security
What Government and Industry Data Really Show
2002
National Environmental Trust

Sunpower, 
by Denis Hayes

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