Maxine Waters threatens to nationalize U.S. oil industries

She starts to say "socailized" but then can't think of the word (nationalize) that she is looking for. It seems some of her colleagues on the panel get a bit of a chuckle out of it.

Regardless, these prices that Congress is 'grandstanding' about... saying to 'the people', "look... see... we're trying to do something" -- thing is, they can't. The problem lies with the de-valuation of the dollar. It is nothing the oil companies can control... and nothing the Congress can control; since giving all power to the privite entity of The Federal Reserve, so many years ago.

YouTube Link

[edit on 5/24/2008 by RabbitChaser]

There's a lot more to this than the devaluation of the dollar. Although, I think that is a small contributor. Congress actually could lower gas prices by simply cutting the taxes a little. Exxon Mobil was taxed in the area of 75% on their profits last year. This equates to the federal government making over 40 cents per gallon on income tax and federal gas tax. They're making 5 times as much as the oil companies per gallon sold so it's in their best interest to keep the prices up.

It's a scary thought that the oil industry could be "socialized". Government is never as efficient as private industry. My guess is we would have gas rationing and the price would be just as high.

reply to post by BlueTriangle

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Yah... I'll agree with your comments. Thing is, though, if they dump the tax, someone else will just tack it back on with one excuse or another. And that 'suspended tax' talk is most likely just campaign rhetoric anyway. We're a country led by morons.

reply to post by BlueTriangle

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why would it be in the best interest of govn't to keep oil prices high, if they are collecting tax per gallon? Maybe I'm missing something, but as prices go higher, people start to consume less, and so the govn't would be collecting less tax revenue as less gallons would be consumed at the higher prices? right?

I guess I'm not following your logic here.

Also, oil is an ifrastructure item, just like electricity and transportation. Deregulation of both of those has caused a lot of headaches, and so I'm not sure socialised oil or whatever you want to call it is actually that bad of an idea! But what we really should have been doing was persuing alternatives and conservations measures way back in the 70's when carter put solar panels on the white house roof (Reagan promptly had them removed when he and Bush took over).