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* * *Oil company profits called obscene
From Lewis M. Lyons
Cave JunctionIt has been obvious for decades that U.S. oil dollars have financed Arab terrorism.
Our government has done little to alleviate this situation. Want to know a reason why?
A huge windfall of the public’s dollars is realized by the government’s tax-collecting agencies as the price of petroleum products soar. Because the high taxes on petroleum products, federal and local, are based on percentages of the total charge, the increase in the bottom line is obscene.
Exxon-Mobil reported a 2005 profit of $36 billion; $16 billion in the fourth quarter. I don’t know the tax percentage on a gallon of gas, but it would total billions of dollars.
You don’t kill the goose that lays that kind of golden egg.
Who has the largest burden?
From Joe Hoelzle
Cave JunctionI tend to not react publicly to world affairs, but in the last month there were two especially disturbing developments I believe should be written about.
First, we had an increase in postal rates. I initially thought it was probably due to increased gas prices, but the postmaster was happy to enlighten me that the increase was a mandate by the federal government to be spent as it wishes. The Postal Service receives none of the increased revenue.
The government tells us that it is lowering our taxes and then increases our costs another way that is more underhanded. So, the rich get the majority of the tax breaks, and the middle- and lower-income population pays a higher percentage of their income in a hidden tax.
The second development was Exxon reporting another record profit for the second quarter in a row. They tell us that the price increase in fuel is due to the higher price of crude oil and loss of refineries due to “Katrina.”
So I thought, what if my supplies suddenly sky-rocketed in price; and on top of that my place of business burned down, how could I possibly make a marked increase in profit?
It definitely makes me question what caused such a huge increase in fuel prices. It also makes me wonder how much stock President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the rest of the politicians own in Exxon and the other oil companies. If my memory serves me right, while Clinton was president we had a smaller increase in fuel prices than now, and the Republican-controlled Congress and the people demanded action.
Clinton released the federal oil reserves and prices stabilized. Where are the indignant voices this time? Are they not being broadcast by our controlled media, or are they content with their profits?
These are two cases of increased basic costs which affect all Americans. But if you compare the percent of income affected of an upper-income family and the percent affected of a lower-income family, who takes the largest burden?
Walden plan seen good in Safety Net situation
From Jim Feldkamp
Adjunct professor at Umpqua Community College, and Republican candidate, 4th congressional districtLike most Oregonians, I was concerned with President Bush’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2007.
In it was the reduction of the “Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination” (the Safety Net). My concern is the realization that the Clinton Northwest Forest plan had finally run its course.
The Clinton plan was designed to assuage the concerns of business and environmental groups about harvesting our counties’ most renewable resource -- timber. In this plan the counties that would have realized additional money, from taxes acquired by logging timber, would be subsidized by the federal government to equal the money that would have been recovered from taxes acquired by harvesting timber.
Unfortunately, the plan was flawed. The Safety Net only provides what are expected to be receipts from timber harvested -- not additional taxes created by new jobs and “spin-off” companies that would normally be associated with a vibrant economy.
Daniel Boone stated, “A government big enough to give us everything we want is big enough to take away everything we need.” It is once again proving true.
The federal payments in lieu of jobs/work are being reduced due to the financial crises and the desire to reduce our deficit. Now counties throughout our state suffer from budgetary shortfalls due to the restriction placed on our timber and resource-based industries. This comes at a particularly bad time -- counties in the 4th Congressional District have some of the highest unemployment in the nation.
Those of us in Josephine County know that these payments are vital to our local economy, and we know that all public officials are working hard to ensure that this Safety Net gets renewed by the federal government.
And it must occur. Because without these receipts our public safety, roads and educational systems will take a direct hit.
But that brings us back to why we needed this in the first place? The Clinton plan was designed to address the concerns of all. Yet in the proceeding 12 years we have seen radical environmentalist-use laws to prevent the harvests of timber “guaranteed” in the Clinton plan.
The extreme agenda driven by these groups has ground down our economy and prevented any sustainable growth.
Luckily, one Congressman in Oregon, Greg Walden, has worked hard to develop and pass laws that allow Oregonians back into our forests to harvest timber. By being the original sponsor of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA), which provided the avenue to get people back into the forest to create jobs and stimulate our local economy, we have provided a modicum of security in this fiscal crises.
Now he is working hard to ensure that Oregonians can take control of the forests after catastrophic events and harvest dead and dying timber, which would provide a new revenue stream and create new jobs and wealth in our state.
It’s a bill that the Communities for a Healthy Forest (of which I am a member) understand would help reduce not only potential fuel for additional fires, but also provide a new revenue stream that could balance our state budget.
Yet through all these changes, through all these laws, our local Congressman Peter DeFazio has been silent. He was reluctant to get on board with Walden’s HFRA, and he is still not a co-sponsor or even a participant in the post-fire recovery bill with laws that can provide a modicum of support to our communities.
It has always been a fool’s errand to rely on the government to provide indefinite welfare at the expense of good jobs. In today’s political environment with polarizing agendas it is a shame that a political agenda conceived and implemented far from the state of Oregon has put our state into such a bind.
It is important that we fight to ensure that the Safety Net gets reinstated, but then what? I believe we should be looking into the future and planning to ensure that opportunities lay within the grasp for local businesses and Oregonians to have sustainable jobs and a vibrant economy.
Because without such assurances even our Safety Net will be inadequate to provide the funding for what are essential services.
It is time to look forward and see opportunities vs. problems, action vs. rhetoric; and work to ensure that our counties, districts and state are not placed on welfare because of policies contrived in Washington that hobbles our state’s ability to generate family wage jobs here at the local level.
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