Obama’s new attack ad against McCain is something. Hypocritical and wrong….but it is something.
Every time you fill your tank, the oil companies fill their pockets. Now Big Oil’s filling John McCain’s campaign with 2 million dollars in contributions. Because instead of taxing their windfall profits to help drivers, McCain wants to give them another 4 billion in tax breaks.
After one president in the pocket of big oil… We can’t afford another.
Barack Obama… A windfall profits tax on big oil to give families a thousand dollar rebate. A president who’ll stand up for you.
Ahhh, the windfall tax. Socialism/Marxism at its finest. The oil companies make a modest profit and they should be punished. The big question you should ask is who is next after oil? Drug companies making a profit? Take it away. Coca-cola making a profit? Take it away. No one should be successful in this country after Obama is elected you see.
The WSJ asks just what the hell is a windfall profit anyways?
The “windfall profits” tax is back, with Barack Obama stumping again to apply it to a handful of big oil companies. Which raises a few questions: What is a “windfall” profit anyway? How does it differ from your everyday, run of the mill profit? Is it some absolute number, a matter of return on equity or sales — or does it merely depend on who earns it?
Enquiring entrepreneurs want to know. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama’s “emergency” plan, announced on Friday, doesn’t offer any clarity. To pay for “stimulus” checks of $1,000 for families and $500 for individuals, the Senator says government would take “a reasonable share” of oil company profits.
[Barack Obama]Mr. Obama didn’t bother to define “reasonable,” and neither did Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, when he recently declared that “The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy.” Really? This extraordinary redefinition of free-market success could use some parsing.
Take Exxon Mobil, which on Thursday reported the highest quarterly profit ever and is the main target of any “windfall” tax surcharge. Yet if its profits are at record highs, its tax bills are already at record highs too. Between 2003 and 2007, Exxon paid $64.7 billion in U.S. taxes, exceeding its after-tax U.S. earnings by more than $19 billion. That sounds like a government windfall to us, but perhaps we’re missing some Obama-Durbin business subtlety.
Maybe they have in mind profit margins as a percentage of sales. Yet by that standard Exxon’s profits don’t seem so large. Exxon’s profit margin stood at 10% for 2007, which is hardly out of line with the oil and gas industry average of 8.3%, or the 8.9% for U.S. manufacturing (excluding the sputtering auto makers).
If that’s what constitutes windfall profits, most of corporate America would qualify. Take aerospace or machinery — both 8.2% in 2007. Chemicals had an average margin of 12.7%. Computers: 13.7%. Electronics and appliances: 14.5%. Pharmaceuticals (18.4%) and beverages and tobacco (19.1%) round out the Census Bureau’s industry rankings. The latter two double the returns of Big Oil, though of course government has already became a tacit shareholder in Big Tobacco through the various legal settlements that guarantee a revenue stream for years to come.
Now…as far as McCain being in the pocket of big oil seeing as how he accepted contributions from them all you have to do is surf over to FactCheck.org and read about the hypocrisy:
In a new ad, Obama says, “I don’t take money from oil companies.”
Technically, that’s true, since a law that has been on the books for more than a century prohibits corporations from giving money directly to any federal candidate. But that doesn’t distinguish Obama from his rivals in the race.
We find the statement misleading:
- Obama has accepted more than $213,000 from individuals who work for companies in the oil and gas industry and their spouses.
- Two of Obama’s bundlers are top executives at oil companies and are listed on his Web site as raising between $50,000 and $100,000 for the presidential hopeful.
The lie in the ad is the fact that Obama tries to say that big oil companies contribute to McCain’s campaign. As FactCheck stated, that would be illegal. Employees have contributed, as they have to Obama. Hell, Obama has two big wigs from big oil working to get contributions from small donors for his campaign.
That’s not being in the pocket of big oil?
Obama wants to punish those evil rich people by taking their profits and give them to the poor. Sounds wonderfully like Robin Hood right?
Actually, it sounds like Karl Marx.
Capitalism encourages people and businesses to become successful and to enjoy the fruits of their labor. They should not feel ashamed to make big profits, neither should big oil. Although, technically, they do not make big profits. Actually quite modest profits, percentage wise, and on top of that they pay huge amounts of taxes to the American peoples coffers.
If the bar for confiscation of profits is 10% then we are all in for a very rough Marxist ride for the next four years if this man gets into the Oval Office.
One other thing…..didn’t Obama say he would not put out negative ads?
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