Bernie Sanders calls for oil price controls and windfall profit taxes

[Armstead]

Once again, Bernie goes where otehrs fear to tread...

http://bernie.house.gov/documents/articles/20050816165550.asp

8/16/2005, WCAX
Sanders Offers Ideas to Battle Rising Fuel Costs


Burlington, VT - Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders says price controls and windfall profits taxes are the way to bring down soaring gasoline prices.

Sanders talked to reporters at a Burlington gas station this morning. He said big profits at the largest oil companies are coming out of the pockets of working people. His legislation calls for opening the strategic petroleum reserve, enacting windfall profits taxes, and a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization about price fixing by OPEC, the organization of oil exporting countries.

Sanders expects his approach will pick up support as members of congress spend time in their districts during the congressional recess.

"Older people are fearful about how they're going to heat their homes this winter. And I think that type of grass roots reaction, that type of anger, that type of fear, is in fact going to provoke the Congress to move forward. And I intend to play an active role in that process," said Sanders.

Sanders said president Bush has failed to put pressure on OPEC because Republicans take large financial contributions from the big oil companies.

[TaleWgnDg]

1. Hhmmmmmm, maybe I should move BACK to Vermont . . .

.
in order to vote again for Bernie? This time for the U.S. Senate. Damn. Way to go, Bernie!

.

[GreenPartyVoter]

37. What do you think.. can he win it? :^)

[TaleWgnDg]

40. Yes, Vermont loves Bernie . . . ! n/t

[Hidden Stillness]

2. Government Has to Control Corporations, Not the Other Way Around

Bernie Sanders is fabulous, as usual, and this is not an "extreme" recommendation, as ordinary Americans have been calling for government response to these crises for a long time. This country's slide down to Third World economic staus will not be stopped until we get a government that commonsensically regulates and controls the corporate world and its profits again. Waiting for capitalists to be good, conscientious people has not worked. These measures used to be commonplace.

[okieinpain]

39. thank you. I don't understand why that is such a hard thing for people

to understand. they can sell, build, market anything they want. but when times like these come about limits should be put in place. it's crazy to allow the market to just run wild.

[kimpossible]

3. Fantastic! Recommended.

[xray s]

4. I am all for windfall profit tax but not price controls

Use the windfall profit tax to pay for tax incentives for high mileage/hybrid cars and trucks, development of wind/solar, improved energy efficiency. Give relief for low income homeowners to help pay for heat in the interim.

$3 gas is killing the gas hog mega SUV market. Price controls will just keep the addiction alive.

[newswolf56]

8. Sorry but this is a classic example of how environmentalists...

demonstrate their elitist arrogance toward America's working families and thereby irrevocably divide the Democratic Party. In the context of today's crisis, anyone opposed to price controls implicitly favors the savaging of the working class and the poor.

[acmejack]

11. That's a classic example of BS!

Environmentalists and their elitism, give me a break! You and I both know that we should have had gasoline in the same price range as Europe for decades. There would be plenty of funding for the global warming issues and the infrastructure.

Feeding an addiction is doing no one any favor. I for one, dislike seeing our government contribute to the demise of our planet!

Why do people feel compelled to trash the environmental movement in favor of the ignore it and it will go away school of thought? That was one of the least progressive stances I have seen here, I would hope you will reconsider your remarks and help us seek a middle ground.

Given the choice of conservation or destruction, I am afraid I come down on the side of environmentalism every time, I think of my grandchildren.

[Armstead]

23. Gas and Oil is not an addiction

It's a necessity. Sorry, but being able to heat our homes and drive is not a luxury in present society.

In the longer term we ought to come up with ways to reduce energy, use renewable sources, all that good stuff.

But it aint gonna happen soon, and in the transition phase people need those things to live our lives.

people should not be punished for the failures of government and the corporate sector to provide alternatives.

[Burried News]

31. OK Lets compromise - Nationalize them!

[newswolf56]

35. There was a thread on this site a couple of months ago...

focusing on the bourgeois elitism of the environmental movement -- an elitism expressed in precisely the way you express it (Marie Antoinette "let-them-eat-cake" indifference to economic reality) -- and how it has not only marginalized the environmental movement itself but wholly (and bitterly) divided the Democratic Party's natural constituency.

Where I live, in the Pacific Northwest, I see it constantly: instead of going after the timber barons, the environmentalists become a bourgeois lynch mob, targeting the loggers themselves, not just with hate-the-loggers rallies but with the potentially murderous sabotage of tree-spiking. Every logger so targeted is a new-made Republican. I have seen it too in Appalachia: in the hatred environmental elitists direct at coal miners rather than the Mine Operators.

You cannot denounce and economically afflict workers whose only job opportunities are within an exploitative, oppressive, environmentally destructive system -- which is ultimately true of us all -- and then expect us to rally to your cause. Contrary to the elitist, pseudo-Leftist cant, workers are not morons.

My own belief is that this pseudo-Leftist malice is the lingering result of the class divisions of the '60s, when the oligarchy thoroughly divided workers from students by using draft exemptions for the wealthy and/or well connected to pit one group against the other. The bourgeois students, already rendered venomously anti-intellectual by a dozen years of U.S. public schooling, had no class-struggle analysis to enable themselves to understand what was being done and so turned on the workers with a vengeance; eventually -- enraged by the outpouring of insults atop the fact they were already unfairly bearing the blood-burden of the war -- "hard hats" began beating up "long-hairs." It was in fact the most successful constituency-dividing tactic in American history, and I have never for an instant doubted that it (and the war that spawned it) was the oligarchy's revenge on President Lyndon Johnson for his Great Society and its War on Poverty.

What the environmental movement should have been doing all these years is building the solidarity of a united front instead of serving the oligarchy by agitating ever greater division. It should have joined with loggers in demanding selective logging, which preserves both timber jobs and the environment. In the realm of reducing petroleum dependence, it should have joined with working Americans and the poor to demand the construction of an adequate mass transport network. Instead -- precisely as demonstrated by the current situation in Seattle (the nation's most environmentally conscious city in the nation's most environmentally conscious state) -- the environmentalists sat silently by for the past 30 years and did absolutely nothing as the city's oligarchy methodically obstructed one rapid-transit construction proposal after another. Meanwhile, Huxley College of Environmental Studies -- a branch of Western Washington University and the state's one graduate-level school of environmental science -- totally ignored mass transport and instead concentrated entirely on making the privately owned automobile environmentally less destructive and therefore politically "correct": an only-for-the-rich solution that obviously serves only the oligarchy and the college's wealthiest benefactors.

Belittling people like myself as "addicts" (and therefore "junkies") is anything but "progressive" and again serves the oligarchy by reinforcing divisions among the afflicted. In truth, most of us would have long ago embraced public transport if it were available in adequate form: burdened by the ever-skyrocketing costs of a transportation system based on private-automobile ownership -- the most obscenely expensive mode of transport on the planet -- we would welcome the savings public transport would facilitate. But our politicians have made certain we will never have that option. In the greatest act of betrayal in human history, our politicians have ensured that we are literally shackled to our automobiles for life -- those who cannot afford it be damned. This nation's chronic and deliberately inflicted lack of adequate public transport -- not to mention the additional exposure to crime and criminals that too often goes hand-in-hand with using public transport -- ensures our perpetual enslavement to Big Oil and Big Automotive: precisely as Big Oil, Big Automotive and their wholly owned political representatives have always intended. And now, to the oligarchy's great glee, it is much too late; the economy is too far into its final reversion to unrestricted capitalist savagery to ever reverse the process. Hence adequate public transport will NEVER be built -- at least not in the United States as it is constituted today.

The "progressive" solution would be for the Left to forthrightly acknowledge the tactical errors environmentalists have committed in the past and begin working to heal the wounds so inflicted. Indeed a few ecofeminists have begun to do just that. Workplace democracy and economic democracy in general are NOT incompatible with environmentalism: in fact even Marx himself (who was deeply concerned about the impact of industrialization on the health of the soil) believed that socialism and environmentalism go hand-in-glove. But the U.S. environmentalists' malicious bourgeois scorn of blue-collar folk and the poor -- a scorn never more vividly demonstrated than by damning as "addicts" or junkies those of us who are compelled to buy gasoline -- may well have already done sufficient damage to guarantee the essential solidarity is forever beyond reach. And even if such healing were hypothetically possible (which I believe it is), there are other barriers: most environmentalists are too proudly elitist to admit their errors and too haughtily bourgeois to mingle comfortably with anyone from further below the salt. Above all, the entire American Left is too venomously anti-intellectual to develop the requisite remedial analysis: a truly suicidal failing -- the deliberate consequence of the nation's public-schooled dumbing-down -- that is undermining ALL genuinely Leftist endeavor in America. Were it not for that ruinous plague of anti-intellectuality, the intrinsic connection between environmentalism, socialism and class-struggle would be intuitively obvious. The American future has thus never been more grim.

Alas I am probably speaking to the equivalent of a brick wall. A true "progressive" would never have so mis-labeled a worsening burden borne involuntarily by working people and the poor; a true progressive would never have maliciously reduced us to subhumanity by calling the burden the oligarchy has imposed on us an "addiction" -- implying we are merely junkies, victimized by our own choices and therefore worthy of no further consideration.

[acmejack]

38. You make a lot of judgements my friend!

Telling me what I am and am not. The tone you adopt is certainly not conducive to anything other than a "brickwall" reception. You desire to tell me what I said and why I am an unfeeling fool.

I will not try to debate with you, as I find your tone contemptable and unworthy of further engagement. I will aspire to avoid replying to your posts in the future, oh wise and learned one.

[Jamastiene]

25. Good point. I'm inclined to

agree with you. Being in the poor category, I cannot afford to go buy a new car. I gotta try to live with my old Nissan Sentra until it no longer runs. Hopefully, by the time I HAVE to get a new car and have no other choice, the hybrids will be for ALL people, not just the richer ones.

And you are right awwn about this issue being one of the ones that divides the party.

[Jim Sagle]

5. Social democracy RRRRAWWWKSSSS!!!!

Sure beats free-market cartelism.

[newswolf56]

6. Unfortunately Sanders is completely wrong...

in his estimate of how Congress will react. With the exception of a tiny, utterly powerless faction of bold and principled individuals like himself, Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of the global oligarchy. Congress will therefore do exactly nothing (except perhaps secretly complain to its petroleum-industry masters that it isn't getting a big enough share of the profits.)

A true "government by the people" would have already imposed a windfall profits tax and would already be planning how to use the additional revenues to expand social services -- especially social services that help people thrown out of work or otherwise ruined by the skyrocketing oil prices. It would also have warned Big Oil that if prices continue to skyrocket, the imposition of price-controls will be essential to the protection of the national work force. Though true "government by the people" would not have betrayed the public to Big Oil and Big Automotive; instead it would have long ago built a public transport network adequate to cope with the present-day crisis.

Sanders is a voice crying in the wilderness. He would surely lead us in the right direction: too bad his message and its promise is so totally suppressed by the corporate media.

[Armstead]

21. Sanders is completely right -- It's Congress that's wrong

More specifically the Congressional Democrats who have given up on basic concepts like protecting and advancing the public interest.

(Not all Copngressional Democrats. Just the Corporate lackeys and apolitical toadies.)

[newswolf56]

28. Kindly read my post before you react. I agree with Sanders...

about everything EXCEPT his estimate of how Congress will react. Contrary to Sander's PollyAnna prediction, Congress will NOT DO ANYTHING to ease the worsening economic plight of the American people: NOT NOW, NOT EVER. Republican or Democrat, all but a tiny few of the members of Congress are wholly owned agents of the oligarchy. Congress gives not a tinker's damn about the people: indeed American working families are no longer represented by the U.S. government at any level. Look at the recent bankruptcy bill -- in essence, the re-legalization and re-imposition of indentured servitude. The only thing Congress will do about skyrocketing fuel prices and soaring profits is complain to the Oil Barons its members are not getting a big enough share of the loot.

[Armstead]

29. I ws just reacting to the fatalism

I understand what you are saying, and agree with it largely.

Howwver, I think we ought to be cheering on those rare birds like Bernie, and pushing otehr Democrats to start following his lead.

[welshTerrier2]

7. blows against the empire: recommended ...

it is time for bold proposals ... our agenda should be to put an end to corporatism ... our agenda should be to reclaim our democracy from Big Oil and other industries that abuse our citizens and innocent people all over the world ... it is time to tell Americans that they must see through the myth of "free" market capitalism that only means industry is free to do whatever the hell they want to do regardless of how it affects our country ...

the American people, suffering with high gas prices and craving a return to the America that once held so much promise, are ready for bold ideas and bold solutions ... nothing is off the table ... the time is NOW to promote an agenda that values "people over profits" and values "our democratic institutions over corporate tyranny and exploitation" and values an America that was admired in the world instead of an America out to prove how macho it can be ...

kudos to Bernie for finding a crack in the walls of the empire ... it will be interesting to see if the "timid wing of the Democratic Party" backs him up on this ...

thanks for posting this, Armstead !! recommended ...

[Burried News]

32. "nothing is off the table" good posterboard material as opposed

to "there are no plans on my desk to attack Iraq"

[burrowowl]

9. Go Bernie!

However, windfall taxes are so Eisenhower, Kennedy ...
When were windfall taxes last paid!?!??!??!

LOVE BERNIE!

Not only heat homes but pay for FOOD shipped in through: TRUCKS that burn Diesel an OIL-derived fuel!

WHY AREN'T MURIKANS OUT IN THE STREETS1

[Robeson]

10. Bernie, you make this old Socialist proud. Thanks!....

...:thumbsup:

[Ishoutandscream2]

34. You and me both, Robeson

He makes my socialist heart smile!

[kentuck]

12. But it's not possible to do that.....?

Is it?? At least, that's what the "pushers" in the media tell us.

[flpoljunkie]

16. Congress will hold hearings on rising gas prices when they return in Sept.

The Republicans, as well as Democrats, are definitely feeling the heat from their constituents. Whether they will actually do anything is a different matter, of course.

They must look like they care with the 2006 mid-terms looming.

[Nothing Without Hope]

13. The Bush empire is joined at the pocket to the Saudi royals. They will

NOT put real pressue on the Saudis and they will NOT take real steps to prevent their oilmen cronies from profiteering on this situation. Indeed, an Iran war would boost the prices even higher.

[deutsey]

14. I love Bernie. I hope he wins his Senate race.

:thumbsup:

[flpoljunkie]

15. Go, Bernie! Go to bernie.org to contribute to his Senate campaign!

http://www.bernie.org

[zippy890]

17. I like that windfall profits tax idea

the dems should rally big time on that one

[Daphne08]

18. It's about time somebody in Washington spoke up!

Hey, I know he's in Vermont. ;)

Go, Bernie!!

I think we should threaten to nationalize the oil companies. Scare them into being responsible! :D

[Al-CIAda]

19. ..."they are stupid" --- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
=====

I just wonder HOW stupid the American people have to be to not fully realize this yet.

[LeFleur1]

20. Monoply Pricing?

Senator Dorgan, D-ND has called for an investigation of the extreme profit taking by oil companies.

[Armstead]

22. Dorgan is great too -- although underrecognized

Sen. Dorgan has been on the right side of many issues. He's fought against trade giveaways, media consolidation, etc.

He isn't colorful or charismatic, so he often is not on the radar but he's one of the Democrats that stands up for what the party is supposed to believe in.

[Burried News]

33. Geez Al that is a great quote from Ike. Shows these guys have had

their agenda for much longer than I thought. Fifty years ago they had this in mind. Everyday I find out something that stuns me.

[procopia]

24. The problem with windfall profit taxes

In the 80's, they were applied not only to oil and gas companies, but to small farmers as well. Many who had owned their mineral rights for decades finally realized a payoff during the 80's oil boom. When windfall profit taxes were passed, as much of HALF of a farmer's payoff went to the IRS. It isn't right that a lifetime investment payoff can be considered a windfall.

[Armstead]

26. So don't put them on small farmers

There are lots of ways through targeting and exemptions that this could be directed at Big Oil.

[OKthatsIT]

27. Bush has reserves he could release as well

Any president would begin with an investigation...they say "refineries"..then the Govt should build them, its national security.

[Burried News]

30. Investment in double hulled tankers Bernie.

[Douglas Carpenter]

36. Bernie is amazing

A True Voice of Opposition
--A Voice for Working People
--Not the Elite--
http://www.bernie.org/issues.asp