Question Earthority!

“These days, even President Bush is dissing the oil companies. … He doesn’t accuse them of starting the Iraq war, of course, but he does now favor looking into other possible misdeeds, such as antitrust violations. For Republican Sen. Arlen Specter and a chorus of Democrats, oil-company misdeeds are enough to justify a tax on their ‘excess profits.’ This hunt for a smoking gun misses the point. Taxes are not a form of punishment. And you don’t need to find wrongdoing to justify a special tax on their profits. You only need a pocket calculator — to figure out how much they owe. The math is rough, but it’s not complicated. About a third of the oil consumed in the United States comes from wells in the United States. That’s about 150 million barrels a month. The oil industry refers to this as ‘production,’ but a more accurate term would be ‘extraction.’ Nature produced the oil and charges nothing for it.” (04/28/06)