Huh?

by digby

Dday mentioned this earlier in his overview of the horror they call a budget deal, but I didn’t understand the full ramifications. They actually gave the oil companies a windfall and didn’t get anything for it at all?

We’ve been focusing a lot here on Calitics in the last day or so on the losers in the recent budget deal. But who are the winners? Pretty high on that list would have to be Big Oil. They were able to convince Democrats to drop their demands for an oil severance tax, and were able to convince Democrats to agree to allow the first offshore oil drilling in 40 years to begin off the unspoiled coast of Santa Barbara County near Point Conception. Every other oil-producing state in the union taxes the extraction of oil from its lands – including Texas and Wyoming. Even Sarah Palin raised the oil severance tax in Alaska to 25% in 2007. Instead, as Paul Hogarth pointed out, California is defining itself to the right of Sarah Palin by refusing to embrace such a tax.

I don’t know how it could get any more insane than this. It’s as if the disaster capitalists have gone beyond the shock doctrine and are just openly looting the treasury now without even trying to pretend they are doing it for any good purpose. They’re just taking it and telling the citizens to go fuck themselves.
If you live in California, you can try to do something about this.

The Courage Campaign is asking our members to zero in on the oil severance tax and ask their legislators to vote “no” on a budget that does not include that tax. We will collect signatures to our letter and deliver it to every legislator in the Capitol ahead of the Thursday budget vote. Californians are being asked to make a choice: give the oil companies a sweetheart deal unprecedented in the United States, or demand that oil companies pay their fair share and help prevent a humanitarian catastrophe that budget cuts will cause. The Courage Campaign thinks the choice is clear. Let’s make sure our legislators hear about that clear choice before the vote on Thursday.

I can’t even wrap my mind around the fact that we would have to do this, but apparently even the most obvious, painless ways of raising revenue are now off the menu. What, are the oil companies going to move to Las Vegas too is they don’t get a bunch of tax breaks?

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