We do not have a free market capitalist system. We have a government assisted profits system for billionaire corporations. The first person to warn us about about "merchants" joing together into "cartels" was Adam Smith himself. We have Exxon and Mobile joining together again after their parent corporation, Standard Oil, was broken up under anti trust laws. After the two corporations merged, they have controlled the largest part of the US oil market. Chevron is second largest. Then there are several corporations competing for third largest. Even at this level, corporations like Conoco Phillips can boost an owner like T. Boone Pickens into a $2.7 billion personal wealth.

If someone disagrees, we have only to look at the Republi-oil-icans in the Senate circling the wagons to block the Democrats from taking away big oil's corporate welfare, despite record breaking profits. Oil is one of the biggest donors to the GOP. So Republicans are generally bought and paid for.

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Wordy...

this is a whole lot of repetition but I will try to address your points.

35 mpg is allot higher then the actual average. and that would be great if the only problem facing the US were gas prices. but still have environmental concerns. And congress is also starting to put pressure on the Car co's

But my point remains the average mpg stood still for 20 years because gas prices went down. And I felt like a chicken little saying over and over again something should be done.

You ideal is reactionary society and that is not practical. We cannot wait until the world bakes before we do something about the possibility that it will.

without highways the oil co's would be less important. we are building infrastructure to for there product. With record profits and them selling huge amounts to OTHER countries I cannot feel bad about there tax burden.
I run a small buisness and there burden net% wise is lower then mine.

Yea but the right wing in this country even on this thread don't understand that the 34% number is open to interpertation some will try to fenagle the numbers to make it seem they spen 3 dollors in taxes for every one dollar they make. Umm?!!!

you have far to much faith in the American people. Once again how many times do we have to wait untill the problem is huge before we do something.


do you even read what you right? This crap is all subjective. Any intelegant person can find enough evidence to back up what they believe and you are no different.

What is really funny is I was agreeing with you on the very point you started this with.

ahh but high gas prices is a good thing IMO. It is the only thing that has shaken people out of ignorance on this issue.

regulation caused low MPG??? going to have to prove that one.


you are not a buisness man are you?

Your numbers are wrong the average mpg right now is 23mpg look this up.


no I am not I think they need to be taxed fairly that may even mean less when all the math is done. I just do not think they should be allowed to buy up pattens and kill themn. They are agressivly seeking to destroy there competitiopn. and doing so screwing the Us over.

Free market or not no co should be allowed to put the US at risk with there tactics.
once again your entire point is flawed MPG averages are not Highe enough. and they are not close to even 30mpg.

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Can we get back on topic please.

"And just like they did in the 70s they'll stop making those huge boats and move to more fuel efficient economical cars that people are demanding. You know, supply and demand? It's already started. I hear commercials constantly advertising the MPG of the featured automobile."

Innovation in greatly increasing the miles per gallon right now are abundant. Innovation in changing to alternative fuels is abundant. And basically none of it is going into mass producting and hitting the US market. An environmentalist citizens group, GreenCars in California took a first generation Prius that still had a dash board set up for plug in electricity and retrofitted it with batteries and plug in recharging. The result was 180 miles per gallon. Tesla, a foreign company, was the only one to react and has just put out a fast sports car hybrid getting 220 mpg with new battery technology. They will soon market a family hybrid.

So why is this innovation not on the nationwide market?

The fact is, the American automakers have been lethargic if not flat out against innovation like this.

Then Ford just came out with a diesel car for Europe getting 63 mpg. Why isn't it being marketted in the US? How much would it cost to run it on biodiesel? (Most likely far less than gasoline).

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