Get ready to be really pissed off......

[montana500]

The White House is going to waive $ 7 billion in oil and gas royalties that were extracted from public land. No big surprise, right?

Well ,they are advocating *right now* the sell-off of our public lands because they are "out of money". The public land sell off would earn 1 billion$ , which the White House says they "desperately" need. Here's the kicker - this oil and gas that was extraqcted (and to be royalty free) came from the SAME NATIONAL FOREST AND BLM lands they now want to sell off to make money!!!! HUH??????

They cut the land and water conservation fund by 40%, and cut the national park budget by 89$ million.

WTF is going on?


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060214/ts_nm/energy_royalties_report_dc

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The government may waive up to $7 billion in royalty payments from companies pumping oil and natural gas on federal territory in the next five years, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing administration officials and budget documents.


The royalty relief would amount to one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in U.S. history, even though the administration assumes oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period, the Times report said.

The report cited estimates in the Interior Department's recent budget plan that would allow companies to pump about $65 billion in oil and natural gas without paying royalties.

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Boy do the Democrats have a campaign billboard if they're smart

enough to see it.

[MadMaddie]

3. They haven't taken advantage of all of the other silver platters...

they have been handed.

How much more do they need!!

[blm]

8. Kerry submitting Resolution today to address this issue

John Kerry to Introduce Resolution Today to Fix “Royalty Relief Program” for Oil Companies
February 14th, 2006 @ 7:57 am

John Kerry announced this morning that he will introduce a resolution in the Senate today that highlights the need to fix the royalty relief program for oil companies. The NY Times reported today that, “The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.”

It was made public today that the Bush administration will use the royalty relief program to allow oil companies to pump $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal land over the next five years and waive any royalties to the government.

Below is a statement from Senator Kerry:

“It’s not America that’s addicted to oil, it’s the Bush Administration that’s addicted to oil. How else can you explain that buried in the President’s budget is one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years?

MORE & LINKS - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=1934

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. Can anyone send word to Kerry?

Tell him to tie in the sale of public lands with this 7 Billion dollar giveaway?

By the way, Thanks John Kerry!

[blm]

13. Call his Senate office. He'll probably bring it up in tomorrow's hearings.

.

[FreedomAngel82]

32. Go Kerry!

[lilbigman]

19. Question is

Are the majority of American people smart enough to see it? They're so damn blinded by "The War on Terror" (you know, the one this country started?) they can't see all the resources it's draining from this country.

[yellowdogmi]

21. Welcome to DU

:toast:

[lilbigman]

24. Thank ya, thank ya

:-)

[FreedomAngel82]

33. Chaos is their best friend

Always has been and always will be. That way they can do their real agenda(s) while we're all focused on silly things like Boehner.

[wildbilln864]

37. Is everyone forgeting?

The elections are still rigged! They'll be rigged! They'll be stolen again and we'll be on the boards here debating it all over again. Nothing's changing!

[MadMaddie]

2. Will the insanity stop....

This country will take decades to recover from all of this.

[Epiphany4z]

4. good lord

get these people out of office!..it is going to take sooooooooo long to fix things and it is not going to be painless...I hope people realize this. It is going to cost $$ to fix all they have screwed up.

[LiberalEsto]

5. They're afraid we'll retake Congress

so they're hurrying up the big giveaways to their cronies.

[Castilleja]

49. I think that is exactly what is going on here

and it started much earlier than this.

[myrna minx]

6. Good god...will it ever stop?

K&R

[gratuitous]

7. To be fair, the oil companies had a rough year last year

And they need some additional money to build vaults for all the money they extracted from consumers last year. Have a heart, would you people? You just don't grasp the burdens of the obscenely overrich.

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. Yeah, poor oil tycoons. They did so poorly that they now need

6 ports to smuggle their stash OUT of the country.

[LisaLynne]

9. WFT is going on? The criminals in the WH are ...

in bed with the oil industry. They are personally going to benefit. That makes me so mad I could scream! Why are there those who refuse to see how we as a nation and taxpayers are being ripped off? They can't pay for education or heath care or anything that benefits us, because they are always offering handouts to their friends and to themselves. These people are so greedy. :grr:

[fasttense]

14. I'm making my federal tax payment to EXXON.

What's the use of making it out to the IRS when congress just turns around and hands it out to corporations?

Isn't there a clause where when you Landlord stops making repairs on your rental, you can put the money that you would pay in rent into a savings account until those repairs are made? I wonder if we can do the same thing with our taxes? The government is just throwing away our tax dollars right now. They certainly aren't making any improvements to our country.

[LisaLynne]

16. Oh, that would be sweet!

You're right -- why not just cut out the middle man and fork over our taxes to the corporations. They're getting that money in the end.

I wish we could legally withhold our taxes in a savings account until things start getting back on track. Just thinking about it makes me get all happy. :)

[SammyWinstonJack]

18. The criminals in the WH are in bed with Corporate America.

pResident CEO is paying back every single one of his campaign contributors. Sooner or later the well will run dry, though. Can't get blood from a rock. There is only so much tax dollars to go around and the rich aren't contributing their fair share and the middle class jobs are being outsourced, in sourced. It's all going to come crashing down, hard. I hope the rich enjoy their years of tax cuts from Pinhead**, because when a Democrat is next elected president, their taxes will be raised to pay for the greed of the bush** administration. Been down this road before.

[lilbigman]

22. Just remember

Just don't forget the ones in the the house and the senate. And let's be on point here folks... not all of them have (R) by their names. We got to make sure we hold ALL who are responsible, accountable.

[Canuckistanian]

12. They know they haven't got much time left

So they're implementing this half-baked plan during the confusion, hoping it won't get noticed.

I'm sure they would have preferred something more elegant, but this gets the job done.

A last "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" moment for their oil capitalist buddies.

[phusion]

15. Damn it!!

This really does piss me off. This is in the face of RECORD profits by these oil and gas barons. WHAT exactly is their reasoning for waiving these royalties? Oh wait, that's right, this is no longer a democracy. This is fascism -- fuck the people, the corporations come first!

:grr:

:grr:

[Joey Liberal]

17. Bush is raping America n.t

[EVDebs]

20. Howcome socialist Alaska keeps ITS 'Permanent Fund' and we get zip?

Just asking.

[ClintonTyree]

23. Good, the struggling oil companies could use some help.

They can barely make ends meet as it is! :sarcasm:

[glitch]

25. LOOTING is what is going on. nt

[RobertSeattle]

26. Whatever happened to "It's your Money"

[debbierlus]

27. This won't go through

Only because it is an election year, and people are really pissed about gas and heating costs.

I would be surprised in Congress doesn't stop it.

Not because it is the right thing to do, but because it will be politically necessary.

I may be wrong, but I think it will fall apart.

[montana500]

28. here's the public land sell-off plan(articles)

http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_3485264


" President Bush on at the White House in Washington, Tuesday. (AP / Gerald Herbert)

Washington - President Bush wants to sell more public land across the West to raise money for schools, conservation and deficit reduction.

Bush's proposed 2007 federal budget, sent to Congress on Monday, calls for granting the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management new authority to sell off land. Those agencies together control hundreds of millions of acres in Western states.

Democrats and environmentalists compare the idea to recent proposals by Tom Tancredo and other Republicans in Congress to sell federal land to pay for hurricane relief and invigorate the mining industry.

Dave Alberswerth of the Wilderness Society dubbed the new sell-off proposal "a billion-dollar privatization program."



http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-forests11feb11,0,1552161.story?page=1&track=tottext


""This is a fire sale of public lands. It is utterly unprecedented," said Char Miller, professor of environmental history at Trinity University in Houston, who has written extensively about the Forest Service. "It signals that the lands and the agency that manages them are in deep trouble. For the American public, it is an awful way to understand that it no longer controls its public land."

The Forest Service has earmarked more than 300,000 acres for sale in 32 states, including tracts in California national forests, ranging in size from 90 acres in Angeles National Forest to 32,921 acres in the Klamath National Forest. Most of the California land slated for the auction block would be scattered across six national forests in the Sierra Nevada."

[eppur_se_muova]

38. Trinity University is in San Antonio, not Houston!

on edit: Oops, LA Times already corrected this. I just recognized the name "Char Miller" and the editorial alarm went off.

[SPKrazy]

29. Similar To Jerry Jones Millions He Made Before Buying Dallas Cowboys

Without the public land

Jerry Jones bought land owned by an Arkansas Gas Company in the Arkhoma Basin

A Republican ran the Arkansas Gas Company, and he and Jones were college roomates as well.

He bought it for a steal, then turned around and made millions of dollars off his investment by selling the gas back to the Gas Company in Arkansas.

There was a lot of stink, but nothing stuck to anyone that I recall.

Bush is trying to give away public land to wealthy friends for a fraction of what it is worth, and then someone will be very wealthy

[stickdog]

30. Seven Billion Fucking Dollars? Why that's enough to grease

all the defense contractors in Iraq under the table for two months!

[hootinholler]

31. K&R This needs to be on top people...

Wonder how many times they've gotten away with similar deals?

-Hoot

[pitohui]

34. christ they are just plain thieves

if the federal gov't doesn't want the $$$ they can damn well give it to the state of louisiana

the oil companies made the biggest profit of any industry in human history off the backs of katrina evacuees who had no choice but to drive long distances to save their lives and run their generators in areas where we had no electricity for weeks or months

there is no call for any more profit to be handed to these thieves, the biggest profit ever declared in all of human history is fuckin big enough

shut 'em down and nationalize

i'm at the point where i would seriously welcome if france wanted to reclaim us and the northern gulf of mexico too and i'm not the only one saying it

[mom cat]

39. I think the operative word here is EVIL.

[Solly Mack]

35. Bankrupting America: Mission Accomplished!

[Vinca]

36. It's finally happened.

I've reached my "pissed off" limit. I can't imagine how I can get more pissed off. What the hell is going on here? In addition to all that, big oil got a bonanza out of the transportation bill. This country has turned upside down. The starving, the sick and the homeless get zip, the foolishly wealthy get millions. And it never stops.

[enough]

40. k&r

[connecticut yankee]

41. Don't they have enough?

Can Congress do anyting about it?

Oh, I forgot, they're too busy cutting programs for the poor.

Let 'em eat cake!

[aggiesal]

42. If you want to read what is really going on

Read the following article. It is very good:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE2/doodoo.html

You'll notice about 2/3rd's down the article the following

...
We've borrowed so much money the lenders are getting nervous.
...
Nixon had to collateralize that debt somehow, and he hit upon the plan of quietly setting aside huge tracts of American land with their mineral rights in reserve to cover the outstanding debts.

So, Nixon invented the Environmental Protection Agency and passed draconian environmental laws which served to grab land with vast natural resources away from the owners and lock it away, and even more, prove to the holders of the foreign debt that US citizens were not drilling. mining, or otherwise developing those resources. From that day to this, as the government sinks deeper into debt, the government grabs more and more land, declares it a wilderness or "roadless area" or "heritage river" or "wetlands" or any one of over a dozen other such obfuscated labels, but in the end the result is the same. We The People may not use the land, in many cases are not even allowed to enter the land.

This is not about conservation, it is about collateral. YOUR land is being stolen by the government and used to secure loans the government really had no business taking out in the first place. Given that the government cannot get out of debt, and is collateralizing more and more land to avoid foreclosure, the day is not long off when the people of the United States will one day wake up and discover they are no longer citizens, but tenants.

[AntiFascist]

43. Bush is bankrupting the country and wants to privatize everything....

notice how the stock market is going up and up and......

[Mnemosyne]

44. And they're selling off public forest?!! n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

45. ***RELATED STORY IN THE NYT and an earlier DU thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2106894
thread title (2-13-06 LBN): U.S. Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies
Comment/excerpt: NY Times. Excerpt: “The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years. New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.”

Look at the disgusting cuts to the most vulnerable, often rather small amounts of money that is critical, then look at this feeding alread-glutted hogs from OUR PUBLIC LANDS.

MUST BE EXPOSED AND STOPPED.

[M155Y_A1CH]

46. K&R nt

[blindpig]

47. Trifecta!

1)"drown the government in a bathtub"

2)mega gift for your friends

3)accelerate the destruction of the environment.(I can only assume that's their goal judging by all of their actions.)

They are beyond the pall. Such a level of cynicism deserves an award, in hell.

If the Democratic Party does not make hay of this in a big way I'll be very pissed off again, it's a gimme. My patience with the "environmental party" is about gone. Are they all fools or on the take?

[mdmc]

48. elected Dems, please fight this!

:kick:

[Old Smokey]

50. Greedy mutherfuckers

this kinda shit ruins my day. so sick of the greed of these swine. its never enough.