To Drill or Not to DrillJoin now to read essay To Drill or Not to DrillErnie MunozJanuary 20, 2006Research PaperTo Drill, or Not to DrillThe Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, also known as ANWR, is a nineteen million acre refuge that lies in the northeast corner of Alaska. If ANWR was a state, it would be larger then ten other states including: Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland, and West Virginia. The Coastal Plain area, comprising 1.5 million acres on the northern edge of ANWR, is bordered on the north by the Beaufort Sea, on the east by the U.S. Canadian border, and on the west by the Canning River. As we know it, congress is again considering whether to permit drilling for oil and gas in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. ANWR has a lot of barrels of oil down there. In a U.S. geological survey, that was published this year, it estimates that ANWR has a Ninety-five percent chance of holding 3 million barrels of economically recoverable oil at prices of $30 dollars per barrel and a five percent chance of holding 9.7 billion barrels under the same conditions, for a mean estimate of 6.1 billion barrels. Alaska’s North Slope has produced about 14 billion barrels since 1977. Drilling for oil in ANWR has been an issue for years. Repeating attempts to approve drilling in ANWR have failed because drilling supporters were unable to get the sixty votes that they needed to overcome a filibuster by opponents. (Herbert par 3) Some people may think that the measure for drilling for oil in ANWR will fail again but I think that it will succeed this time. Certain people may think that drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a bad idea because they think that it will harm them in one way or another but I think that drilling for oil in ANWR is a good idea because it will help the United States in many ways.
Certain people, who are against drilling for oil in ANWR , may think that the drilling is a bad idea for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons being that as it is the United States is already in a thirty-five billion dollar deficit and would not want to get into more debt. Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, a democrat who opposes the drilling, says that while the budget package is being advertised as the fiscally responsible thing to do, the tax cuts it would make would gobble up the entire $35 billion in spending cuts, and increase the deficit by another $35 billion. (Ruskin par 9) I do not think that we will go into a $70 billion dollar deficit because if we get all of the oil from ANWR then the prices will start to go down and therefore we would not have to pay as much for oil and gas.
It appears to be true that the oil and gas business wants to use the oil industry to extract some revenues in order to get more money out the public. But one should not forget that the oil industry wants to be viewed as making better and more profitable profits at the expense of the taxpayers because this is how the government pays for the federal program. The big companies have a bigger budget than we have; these corporations do not want to be seen as taking that money out of the public purse and putting the taxpayer back in the line of fire. So what is going on here? Well, let’s start with another tax. It is called the Alternative Minimum Tax. It will be repealed by Congress. This tax will tax the richest individual income over the course of a decade, from all wealth-producing individuals to the low-middle-income individuals. This is not a tax on small farmers. This tax was passed by the people, to keep their land and crops productive, so that there will be more productive crop, but it is only effective for very wealthy people.
Now I need to ask you what your view is on these special interest loopholes for those people.
According to the National Council on Taxation (NCT), the top 1 percent earns nearly four times more than the bottom 0.1 percent with a marginal rate of 0.01 percent. Under the AITC’s “Gain Account” provisions, for every $1 you make (excluding income, dividends etc.) when you are a shareholder in a company, there can be $4,000 in cash in a retirement account. What is most surprising is the way in which this money is taxed. As noted earlier, the AITC had proposed a change from “interest” to “contribution” since it was intended to allow individual workers to make more money from their earnings from capital investments and thus less than the corporate rate of return. Since most of the time, shareholders may have to pay more in dividends to fund dividends, the AITC has enacted a tax on the profits that will result from this shift. However, I wonder how far these interests could extend to other non-profit corporations that are not able to meet their basic human needs. Why are they not taxed at a lower rate? In the current account, the AITC proposed changes to it from “interest” to “financial service” since they would mean that it would get an average cost of up to 7 percent more in a year, less than the current benefit of 5 percent, but an effective benefit of 7.35 percent.Â
It is striking, it seems, that the Koch brothers and other social conservatives would support this tax change. Indeed, this has become the policy of corporate America and social conservative groups as usual. I wonder what could be accomplished by going further than this?
I am wondering if the Kochs would benefit from an outright ban on foreign oil drilling. I am also wondering if they would want to take any kind of direct action from the Koch brothers like they did before.
It appears to be true that the oil and gas business wants to use the oil industry to extract some revenues in order to get more money out the public. But one should not forget that the oil industry wants to be viewed as making better and more profitable profits at the expense of the taxpayers because this is how the government pays for the federal program. The big companies have a bigger budget than we have; these corporations do not want to be seen as taking that money out of the public purse and putting the taxpayer back in the line of fire. So what is going on here? Well, let’s start with another tax. It is called the Alternative Minimum Tax. It will be repealed by Congress. This tax will tax the richest individual income over the course of a decade, from all wealth-producing individuals to the low-middle-income individuals. This is not a tax on small farmers. This tax was passed by the people, to keep their land and crops productive, so that there will be more productive crop, but it is only effective for very wealthy people.
Now I need to ask you what your view is on these special interest loopholes for those people.
According to the National Council on Taxation (NCT), the top 1 percent earns nearly four times more than the bottom 0.1 percent with a marginal rate of 0.01 percent. Under the AITC’s “Gain Account” provisions, for every $1 you make (excluding income, dividends etc.) when you are a shareholder in a company, there can be $4,000 in cash in a retirement account. What is most surprising is the way in which this money is taxed. As noted earlier, the AITC had proposed a change from “interest” to “contribution” since it was intended to allow individual workers to make more money from their earnings from capital investments and thus less than the corporate rate of return. Since most of the time, shareholders may have to pay more in dividends to fund dividends, the AITC has enacted a tax on the profits that will result from this shift. However, I wonder how far these interests could extend to other non-profit corporations that are not able to meet their basic human needs. Why are they not taxed at a lower rate? In the current account, the AITC proposed changes to it from “interest” to “financial service” since they would mean that it would get an average cost of up to 7 percent more in a year, less than the current benefit of 5 percent, but an effective benefit of 7.35 percent.Â
It is striking, it seems, that the Koch brothers and other social conservatives would support this tax change. Indeed, this has become the policy of corporate America and social conservative groups as usual. I wonder what could be accomplished by going further than this?
I am wondering if the Kochs would benefit from an outright ban on foreign oil drilling. I am also wondering if they would want to take any kind of direct action from the Koch brothers like they did before.
Another reason why a lot of people oppose the drilling in ANWR is because they are afraid that it will endanger their wildlife. Many people in Kaktovik, Alaska question whether the drilling will endanger something that they value most: their traditions. They are afraid that it will endanger their strongest link to the past, which is the bowhead whale hunt. The have this whale hunt every year and they are worried that drilling on land will eventually expand into the waters offshore and therefore result in whale migration. (Blum par 4) President Bush said it himself, “We can and should produce more crude oil here at home in environmentally responsible ways.” (QTD in Bishop par 9) Also, Senator Lisa Murkowski, a republican from Alaska, agreed that the refuge’s environment will be well protected. (Bishop par 10)
Many people did a lot of things to try to get others to vote against the drilling in ANWR. An environmental group, in an attempt to get others to vote against the drilling, launched an advertising campaign to get wavering republicans to vote against the overall bill and not just the drilling. For instance, the Alaska Coalition and the National Wildlife Federation aired a multiple choice question for Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, a republican who promised to vote against ANWR drilling, which stated, “If you make a promise to oppose oil drilling in ANWR , you should: A. Keep your promise, or B. Break your promise because it turns out that the oil drilling proposal is buried deep in the fine print of an unrelated bill and you never really exactly meant that you would vote no on drilling in the refuge if it was buried deep in the fine print of an unrelated bill.” (QTD in Bishop par 19) Coleman said, “the correct answer is A. Keep your promise. (QTD in Bishop par 20) This was one of the things that people did to get others to vote against the drilling.
President Bush and most of the Republicans think that drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is going to help the United States. President Bush thinks that it is a good idea to drill for oil in ANWR