Reduce the amount of driving we do for about a month.

You are not comparing like with like: the figure I guess you are talking about for Big Oil is Net, whereas the tac is necessarily Gross. In a highly competitive market, which pumped gasoline is, it is inevitable that Net margin will be forced to a minimum value. The same happens at retail: a supermarket may well be making only 5%, while taxes may amount to 10%. It happens in pay: you may move jobs for a $2000 increase (i.e. profit) on a job for which you pay $10,000 in taxes.

Gas in America is unbelievably cheap. It costs about as much as milk does. If consumers paid what gas was really worth, it would be at least $10 a gallon, like it is in other countries. Why is gas so incredibly cheap here? Because the federal government gives HUGE tax breaks to "Big Oil" so that they can afford to sell gas at a cheap price and still make tons of profits. And because the federal government sends HUGE amounts of money to foreign countries as part of trade agreements to keep crude oil prices low, so that Big Oil will sell lots of gasoline and make tons of profits. All in the name of the economy. Let's see... What is is called when the government takes money from *everyone* and spends it on a special few causes? Oh yeah, "socialism". What would it be called instead if the government passed the costs directly to the people who used a particular resource, resulting in a most efficient market mechanism? Oh yeah, "capitalism". The government should stop giving tax breaks to Big Oil, stop reducing the price via trade agreements, and most of all, it should tax the hell out of gasoline so that the people who use the most are also paying the most. Look, let's say my neighbor is a conservative Christian moron who drives a Hummer and doesn't give a shit about pollution because he thinks Jesus is coming any day to save him. He can afford it because he pays only $3 at the pumps, and I have to pay the other $7 that his gas costs because my income taxes go to the Big Oil companies. That's socialism. If my born-again bigot neighbor had to pay the whole $10 himself, you can be certain that the capitalist mechanism would find a most efficient source of energy.

I can't quote you specific statute numbers. The tax breaks seem to appear regularly in the congressional Energy bills. If the Big Oil companies were not getting tax breaks, then why were they in front of congress trying to defend their tax breaks against Obama's energy plan, despite making record profits recently?

Demand a reduction in federal & state gasoline taxes back to...ow, say 1989 levels...that should put an extra quarter in your pocket for every gallon you buy and still leave plenty for the upkeep of roads and bridges. 10 gallons a week - save $2.50 ..You'll save $130 bucks a year....a nice little xmas bonus for ya.

I find it rather funny that people in the U.S. are spewing over petrol prices .. at a little over $2 per gallon thats dirt cheap... try $ 1.20 plus per litre( Australia) and even more in other countries and we have been paying more or less this price for years. As for putting a stop to it ..you can't and you may as well get use to it... welcome to the real world!

So you're saying that with Obama in the White House, gas prices were lowered because Obama created a HUGE TAX CUT at the pumps?