You read that correctly. Exxon, the most profitable company in the history of the world, paid no federal taxes at all  last year. Instead, they got a $156,000,000 tax refund from the IRS.   Regular citizens who pay taxes sent Exxon money to pollute the world with their dirty fossil fuel energy. In addition, Sanders reported today in a radio show that Exxon is spending millions on lobbying fees so that they can retain the rights to drill offshore and so is BP. In 2009, he said, BP spent $19 million dollars just on lobbying. (Who is getting that money?)

We are effectively “bailing out” Exxon through our taxes that go to the IRS, a company that doesn’t even remotely need bailing out. We need to stop handing over our money to multi-billion-dollar polluters like Exxon and BP.  We need to get off fossil fuels completely.

Bernie Sanders is a liberal Senator who is on a radio show every Friday. (The Thom Hartmann show). He is one of the few Senators who realizes that we need to move “very aggressively” away from fossil fuels and he said today that we have adequate technology right now to do that. He has legislation currently before the Senate that calls for 10 million new solar panel-covered rooftops in America, new solar thermal plants (that could provide 30% of the electricity to homes in the Southwest, according to Sanders) and other renewable energies. The following is from senate.sanders.gov, the website of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Repeal Big Oil Tax Breaks

BP posted $5.6 billion in first-quarter profits. Exxon Mob il, the world rsquo; ;s most profitable corporation, paid no federal income taxes for 2009 and – guess what? – received a $156 million IRS refund. Enough is enough! Oil industry tax breaks that Bernie called “obscene” would be repealed by an amendment he filed Wednesday. Outlining the proposal in a floor speech, he said it would begin to transform our energy system away from dirty and dangerous fossil fuels by investing $10 billion in energy efficiency and sustainable energy, and cut the deficit by $25 billion. Another bill Bernie filed in the wake of the BP oil disaster would ban offshore ocean drilling and make cars get far better gas mileage. “Sanders gets it,” Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote for The Nation.

Global Warming

The Senate on Thursday defeated a Republican-led effort to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. The Senate voted 53 to 47 to reject an attempt to block the E.P.A. from imposing new limits on carbon emissions based on its 2009 finding that the gases threaten human health and the environment. Senator Bernie Sanders framed the debate in terms of science vs. politics. “With all of this evidence who’s arguing against [...]