'Ben Stein: Pelosi's Hot Air Can't Power My Car'

NewsMax.com "I don't blame Exxon for making the profits ... it's a busines; it's owned by pensioners and widows and retirees. It's fine if they get the money because it's going back to the American stockholders." So said Ben Stein, Economist, author of "Yes, You Can Become a Successful Income Investor! Reaching for Yield in Today's Market," actor and former Nixon speechwriter on "Your World with Neil Cavuto." "The amount of profit on each gallon of gasoline is between six and eight cents. If you cut out all the profit so that Exxon/Mobil went out of business, and Conoco went out of business next year, you'd only save a few cents per gallon. "It's just nonsense that they're bleeding America white. They don't set the price - the price is set on world markets. It's good if they make a profit becuase then they can have more money to explore for more oil and more energy sources. "I just am sick of people knocking the oil companies," Stein said. For good measure, he added, "I've never been able to power my car with envy, or with the hot air out of Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid." Stein also had an observation about President Bush's State of the Union speech last night: "I'll tell you something that struck me as very interesting. Almost everything in the president's speech about alternative energy sources, I wrote about in a speech for Richard Nixon in 1973. "Every pitch, every single thing and a great, great deal more, and that was 32 or 33 years ago!" Cavuto said that the special interest groups are saying oil companies "should give some of it back; what do you say?" "Absolutely not!" Stein insisted. "It's already been given back ... they're paying something like 40 percent of their profits in taxes ... the next biggest chunk [of profits] goes back in dividends and the rest of it goes for exploring more oil." Cavuto said that Bill O'Reilly and others say the oil companies are gouging. Stein said there is no evidence of that. "There has not been a successful price-fixing case against an oil company in a hundred years. It's just total nonsense." Stein added that the price is set on the "world market by young traders who drive Ferraris. Exxon, Conoco Philips, Chevron ... they are not fixing the price. That's just total nonsense."