(the "related story" link), that's a profit margin of about 8 percent. Is that too high for you?

Do you even know what these tax arrangements are? Does Blitzer?

If the total were actually $4 billion for all the oil companies according to the article, what part of that applied just to Exxon? Is Blitzer aware that Exxon alone paid almost $10 billion in taxes in 2010? As a point of reference, the entire bottom 50 percent of this country paid about $19 billion in taxes in 2009.

I'm hoping someone like podrock chimes in on the details of what oil companies deduct in their taxes.

But by all means, strip that $4 billion from the oil companies. For sure our glorious government will spend that money - which would run the Federal government for all of nine hours - more wisely than the oil companies would. Maybe they could dump another half trillion on a failed solar panel company.