http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/how-many-jobs-depend-on-the-big-three/

1 in 10 jobs won't evaporate if the "big" 3 go under.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/do_the_right_thing_start_drill.html 

Highlighted quotes:

But a paradox is that most environmentalists think of themselves as egalitarians. So, instead of objecting to the view of a derrick from the California hills above the Santa Barbara coast, shouldn't a liberal estate owner instead console himself that the offshore pumping will help a nearby farm worker or carpenter get to work without going broke?

Another paradox: American laws and technology ensure a rig off Florida or in Alaska has far less chance of springing a leak than one in the Persian Gulf or the Russian tundra. If there really is a shared "planet earth," then aren't we all its collective stewards? By locking out energy exploration in the United States, we are encouraging it almost everywhere else. 

We should stop talking about suing the OPEC cartel, jawboning the House of Saud to lower prices, blaming the oil companies or adding yet another massive tax on sky-high gas prices. What we don't need right now are more pie-in-the-sky sermons about wind and solar saving us all or about millions of new jobs in green technology that can be almost instantly created.

That all may be well and good in a generation. But in the here and now, we still need to tap the abundant conventional energy we already have in the United States. And in large part that means building, mining and drilling.

and

http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Gouging+Big+Oil+means+gouging+you&articleId=8b2912b9-27c3-49c2-82fd-4be7a174b4ee

The latter being crystal clear.

Read it and weep:

The truth, however, is that the case for this new tax is nonexistent.

First, oil company profits are not "unreasonable," however one might define that term. Oil and gas companies earn an average of 8.3 cents per dollar of revenue, compared to 7.8 cents for the Dow Jones average, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in April. And those huge oil company profits are big in dollar, but not percentage, terms.

Exxon-Mobil has earned more money than any other American company in the past five years. But last year, it's most profitable ever, its profit was only 10.9 percent of revenues, Fortune magazine reported last month. Bank of America's profits were 12.6 percent, Pfizer's were 16.8 percent, Coca-Cola's were 20.7 percent, Google's were 25.3 percent, and Microsoft's were 27.5 percent. Whose profits are "unreasonable"?

While Exxon-Mobil was earning 10.9 percent profit last year, it paid 44 percent of its revenues in taxes, The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch reported on Tuesday. Forty-four percent! The government took four times as much from Exxon-Mobil's revenues as shareholders did. "Big Oil" isn't paying its fair share? Hogwash.

You might also be interested to know that 52 percent of Exxon-Mobil's stock is owned by fund investors such as mutual and pension funds. That means you. If it is slapped with a windfall profits tax, your retirement plan might be the one paying the price.

And if all that weren't enough, there is the evidence from the 1980s. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter advocated and Congress imposed a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Guess what happened? Domestic oil exploration dropped, and the promised tax revenues did not materialize. It actually made us more dependent on foreign oil. Isn't that what Congress wants to prevent?

In their push to tax oil companies even more for the sole reasons that they have made record profits lately and the public wrongly suspects those profits of being responsible for high gas prices, Sen. Barack Obama and his Democratic Party are trying to move us back to the failed thinking of the late 1970s. That would be economically harmful, not helpful.

The idea that imposing confiscatory taxes on oil companies will somehow reduce the price of oil has no basis in fact. It shows the flawed economic thinking of a party that still assumes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that high taxes help the country, low taxes hurt, and the government can make everything better by asserting greater control.

And finally see some eye candy propaganda from the Republican Party.  http://republicanwhip.house.gov/UploadedFiles/GAS%20CHART%20TEMP%20PDF.pdf
2.07 after... what... a year or two?  four years?  If they listed the year this price would get there then we could take that number and apply the laws of supply and demand to it.  Like say they estimate that after their plan gas will be at 2.07 per gallon in four years.  I could say yeah BUT, global demand for gas will be going up and global supply won't match growth in demand, in fact growth in supply even with their gas pumping plans is still not going to be close to feed emerging markets... so yes, all things being held constant 2.07 a gallon if everything goes perfect.  But with supply, demand, and other snags - oh and not to mention TIME to drill and refine and get stuff up and running and to the market - the most I think they could shave off the price is $1.00ish. 
And you want to know the worst part of that column?  We would be paying $-0.136 for gas if all the saving measures had their estimated maximum effect.  Add up all the savings, it is $4.195 per gallon.  Price of gas in the example is $4.059. 

Do I support their plan and hate the Democrat plan?  Hell yes - but let's be a bit more realistic guys.  In the words of Dubya, "That's fuzzy math"