How about a windbag prophets tax?

The Democrats are a political party so devoid of ideas that they can’t even come up with new bad proposals and are reduced to simply reinventing their old terrible ideas. A case in point is the so-called windfall tax on oil company profits. Both Dem contenders for the presidency favor a version of this old turkey.

Here’s the Barack Obama flavor:

Obama proposes oil companies be taxed on windfall profits from oil sold at or above 80 dollars a barrel, and the revenue be used to help relieve the burden of rising prices on working people, according to his campaign.

Hillary Clinton has gone past the proposal stage and has actually introduced a windfall tax measure:

Mrs. Clinton introduced legislation in the Senate today proposing [a] gas tax holiday and covering the cost of it through a “windfall profits” tax on oil companies, a campaign spokesman said.

Wait just a sec… Haven’t we been down this rocky road before? In the words of one of major league basesball’s most colorful characters, former Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, “This is like deja vu all over again.” The AP’s Daniel Sorid writes:

…even liberals would have a hard time defending the country’s last experience with a windfall tax, in 1980.

*

What began as a compromise by the Carter administration to lift ceilings on oil prices grew into a bureaucratic nightmare that Congress in 1984 called the “largest and most complex tax ever levied on a U.S. industry.” The law produced nowhere near the revenue it promised, made the country more reliant on foreign oil, and generated reams of red tape, according to a 2006 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

*

The law was put out of its misery in 1988, two-and-a-half years before it would have automatically expired.

*

“It’s a terrible idea today,” said Phil Verleger, who helped design the windfall tax policy as the Treasury Department’s director of domestic energy policy from 1977 to 1979. “The windfall profit tax was a quo for a quid; the quid was price decontrol. There’s no quid right now.”

Well, Mr. Verleger, it was a bad idea then, too. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the 1980s windfall profits tax depressed the domestic production and extraction industry and furthered our dependence on foreign sources of oil.

Let me repeat that for those you on drugs or afflicted with terminal liberalism. Ver. 1.0 of the windfall oil profit tax was a disaster for the nation from which it has never recovered. Domestic oil producers found it unprofitable to produce, and the United States became even more dependent on foreign oil than it had been. It  is a major contributing factor to the situation we find ourselves in today: between Iraq and a hard place.

Why, then, in the name of all that makes sense, should this nation go back to doing something that not only did not work the first time, but was a major source of many of the energy woes we are experiencing today? Cynical conservatives are tempted to say that it is because socialists, despite the nearly universal failures of socialism throughout history, just can’t resist trying it again, hoping the results will be different this time.

The real answer is just as cynical. The oil companies are simply too inviting a target for the political left. They are fond of repeating that the oil companies are making billions of dollars of profit. Never mind that Exxon-Mobil’s profit margin of 10.7% pales in copmparison to some other well-know American corporations:

If you’re after really big earners… check out Yahoo (a 45.5 percent profit margin), Citigroup (33.4 percent), Intel (24 percent), and Apple (22.7 percent).

Never mind that Exxon-Mobil paid nearly $3 in taxes for every $1 in income. The company’s first quarter tax bill was $30 Billion.

Never mind that among Exxon-Mobil’s larest stockholders are not just individual fat cat shareholders such as the the Rockerfeller family, but many pension funds and mutual funds as well. Penalizing the big oil companies will simply force them to protect their shareholders by passing along the tax increases to consumers, who always pay the ultimate price for the left’s attacks on capitalism.

Those of us who take the time and trouble to study history do so because it is such an excellent teacher. It was the American-born philosopher George Santayana who is credited with the quote which would seem to explain the Democrats’ myopia on oil company profits:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

But it is another one of his quotes, and from the same source, which puts that first quote in context and best describe’s the Dems’ obsession with meddling in the affairs of the corporations they love to attack:

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

These liberal Democats and their two favorite candidates for the leadership of the free world are fanatics. As a conservative, I can think of one tax which I would support - a tax not on windfall profits, but rather one on windbag prophets.

- JP

Knowing much that isn’t so

Ronald Reagan’s famous “A Time for Choosing” address was a speech that was delivered on a number of speaking occasions during the 1964 U.S. presidential election on the behalf of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. It was given many times, and Reagan altered it during his many campaign stops, so several versions of the speech exist. But perhaps the most famous version was delivered to the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco as a nominating speech for Goldwater. Known by two titles, “A Time for Choosing” and “Rendezvous with Destiny”, it was such a landmark address that it also became known as simply “The Speech.” Its text is rich with well-known Reagan quotes. One of my favorites is:

The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.

Liberals are not very good at checking facts. Is it because they are lazy or willful prevaricators? I’ll cut them some slack here. I believe that liberals tend to get things wrong so often because they come to believe so much in their preconceived notions that they never question the actual facts behind what they say. Why bother to look something up if it “feels right” and you “just know” that it’s so? That’s not lying; it’s just that liberal elitism at work.

This is how Hillary Clinton can claim that on her 1996 trip to a U.S. military base in Bosnia she remembers landing under sniper fire and having to run and duck bullets, when CBS news footage actually shows a much more serene scene. Mrs. Clinton can be seen walking calmly from the Air Force C-17, being greeted by a line of local dignitaries and meeting 8-year-old Emina Bicakcic, who read a poem in English for the visiting first lady. There wasn’t a stray gunshot, mortar round or exploding land mine to be see or heard. But Sen. Clinton just knows that she is the better foreign policy choice in the battle between her and Sen. Barack Obama that her conjured-up image of a more dangerous arrival in Bosnia is seared, seared in her brain.

Obama has made some claims of his own that are just as divorced from actual events. He has repeatedly and falsely claimed that he was a law professor at the University of Chicago, when he was actually an untenured senior lecturer. He has claimed credit for nuclear leak legislation that never passed. Even his fellow organizers say that Obama took too much credit for his community organizing efforts.

[Read more]

Will the Supreme Court Clarify Concealed Carry?

Judging by most reports of today’s proceedings the Supreme Court is very likely to agree with the majority of Americans that the Constitution does guarantee an individual right to gun ownership.  The next question is how far will the court go in interpreting the 2nd Amendment?

Will they severely pacific poker comtorneos de poquerplay poker texasdescarga de juego de poker5 card studtexas holdem no limitvideo poker onlinejuego poker texasjugar card stud en lineajuegos de poker gratuitos,de juegos de poker,juegos de pokerwww.pacific poker.com,pacific poker com,pacific pokerstrip poker onlinejuego poker online gratispoquer on linestrip poker pc gamejuegos de poker onlinepoker descubiertopoker de dadosjuego al instante pagina internetjuegos de polly pokerpoker 2 cartas7 card stud gratispoquer lineaonline poker gamejuego poker casinopoquer onlinejugar poker on linereglas juego pokerbonos poquercrack rebel pokerpoker pc games,poker games download,poker gamesdownload games poker gratisset de pokerjuego dados pokercard gamblingstrip poquerbajar juego pokerpoquer internetpoquer texaspoker dinero gratisjugar poquer lineaonline pokerjugadas pokerpoker gratis descargarseven card studjuego al instante portal webbunny pokertexas holdem gratisparty poker bonus,poker bonus,no deposit bonus pokerjuego de poker para pc limit the government’s ability to regulate firearms, will they reach out and clearly outline under what circumstances government can restrict gun ownership, gun usage?  Will they not only overturn the DC ban but will they force DC to allow concealed carry?  These are very interesting questions.  The court today certainly seems open to clearly defining the 2nd Amendment, many members of the court seemed to understand the awesome responsibility they have.

In the past other courts have tried to take very narrow views of issues and not try to change precedent.  There is no precedent to change here and there are many issues around the 2nd Amendment that need clarity.  I doubt this court will clarify all of them but hopefully they make it clear how they view the 2nd Amendment so as to open the door to address many of these other peripheral issues. 

Nearly seventy years have gone by with gun owners being under assault from liberals in control of the courts and congress.  Even when Republicans ran congress they did so only with the permission of liberals it seemed.  We can only hope that the Supreme Court takes the occasion to reverse the tyranny that gun owners have been subjected to for the last sixty plus years.

Next Page »