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.

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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.

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

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“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

Are you better off?

The Democrat National Committee is airing a new television ad, “Better Off?”, aimed squarely at Republican presidential candidate John McCain. The ad attempts to link McCain to the presidency of George W. Bush by showing clips of McCain saying that overall, we are better off than we were eight years ago. The ad ends by asking the viewer, “Do you feel better off?”

How like the liberal Dems to ask voters to make a decision based on feelings rather than something of a more empirical nature. For example, a little over one year ago:

Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high
Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon
The unemployment rate was 4.5%

But since voting in a Democrat-controlled Congress in 2006 we have seen:

Consumer confidence drop like a stone
The cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3.50 a gallon
Unemployment rise to 5% (a 10% increase

In fact, since voting for change in 2006, Americans have seen $2.3 trillion in the equity value of their households evaporate due largely to stock and mutual fund losses. Home equity dropped by $1.2 trillion dollars, leaving 1% of American homes in foreclosure.

But the new DNC ad asks voters to consider if they are better off now than they were eight years ago, not just since the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress just a couple of years back.

Okay, fair enough. Let’s compare taxes under Bill Clinton in 1999 to taxes under George W. Bush in 2008:

Single making 30K - Clinton tax $8,400 vs. Bush tax $4,500;
Single making 50K - Clinton tax $14,000 vs. Bush tax $12,500
Single making 75K - Clinton tax $23,250 vs. Bush tax $18,750
Married making 60K - Clinton tax $16,800 vs. Bush tax $9,000
Married making 75K - Clinton tax $21,000 vs. Bush tax $18,750
Married making 125K - Clinton tax $38,750 vs Bush tax $31,250

Of course, the DNC ad mentions none of this. Nor does it call attention to the fact that either Democrat candidate would be sure to raise taxes. Obama and Hillary are both on the record as saying that if elected, they would repeal the Bush tax cuts.

So in light of this data, perhaps the DNC should not have gone there with its new ad. It leaves the door wide open for an RNC response ad bringing attention to all of the above.

So how about you? Most of you have recently prepared your tax returns to file before the IRS deadline of a little over a week ago. You’ve not only seen the numbers, you’ve worked with them.

Are you better off?

- JP

What Is A True Conservative To Do?

    In today’s world, where the Press has delivered us the worst possible Republican nominee, what is a true conservative to do on election day?

     The answer, of course, is to do everything you can to minimize the damage.  Sitting home and sighing that “we’re screwed” will just ensure that we are.

     I know it will pain many of us greatly to go and vote for John McCain, but, the alternative (a Democratic president) is unthinkable.

     With McCain we won’t have the best conservative but it will be better that Hillary or Barack.  But, most importantly, getting up off our couch and going to the polls will allow us to vote for Republican candidates for the House and the Senate and even state and local Republicans.  By going to the polls we can help to determine how easy it is for any president to get his way with Congress.  By supporting Republican candidates we have a real chance of narrowing or even eliminating the Democratic lead in both houses of Congress which will go a long way towards allowing us to keep the pressure on to ensure they follow the will of the people.

     The key is to stay involved, at all levels.  Whether it is by making phone calls, donating to the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee or the National Republican Senatorial Committee, it is the only way we can move our values, our beliefs, our issues forward.

     So, Be strong and stand up for what we believe in and GO VOTE!