True North

I just wrote about Rep. Paul Kanjorski's corruption. Now I find that he's anti-capitalist, too:

The current high price of gas has led to a lot of crazy proposals from gas tax holidays to creating a tax deduction based upon energy consumption. But Rep. Paul Kanjorski's (D-PA) may top them all in terms of its stupidity. From the Times Leader, Kanjorski's plan would do the following:

• H.R. 5800 would tax industries' windfall profits.
• The bill would set up a Reasonable Profits Board to determine when these companies' profits are in excess, and then tax them on those windfall profits.
• As oil and gas companies' windfall profits increase, so would the tax rate for those companies.
• Kanjorski said his legislation will encourage oil companies to lower prices to prevent them from receiving higher tax rates.

Here's what the Tax Foundation said about Kanjorski's economic model:

While Hillary Clinton may have failed ECON 101 along with John McCain, it appears as if Kanjorski may been enrolled in Marxism 450 at the time. In all honesty, nationalization of the oil industry (i.e. Venezuela) may be better than Kanjorski's ridiculous proposal.

The Tax Foundation isn't advocating the nationalization of the oil industry; they're just saying that nationalization is least awful of those alternatives.

I'd love seeing the oil companies establish a high profile policy board that questioned the federal government's interfering with the oil companies' ability to do what they're supposed to do. Perhaps they could call it the 'Reasonable Regulations Board' or something like that. I'd suggest that this Board hold monthly town hall meetings all across the country telling citizens all the ways that the federal government prohibits the oil companies from delivering their products to consumers in an inexpensive price.

Capitalists rightly cringe whenever they hear words like fair or reasonable used in connection with economics. They have the right to do that because anything after either of those words is bad news to capitalists. It's arrogant to think that government at any level knows what's fair or reasonable. Bureaucracies aren't littered with people who understand the concept of supply and demand, which means their determinations will automatically be wrong.

I'd further ask Rep. Kanjorski why he thinks the oil companies' profits are setting records. Does he think that stifling American companies' ability to find new reserves plays a role in that? Might today's high gas prices have anything to do with Bill Clinton's 'environmental legacy' that made hundreds of thousands of acres off-limits for oil exploration? Does Rep. Kanjorski think that prices would be dramatically different had we opened those federal lands up for exploration?

If we armed citizens with this information, I don't think it'd take long to start an anti-regulation revolt. People are mad as hell about gas prices. If they were shown proof that Democrats were standing in the way of reasonable oil prices, I'd bet that you'd see a revolution rise up within no time.

Isn't it time to start an anti-oil exploration regulation revolt? Isn't it time we increased domestic production instead of putting huge oil reserves off limits for 'the environment'?

Most importantly, isn't it time to retire socialists like Rep. Kanjorski?

Comments welcome at LFR.