Oil and Windfall Profits

What is the major LEFTIST Democrat reaction to high gasoline prices?

Is it to do womething with the potential for LOWERING gasoline prices?  For example, are leftists proposiing anything like what I proposed in my recent entry on a CAN DO attitude toward lowering gasoline prices?

Don't be silly.  Leftists--espeially leftist environmentalists--do not WANT lower oil and gasoline prices.  What they want is for their agenda to be FORCED on us by CENTRAL PLANNING--no matter what consequences that will have for our economy and for our lives.

Thus, I heard a leftist Democrat on CSPAN talking about how we cannot produce enough oil in and around the U.S. to become "independent" of foreign oil (almost certainly FALSE--especially if you include oil shale resources in Colorado).   This idiot asked why we should devote 20 years of "resources" to developing oil  when 20 years of effort (CENTRAL PLANNING) can produce true energy independence if we devote "our resources" to alternative energy.  

Problem:  No one is ASKING the Federal Government to devote any RESOURCES to drilling for more oil.  All those of us who are SANE is asking is that the Federal Government remove the PROHIBTIONS that keep oil companies from now drilling from oil in so many places--not to mention the state and federal probitiions and obstacles placed in the way of shale oil development, nuclear power and the rest.

Notice the complete contempt for FREE MARKETS here.  The idea is that we need to dECIDE what energy sources should be SUBSIDIZED/promoted by the GOVERNMENT, because the free market can't be trusted to get it right.  The reality is the opposite:  There is no way that CENTRAL PLANNING has EVER gotten it right.

Further, what does one have to do with the other.  In other words, what does PRIVATE drilling have to do with supporting research on alternative energy?  NOTHING.  We can do BOTH, if Federal Government support of research on alternative energy is indicated.  The more domestic oil resources we develop, the EASIER it is to find enough alternative energy sources to become fully energy independent.  This is not even a matter of opinion.  It is OBVIOUS.  The refusal to see the obvious indicates that leftist Democrats are NOT interested in cheaper gasoline, or cheaper energy.  They are interested in the Federal Government taking over how energy is produced in this country, and ultimately the whole economy.

This is further illustrated by the reaction of leftist Democrats to attempts to say that we need more drilling, less environmental obstacles on energy production and refining, and les government MANDATES creating more expensive gasoline and less efficient engines.

The reaction of leftist democrats is to encourage a vindictive impulse to PUNISH the oil companies.  Readers of this blog know that I have no sympathy for Big Oil (created by Gig Mergers unopposed by Democrats).  However, NO leftist Democrat has ever explained how a "windfall profits" tax on the profits of oil companies reduces the price of gasoline ONE PENNY.  It may RAISE the price of gasoline, by distorting the incentives of oil companies to produce more oil (which leftist Democrats don't really WANT), but there is no way that a TAX can help produce more oil or reduce the price of gasoline. 

Leftist Democrats want the TAX for their own leftist purpose of more POWER to themselves and the Federal Government.  Their excuse for the TAX is to use the money for CENTRAL PLANNING directing the use of designated "alternative energy" (the type that is raising the price of FOOD without decreasing our relance on foreign oil or even helping the environment).   Again, all this can possibly do is RAISE the price of gasoline as we HOPE (20 years from now) to have figured out how to do without oil. 

Can the public really buy this.  Well, indications are that they DON'T.  Public opinion polls (albeit I refuse to believe that polls have any use, and continue to believe we should sabotage them) indicate that most of the public (rationally) does not want to raise the price of gasoline ONE LPENNY in order to "fight" "global warming". 

So why is the public voting more and more for Democrats?  Does not the public realize where Democrats stand?  Well, the media is doing their best to make sure that the public does NOT understand.  But there may be a kind of that same insanity at work here--see yesterday's entry:  You are insane if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result).   The public has gotten mad at President Bush (justifiably, although Iraq is one of the lesser justifications).  People realize John McCain is no great shakes, and that Republicans/conservatives seem to have no great leaders out there.  Therefore, the public seems to be willing to go back to Democrats, even though they are advocating the very same things that have CREATED many of our present difficulties.  This includes not only gasoline prices, but the pressures on the wages of workers (ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, where Democrats have BETRAYED the workers they purport to support, as they are doing on gasoline).

It is enough to get you depressed.  Some things here are obvious.  The public even realizes they are obvious.  But we continue down the leftist path as if we were lemmings being drawn to destruction by forces beyond our conscious control. 

I am NOT a lemming. I will continue to point out the obvious, and how stupid you are to follow those leftists leading you to destructioin.  Problem:  are the lemmings out there so many that they are going to continue to overwhelm the rational people unwilling to be lemmings?  That thought depresses me.  But I can' only do what I can do.  You lemmings out there know who you are.  (Nope, I am NOT saying that LEFTISTS are lemmings--they are WORSE, but the people who don't really belive this leftist junk but keep going along with it anyway ARE lemmings).