The No Kool Aid Zone » The Failure of Big Government

Archive for the ‘The Failure of Big Government’ Category

The Inmates are NOT Running the Asylum!

when old coots should be in bed

Taxing the Evil Oil Companies

when old coots should be in bed

Well, what are the Socialist Democrats up to now in the U.S. Senate?

Senate Considers Windfall Profits Tax on Big Oil

Great. Gas is at $4 a gallon, and Harry Reid and his band of merry Socialist henchmen propose to do something guaranteed to raise the price of gas even further and harm the economy. Econ 101: Corporations do not pay taxes. Not now, not ever, and to think they do is to subscribe to what I call the “Big Bag o’ Money” Theory about how things work. It goes like this: Exxon, say, makes all this money by selling gas to consumers, and they stick all the money in this big bag called “profits”. Then, Congress takes a look at the profits bag, determines something stupid like “The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy,” (Socialist Dickie Durbin, D-Saigon), and decides to tax the “windfall profits” (whatever that means). And Exxon says, “ah, yep, ya got us! You’re right! We’re snakes, making all this profit! We’ll dip into our Big Bag o’ Money and pay the extra taxes, and promise to be good boys and girls from here on out!”

No…corporations do not pay taxes. You pay taxes. I pay taxes. Poor people pay gas taxes, just like rich people. And we all eat, and so when gas is taxed, and prices go up at the pump, our food costs more (yes, food that poor people eat, along with middle-class and rich people). Further, publicly-traded companies render dividends to the zillions of Americans who are invested in the stock market–and when taxes are raised, people feel the squeeze and buy less gas and there are less profits for all the folks who’ve invested money in the stock market and…

You get the picture.

Now, the question that comes is, are Socialist Democrats stupid not to know basic Econ 101? I mean, it’s a fair question to ask, because the economics of the thing isn’t even arguable. My answer? Nope, not one bit; there’s not a Socialist Democrat in Congress who doesn’t very readily understand the economics of the thing. So…if they’re not stupid, what could they be? Hmmm…

You don’t think…no…they couldn’t be…well, but then…I mean, is it even, like, possible that maybe they’re…evil? Like, that they’d use the misery of the American public, an American public educated in failing public schools that don’t help our kids actually think about things like basic economics, to fool the easily-fooled American public into thinking that they were doing them a real service in socking it to those evil oil companies, when in fact they were actually
- Raising more money to spend on their beloved (worthless) social programs?
- Accumulating more power to themselves?
- Aiding their own re-election chances, because the easily-fooled Econ 101 flunkers actually believe that the Socialist Democrats are doing something to help them?
- Perpetuating the hilarious myth that Socialist Democrats are the party that looks out for the little guy, takes up for the poor, and is concerned for the “working man”?

I mean, if I were a cynical person (and of course, TNKZ readers know that I’m not, you know), I’d be tempted to think that the Socialist Democrats were up to something pernicious, instead of trying to help the American people by taxing our way out of the problem.

Update: Predictably, the Least Qualified, Most Liberal Presidential Nominee in History has called for more taxes on the big oil companies.

More Congressional Buffoonery, Courtesy John Dingell

when old coots should be in bed

I don’t mean to be mean, I really don’t, and I don’t mean to toss around pejoratives in place of reasoned argument. But there comes a time when about all one can do is to use words like “buffoonery” to describe ideas so preposterous that ordinary language fails us. It’s hard not to think of Congress as a massive collection of buffoons, period, given that they’re concerning themselves, as I said a few weeks ago, with Roger Clemens’ posterior and the like while there are real-life issues that plague the Union. But in the spirit of “no bad idea shall be left unsuggested”, we get the following buffoonery:

Michigan Congressman Wants 50-Cent Tax Hike on Every Gallon of Gas

This courtesy of John Dingell, who’s been proposing buffoonery for better than a half-century. It’s infuriating that this (dare I say “buffoon”?) gentleman has been in Congress so long that he has completely lost touch with reality, and with his constituency. To add 50 cents a gallon now to what we are paying for gas, which is causing the price of everything to go up, is beyond ridiculous; it strains credulity that an individual, theoretically charged with helping move America forward (and as a Democrat, supposedly sympathetic to the plight of the poor–try saying that with a straight face!) would propose something so breathtakingly…buffoonish.

This would seem to be exceeded in its buffoonery only by those who would give this man their vote to return him to D.C. to continue such buffoonery…

“But We Turned This Over to the Government!”

when old coots should be in bed

And we’re still not safe????

When we make decisions with our feelers instead of our thinkers (pretty much the classic definition of contemporary liberalism, if you think about it), we make bad decisions. In the aftermath of 9/11, we “solved” a problem by taking most airline security out of the hands of private companies and putting it into the hands of government. And both the Socialist Party and the Gutless Party went along with it, because it felt good to do it. And it felt safer to have the government in charge.

Feel safe now?

But of course, we won’t learn from this: we rarely do. Instead, whenever there’s a perceived problem, we turn to Big Government, the same Big Government that screws up everything else it touches, for the most part, instead of unshackling the private sector’s ability to deliver better goods and services for better prices.

Saved by the Government!!! NOT!

when old coots should be in bed

Wait!!!! I thought that turning everything over to the government was going to fix this problem!!!!

Most Fake Bombs Missed by Screeners

Note the difference between the private firms and the government employees. Yep, the private firm’s employees missed one in five fake bombs (an unacceptable rate), but the government employees at LAX missed three in four, and the O’Hare government employees missed three in five. That means that the odds are stacked against you getting a bomb on a plane in San Francisco, by 4-1, because the private firm is doing its job three to four times better than the government, but if you want to get a bomb on a plane in LA, the odds are significantly in your favor.

Once again, the government fails. And yet our liberal friends persist in believing that government can solve most any problem. No, folks, government causes a whole lot more problems than it fixes. But liberals will persist in this windmill-tilting belief, against all evidence, and the only reason that Mrs. Bill might be our next president is that plenty of people will be fooled into believing the silly notion that government fixes things.

“But, But, Doesn’t the Government Protect Us???”

when old coots should be in bed

Sorry, but apparently we’re too busy worrying about distributing pork, giving out mohair subsidies, and investigating meaningless firings of lawyers to actually do the job that government is supposed to do:

Report Blasts TSA Airport Cargo Security

Sheesh, after 9/11, when we took airport security out of the hands of the hands of inefficient, incompetent, and evil private companies, and turned things over to our trusty government, well hey, we should have been able to rest easy, since the government fixes everything!!!

As Ronald the Great once said, the scariest thing we can ever hear are the words, “we’re from the government, and we’re here to help.”