Crossposted from Flopping Aces

I find it curious how the Democrats in all of their wisdom can actually think this is a good idea:

Senate Democrats on Wednesday called for a temporary windfall profits tax on oil companies and a rollback of $17 billion in oil industry tax breaks as part of an energy package. The proposal also would impose federal penalties on energy price gouging and calls for stopping oil deliveries into the government’s emergency reserve

When they should know that any reductions in the meager profits Big Oil makes (Their profit margin came to a whopping 8.3%, which underperformed the entire manufacturing sector as a whole. For investors in the oil industry, and 8.3% return on investment doesn’t exactly equate to screamingly fabulous growth, especially when looking at pharmaceuticals, 18.4%, and beverage makers, 19.1%) means only one thing. Upping gas prices.

Thats how capitalsm works folks. Businesses cannot survive without profits and a reduction in those profits forced by the government will only prompt them to pass the burden onto the consumer.

VDH:

Nancy Pelosi chanted “Veto and Drill”, “Veto and Drill” in caricaturing the threatened presidential veto of windfall oil company taxes and desire to drill in ANWR and elsewhere. But all that might sound, in fact, good to most Americans. With the world’s largest reserves of coal, after creating the nuclear power industry ex nihilo, and with billions of oil still under our soil and waters, it makes no sense to produce less energy while blaming and taxing those who produce what we have, rather than drilling, digging, and saving, as we find ways to transition to the alternate energies. The problem is not just oil, but importing oil at $120 a barrel that is bankrupting us as much as it is enriching the wrong people.

Want to fix it? Lets get the oil that is below our own feet and stop being reliant on others oil. It’s just plain old common sense. Something that seems to be lacking on the Democrats part. Hell, the last time this windfall tax crap was pulled in 1980 it did nothing but but reduce the domestic production of our own oil which in turned made us MORE dependent on foreign oil.

What other brilliant plans do the Democrats have up their sleeves?

A provision aimed at cracking down on speculation in the oil futures market — which some experts say may account for 10 to 30 percent of the price of oil — would prevent traders of U.S. crude oil futures from routing transactions to offshore markets in order to increase transparency and accountability of the trades and would increase the margin requirement for oil futures trades.

Brilliant, force traders to foreign markets….just freakin brilliant!

A Senate proposal to combat speculation in energy markets could have damaging unintended effects, a top federal regulator warned Wednesday.

At issue is a Senate proposal to mandate higher cash collateral for energy-futures trading. The proposal is part of a package of measures that Senate Democrats unveiled Wednesday — and will try to bring to the Senate floor for a vote by Memorial Day — in an effort to curb speculative trading that some say is contributing to soaring oil prices.

Trading-exchange officials are lobbying against the measure, saying it could cause a migration to foreign exchanges and rob the market of the liquidity that some participants in the market say they need to hedge their risk. Wednesday, the acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission also criticized the measure.

“It has the potential to drive participants [traders] into more opaque markets, which is exactly the opposite of what we want to be doing,” Walt Lukken, the commission’s acting chairman, said in an interview. Mr. Lukken also testified before a Senate panel that his agency hadn’t seen evidence indicating that speculators are “a major factor” in driving up the price of oil.

“All you’re going to do is potentially cripple the U.S. exchanges and move that flow of trading away from the U.S.-regulated markets to non-U.S.-regulated markets,” Jim Newsome, the chief executive of Nymex Holdings Inc.’s New York Mercantile Exchange, said in an interview.

You really can’t make this stuff up.

Gateway Pundit with some great slides which show the brilliance of the Democrat plan to tax more instead of drill more:

Just a crazy world we’re living in….

also:

FBI Director Confirms: Al Queda Cells Are Inside U.S.

They’re heeeeeeeeere…..

In House Judiciary Committee testimony, Mueller was asked about cells of Al Qaida in the country.

“As to your first question as to whether we have found affiliates or, as you would call them, cells of Al Qaida in the United States, yes, we have. Again, I cannot get into it in public session, but I would say yes, we have.”

LINK

Perhaps President Obama will ask his FBI Director who they are so he can invite them to the White House to talk? You know, like FDR did to Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo.