Tilting at Windfalls

Most of you who play online with me know that I'm a Hoosier by both birth and residency.  That's not really all that exciting, but unfortunately it's ruining my cereal every morning.  As most people know there's a primary in my State next week.  Normally I have the luxury of using my DVR to watch my television programming and can skip through the onslaught of political ads that we've been inundated with over the last few weeks.  The problem is, that in the morning, while I'm eating my Honeycombs, I watch the local news in order to get the scoop on the weather that day or any breaking story that might effect me that day.  Regrettably, I don't get the chance to fast forward the commercials, so I'm stuck watching all the political ads during what would ordinarily be a blissful morning meal. 

After 3-4 weeks of this I finally shouted at the TV, "Do you really think we're that stupid!?"  Let me explain.  My favorite time of year is August.  It's hot outside and I'll pick the heat over the cold of January every day of the week.  It's my anniversary in August as well.  We usually get to have a really nice meal and sometimes even take a good vacation in August.  The Chi-town LAN is usually in August and that's always a nice treat.  The other benefit to me in August is that August is our company's end of fiscal year.  We've been fortunate the last few years to earn a profit for all our hard labor and good planning.  I'm not sure if it would be considered a "windfall" profit, but that's more a function of timing and need by a politician then anything else I suppose.  The nice thing though is when our accountant calls and says "Hey fellas, you've got too much money in the bank, either spend it or give it to Uncle Sam in the form of taxes."  That's the call we like to hear.  We get to update any office equipment, buy any new tools we might need, invest in some building upgrades or repairs, and all most always, I get to pad my bonus check with a few extra greenbacks. 

So, when in the morning I see ads from both Clinton and Obama talking about how they want to pay for whatever pandering problem they've identified by "taxing the windfall profits of the oil companies", I don't know whether to laugh at the lunacy of such a statement, or be sad for the millions of Americans who'll fall for it.  Do you really think that Exxon and Shell and the various other companies will just hand over all that "landfall" profit?  The correct answer is Hell No!  They will simply spend what they can on themselves in order to keep the government's greedy hands off of their money.  That's right, let's not forget that while politicians like to paint big companies as greedy corporations, there's never been a more greedy organization then the government itself, but I digress.  There's no way that the oil companies accountants will show a profit large enough to be overly taxed in order to pay for whatever program Clinton or Obama have cooked up.  Even if they couldn't spend it/hide it all, and I have no doubt that they can, they won't just eat that loss.  The money you would've saved by the reduction in federal gas tax at the pump will be lost to the oil companies price raise in order to cover their own losses.  How do these guys even get away with these proposals without people laughing to their faces?

Here's the other laughable part of the equation.  These same anti-business, pro-government folks keep calling on these energy companies to develop more alternative energy solutions and spend more money cleaning up some of the processes that they currently use.  Now, I wonder what it would take for a company to be able to do those kinds of things?  I guess it might take the company to earn enough money to be able to invest in such projects.  That's right, it's going to require that the energy company....wait for it.......wait for it.....EARN A PROFIT!  But wait!  Hillary thinks a big company earning a profit is a bad thing.  If not a bad thing then at the very least something that should be penalized and/or have more government regulation of.  If there is any doubt that these to Democratic candidates are socialists at this point, the recent media blitz surrounding their campaigns in my state has dispelled such doubts.  I didn't even get into the follow up interview I saw regarding health care.

I would say that I'm looking forward to November when this campaign is over, unfortunately some of these folks might win and then the real problems start.