Free Republic

WASHINGTON — With gasoline prices topping $4 a gallon, Senate Democrats want the government to grab some of the billions of dollars in profits being taken in by the major oil companies. Senators were to vote Tuesday on whether to consider a windfall profits tax against the five largest U.S. oil companies and rescind $17 billion in tax breaks the companies expect to enjoy over the next decade. "The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy," said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat,...

What do the farm bill, the cap-and-trade global warming bill, the clean water bill, the housing bailout bill, and the school construction bill all have in common? Not much, except that in each one and countless others the Democratic majority in Congress has inserted "prevailing-wage" requirements that amount to a super-minimum wage. We're speaking of Davis-Bacon, the 1931 law that originally applied to road building and other federal construction projects and set a floor on wages in part to price black and Mexican workers out of the work. Today, its main impact is to require de facto union wages. Many...

The average price for regular gas hit $4 a gallon over the weekend. Gas prices have risen 75% since Nancy Pelosi took over. Where's the energy independence Democrats promised two years ago? In November of 2006, House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi issued a press release touting the Democrats "common-sense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices." She accused the oil companies of "price gouging." The price of gasoline when the Democrats took control of Congress was around $2.25 per gallon. ... It's a problem driven by domsetic supply restriction imposed by the Democratic Congress in the face of growing worldwide...

Barack Obama: Change We Can Believe In | NEW BLACK PANTHER PARTY -- Barack Obama: Change We Can Believe In | Mishal Al-Johar’s Blog: How Barack Obama Learned to Love Israel -- Barack Obama : : Change We Can Believe In | Socialists for Obama: An open letter to our next president Barack Obama -- Barack Obama: Change We Can Believe In | Marxists/Socialists/Communists for Obama Barack Obama: Change We Can Believe In | ZIONISM IS THE MAIN CAUSE OF ANTISEMITISM [more] ...

At this moment, the Senate is debating a package of punitive measures against the major domestic oil companies, including a new windfall profits tax. We've been down this road before and to disastrous consequences. Twenty eight years ago, President Jimmy Carter sign into law the Crude Oil Windfall Profit Tax Act (P.L. 96-223). According to a 2006 report by Congressional Research Service economist Salvatore Lazzari: "The WPT had the effect of reducing the domestic supply of crude oil below what the supply would have been without the tax. This increased the demand for imported oil and made the United States...