Obama, Oil and DWUI

Senator Barak Obama commented recently on Exxon-Mobile’s 2nd quarter profits of $12 billion by noting that, “No U. S. corporation ever made that much in a single quarter”. In a statement on his web site, the senator called these profits “outrageous ... while Americans are paying record prices at the pump.”

This kind of populist demagoguery against oil companies in particular and private enterprise in general may be effective in securing votes but it is intellectually dishonest and enormously harmful to our society.

Senator Obama is seeking to become the chief executive officer of a country that is asking its citizens to contribute $3 trillion over the next 12 months to keep it operating. Just as no corporation in history has made more profit than Exxon, we can truthfully observe that no country in history has ever expected its citizens to pay so much money to support a record high budget! Does the Senator find this as outrageous as Exxon-Mobile behavior? And, at a time when Americans are paying record amounts of money to keep the country operating, is Obama's call for higher taxes not equally outrageous?

Perhaps Senator Obama is unaware that the federal government that he seeks to lead will take in about $6.7 billion in gasoline taxes for the gas consumed by Americans during the 2nd quarter of this year? When state and local gas taxes are added to the federal burden, governments at all levels will rake in $16.1 billion in gas tax profits. Shouldn't the senator find this to be equally outrageous?

Obama is concerned about the record high gas prices being paid by Americans and he is advocating new taxes on oil company profits which he would return to private citizens through a tax rebate. If there is some moral obligation for oil companies to share their record high profits, should the federal government be subject to a similar obligation to share the windfall profit they are receiving from record high gas tax revenues?

In a related note, Obama suggested recently that we can save as much oil as we would get from drilling for more oil by just keeping our tires inflated and keeping our cars tuned up. This could be dismissed as one of those misstatements that anyone campaigning for public office is going to make from time to time but Obama has continued to defend his remark.

In a country where people find it difficult to maintain discipline with a diet or exercise routine for more than 27 nanoseconds, do we really believe that people will be diligent in keeping their tires inflated? We should, in fact, keep our tires properly inflated but this cannot be considered a serious public policy proposal.

Perhaps Obama will propose some legislation to penalize people who don’t comply. I can see it now. On those three-day holiday weekends, we’ll add tire inflation checkpoints to our sobriety checkpoints. A guy who is stone-cold sober may make it through the drunk driving check only to find that he is still cited for DWUI – Driving While Under Inflated. We’ll cuff him and haul him off to jail and take away his license and get him to perform community service for his failure to help the country out of this energy crisis.

This country can solve its energy problem and it can do it in short order with a few wise decisions. A commitment to more drilling here and now would make an immediate impact. I also like the proposal put forward by a coalition of national security experts and environmentalists that would involve converting automobiles to methanol over the next few years (See more here at http://www.setamericafree.org/ and specifically here at: http://www.setamericafree.org/blueprint.pdf ) . I’m also in favor of conservation.

This seems like an issue that is ready made for the bi-partisan approach that people claim to want. The one thing that will not work is the demonization of private industry that Senator Obama is utilizing in pandering for votes. Regrettably, Senator McCain is not much better. He too is running ads that tout his courage in taking on the big, bad oil companies.

As I have observed before, I'm much more afraid of a monopolistic government that can take money from me by force than I am of a private business that risks enormous amounts of capital and still has to compete for the chance to take money out of my pocket.