House of Eratosthenes

Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a “Reasonable Profits Board” to control gas profits.

The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a “windfall profit tax” as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit.

The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 percent to 100 percent on all surplus earnings exceeding “a reasonable profit.” It would set up a Reasonable Profits Board made up of three presidential nominees that will serve three-year terms. Unlike other bills setting up advisory boards, the Reasonable Profits Board would not be made up of any nominees from Congress.

…to which, one of my friends over there had this to say: “Jesus Christ. Ayn Rand is a time traveler.”

Ineptocracy I want the bumper sticker. It would have to be separated from the reference to my Lord, since aside from being cutely blasphemous, it seems to be making an ironic statement about religion itself by juxtaposing faith itself with a prominent member of the faithless.

But yes, at this point just crediting Alyssa Rosenbaum with the mere gift of prophesy leaves some things unexplained. Time travel seems more like it. The weird name of this board, seems like something straight out of the book, around page 550 or so. It’s Directive 10-289, the Moratorium on Brains! Run for your lives!

No, not quite there yet, though I’m apprehensive about seeing what comes next. We’re still at the early stages, where the unproductive tell the productive how to do their producing, and then when the predictable results are unveiled before us, we lie to ourselves about what it all means.

Terri asks:

How about a “reasonable taxes board? The federal government taxes gas at 18.4 cents a gallon. Is it unreasonable? Theoretically no because it’s going to pay for interstate highways but seriously, if you want to lower the price of gasoline isn’t the one place you actually control the better place to look than setting up an unconstitutional board to force one type of business into a profit model that is designed by people who have no interest in the business other than because they “care” about the poor?

Update: Boortz defines “windfall profit”:

Now as I’ve mentioned, the Democrats have come up with this idea before .. though the idea of this presidential panel is new. But a windfall profit … what is that? I’ve come up with a definition I’d like to share with you, since I’m sure that government schools don’t teach things like this. A windfall profit is money earned by a company that can be readily demagogued by a politician. It is money earned by a company on a commodity that consumers absolutely need but don’t like paying for.

Bulls-eye. They’re supposed to care so much about the middle class and the poor people, but if you hate a certain layer of our economic strata, by which I mean absolutely loathe it and want to see it go away, what better way to make it happen: You identify a product or a service upon which that class relies, the deprivation of which would do the people within the class the greatest damage, and then you make the production of that product or service as miserable, as onerous, and as unprofitable an experience as you possibly can.

Thus has been the case with democrat politicians and: Oil, gasoline, higher education for the next generation, rents, mortgages, health care services, legal assistance and food. In the municipalities which have most consistently elected democrats throughout the decades, those commodities have all been priced into outer space.

As far as domestic issues are concerned, a democrat is a Republican who cares about “the plight of the middle class” and lacks a functional long-term memory.

How about a “reasonable profits” board for oh, I don’t know, Apple. They have a 50% margin on the hardware for the ipad. How about one for movies? Titanic made a billion dollars. There’s no way they need all that extra money. That should all go to taxes after they’ve recovered their costs. Even the president said “at some point I think you’ve made enough money.” Surely an ROI of over 100% is too much.
- Duffy | 01/20/2012 @ 07:57
Like many in the technology industry, I find it much easier to build something once I have a list of requirements in hand, than to generate that list of requirements based on an anticipation of what people will need. It’s a real crap-shoot. Even when people more talented than me manage to get it done (MS-DOS, spreadsheets, desktop databases, Facebook) it still looks like a crap-shoot…a successful crap-shoot.

If I ever manage to get ‘er done and start pulling in the loot to acquire my seven-building 43,000 square foot dream house with the garage turntable for my Bugatti Veyron, and some government pencil-pusher comes along to tell me my profits are excessive, he can stick it right where the sun don’t shine. Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, I’ll say. If offshore accounts are where it’s at in pursuing that happiness, then so be it…says more about what America has become, than about what I’ve become.
- mkfreeberg | 01/20/2012 @ 08:06
“If offshore accounts are where it’s at in pursuing that happiness, then so be it…says more about what America has become, than about what I’ve become.”

Indeed. There are many people using the “Five Flags” lifestyle for that very reason.
- Duffy | 01/20/2012 @ 08:33

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Ayn Rand is a Time TravelerFriday, January 20th, 2012

Ayn Rand is a Time Traveler
Friday, January 20th, 2012