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Column: The Danger of Liberal Oil Policy By Rizzuto Fri May 02, 2008 - Liberal ideology surrounding the oil industry and gas prices is completely backwards. Like most of their policies, it is dependent on exerting unnecessary government control and burden over a perceived problem. Their solution to the modestly higher price in oil that we're currently paying is to penalize the oil companies by instituting a "windfall profit tax". What they don't tell you is that the oil companies are not going to pay this tax; they're simply going to pass it off to the consumer as any industry would do. Meanwhile, according to the US Energy Information Agency, oil companies made a profit of 10 cents a gallon while the federal government walked away with 18.4 cents a gallon and state governments took as much as 50 cents per gallon when oil hit its peak price in 2006. We could easily instate a "windfall profit tax" on the government by cutting taxes on every gallon of gasoline. This doesn't fit the liberal idiom though because the people need a villain; in this case it's the greedy oil companies screwing you at the pump. The truth is that there is no villain; there is simply a bloated government hungry for your cash. By demonizing the oil companies, all liberals are really doing is running interference for the government and its wasteful spending habits. What is even worse is the liberal idea that the government can simply confiscate profits from oil companies. At the Democratic National Committee's 2007 winter meeting, Senator Hillary Clinton said "The other day the oil companies recorded the highest profits in the history of the world. I want to take those profits. And I want to put them into a strategic energy fund that will begin to fund alternative smart energy, alternatives and technologies that will actually begin to move us in the direction of independence." Simply put, this is a dangerous step toward nationalization of the American oil industry. This theft of profits from publicly owned oil companies would prove to be a disaster for the American oil industry which is already burdened by high taxes and costs, and extremely costly for your bottom line at the pump. In short, it's the left's intention to exert a more authoritarian control over one of America's most profitable industries. If we've learned anything since September of 2001, it's that the importance of America's oil policy can not be overstated. The argument can be made that oil is our greatest weapon against terror sponsoring states, seeing that in the case of countries like Iran, Syria, and Libya it is their chief export. Iran, Syria, and Libya are in fact over reliant on their oil sectors which are bloated and inefficient due to excessive government control. Even at their most efficient, these government controlled oil bureaucracies would have trouble keeping up with slick and efficient privately owned companies. Another self proclaimed American enemy and OPEC member state, Venezuela is making a rapid decent into authoritarianism. On May 1st 2007, President Hugo Chavez seized the last of Venezuela's privately owned oil fields. With this seizure will come an inevitable atrophy of their oil sector, a sector on which they, like Iran, Syria, and Lebanon are over dependent. This dependence on an inefficient and overly bureaucratic system represents our enemies greatest vulnerability. Conversely, an efficient and privately owned oil industry can be one of America's greatest assets. What better way to exert soft power over these countries than aggressively competing with them. Liberal opposition to domestic drilling in places like ANWR keeps oil supply dependent on the output of OPEC who control about 2/3rd of the worlds oil reserves and have been known to cut output to keep the price of crude oil high. If we had greater access to areas like ANWR, where by all indications environmental impact of drilling would be minimal, OPEC would be forced to drop its prices to remain competitive with our domestic oil. This would work to limit the political and economic clout of OPEC countries including Libya, Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia.
Comments : 1 Comment
GlennJericho commented, on May 2, 2008 at 11:41 p.m.:
You can bet that unless oil excedes the price of gold, the government will just sit on its hands listening to the environmentalist nuts talk about the damage that will be done to the northern blue mudstone lichen. "If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn't be here. It'd still be waiting for an environmental impact statement."-- Ronald Reagan
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