Consciousness and Politics

Posted by JCE

***

Yesterday I listened to a broadcast on NPR discussing the "new" proposed Windfall Profit Tax announced by Ms. Clinton as her way of addressing the skyrocketing costs of fuel. The broadcast interviewed Joseph Thorndike, director of the Tax History Project at TaxAnalysts.com and he explained that this is not a new tax at all and is in fact a very bad idea. The problem being that it is a windfall profit tax...not profits. There is another sort of tax that has been used in the past during war time to both cover the costs of the war and alleviate the strain on the economy and that is the Excess Profits Tax. The excess profits tax goes back approximately 5 years and calculates the tax on the profits of oil companies. The windfall profits tax is, for all intents an purposes, a one time tax based on the current price per barrel of oil.

Although I cannot follow all the intricacies of the tax jargon, it struck me that if there are people out there that already know all of this and have analyzed it, why isn't Congress and/or our presidential hopefuls asking them for advice? Actually, what I would really love to know is why someone like Hillary Clinton did not already know this? She has a law degree, she has spent time in the White House and has done time in Congress. Ummm...?

For the record, Congress did try to pass an excess profits tax in 1991 but were unsuccessful and our current Commander in Chief does not favor such taxes so he has not approved of any such tax nor has he initiated efforts to reinstate it during this war.

I realized that tax talk is boring to the point of sleep inducing, but this serves as one example of the willful deceit that has gone on for the last 7 years (and longer) and will most likely continue. Commercialized media does little to nothing to help the situation and the average John Q. Public is left paying the price for not paying attention and for not fully researching every damn thing spouted by politicians. The part I truly do not understand is the need to lie. BGH asked me once, is it unreasonable to expect capitalism to have a conscience? I ask the same question about politicians - are they incapable of doing their job with a conscience?

You can listen to the NPR broadcast here.

***