Dems propose 'Reasonable Profits Board' to regulate oil company profits

The Hill ^

[Sub-Driver]

Dems propose 'Reasonable Profits Board' to regulate oil company profits By Pete Kasperowicz - 01/19/12 10:20 AM ET

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.

The bill would also seem to exclude industry representatives from the board, as it says members "shall have no financial interests in any of the businesses for which reasonable profits are determined by the Board."

According to the bill, a windfall tax of 50 percent would be applied when the sale of oil or gas leads to a profit of between 100 percent and 102 percent of a reasonable profit. The windfall tax would jump to 75 percent when the profit is between 102 and 105 percent of a reasonable profit, and above that, the windfall tax would be 100 percent. The bill also specifies that the oil-and-gas companies, as the seller, would have to pay this tax.

Kucinich said these tax revenues would be used to fund alternative transportation programs when oil-and-gas prices spike.

"Gas prices continue to rise, creating a hardship for the American people," he said. "At the same time, oil companies are making record profits gouging their customers. This bill would tax only the excess profits and create forward-thinking transportation alternatives."

Specifically, he said the money would be used to fund a tax credit on the purchase of fuel-efficient cars and set up a grant program for mass transit programs when oil-and-gas prices are high.

The bill does not estimate the size of these grants or the amount of money that might be collected through the tax.

Co-sponsoring the bill are five other Democrats: Reps. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), Bob Filner (Calif.), Marcia Fudge (Ohio), Jim Langevin (R.I.), and Lynn Woolsey (Calif.).

[mo]

Heh...state and Federal Government ALREADY earn more from the sale of a gallon of gas than any oil company...

http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1139.html

Perhaps we need a citizens board to “regulate” how much government can profit from taxation!!!

[NormsRevenge]

Stalin would be proud......... of Obama’s 5-year plan.

—

Makes ya wonder how much more blatant the commies within can get.. when it comes to their agenda.

[Night Hides Not]

Thanks for posting. I pulled my copy of AS to read again, mainly to see how close the screenplay was to the novel.

Having viewed the movie at least five times, IMHO it has stayed truer to the novel than any adaptation of a novel I've ever seen.

On Election Day, I'm taking the day off. First, to vote; second to see Atlas Shrugged, Part II.

[dsc]

After a hundred million innocent dead in the twentieth century, no liberal is entitled to the slightest consideration, courtesy, or civility. Liberals should be reviled, abominated, spat upon, even beaten, whenever they have the gall to show their faces in the presence of decent people.

Intellectual dishonesty is not merely the hallmark, the metier, the forte, the oeuvre of the liberal, it is the very sine qua non of liberalism. Compared to this, hypocrisy is a mere spear-carrier in the liberal’s limping army of sophistries, prevarication, and false moral equivalences.

The liberal himself somehow manages to suppress awareness of his own detachment from both reality and honesty, and in fact spends great volumes of energy swanning about in high dudgeon, gushing forth banshee wails of rage at the purported dishonesty and malice of his opponents. Spraying poison in all directions like a rabid cobra on meth, the liberal walks closed-minded through a world in which only he is open-minded, bigoted through a world in which only he is tolerant, ignorant through a world in which only he is educated, consumed by rage, hatred, and malice through a world in which only he is kind and nice.

All leftist thought, from the limousine liberalism of a George Clooney to the mass murders of Mao, Stalin, or Pol Pot, is of and from Satan. It is a contaminant in the human cognosphere, not a natural component of it.

Dear Lord, help us to drive the left entirely out of political and social power, first in the US, the country You founded, and then across the face of the Earth. Amen.

[andy58-in-nh]

Nicely written.

And also true. If you still wonder how liberals manage so successfully to suspend the sense and sensibility that God gave them, the answer is that they have replaced God and his law with something else, and worship that instead. And you know exactly what that is.

I am fascinated with the means by which human consciousness is propelled from one of rational perception and interpretation to the inverted fantasy world in which many modern liberals dwell, in which each and every value becomes more precisely its opposite.

If you accept that human consciousness and perception are voluntary (and I think they are), then one has a choice: acceptance or denial. Responsibility or dependency. Individual liberty or collective servitude.

The reason that liberals must deny reality and the concept of value is to justify their desire for that which they want or need - but have not earned by productive effort. Instead, those who do create and produce things of value are not assumed to be what they are - givers - but instead are considered "takers". And when liberals (or more generally: collectivists) attain majority status, they empower their vicarious deity, the State, to do themselves what they would otherwise do were they bold or brave enough: steal.

And, please do not forget this: before they are murderers, all collectivists are first thieves.