A Conservative Blog by GypsyRN

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. …

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.

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For those of you who have read “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand this bill has eerie similarities to the Equalization of Opportunity  bill that was introduced in her novel. Another way that government attempts to control what people and corporations make. It was supposed to level the playing field so no one got ahead or made more then someone else.  This new reasonable profits board is suggested to be set up with Presidential appointees, not confirmed by congressional hearings! This is right out of Atlas Shrugged, most interesting that Ayn Rand had this ability to play it forward to the present day. She is a real visionary.

This was gleaned from Hotair.com. There is a complete run down by Michelle Malkin in her blog. Here was going again, the government trying to take more and more freedom from the citizens. This is what Ayn Rand wrote about, the loss of personal freedom, degradation of capitalism and the progressives moving towards socialism. If  this does not send chills up your spine then something is very wrong! This kind of government action is just another attempt to usurp our freedom and our way of life in this capitalistic society.

I have been reading some of the news outlets on the net regarding the marines urinating on Taliban fighters. There seems to be more outrage over what the marines did then what the Taliban or Al Qaeda have done to our troops. I don’t recall that much outrage when the Somali fighters dragged a naked body of a dead seal through the streets of Mogadishu, there was not much outrage when the Blackwater security men were not only killed, they were burned, mutilated and hung on the bridge in Iraq, I really did not see the outrage when Nick Berg was beheaded by Al Qaeda in that gruesome video tape on the web. I know that in Vietnam fingers, ears and other body parts were taken from the Vietcong troops. I do know that in WWII there were soldiers, especially in the Pacific, that took skulls, and other body parts of the enemy. The Japanese  also had been desecrating the bodies of the American marines.

I don’t condone what the Marines did, I would understand how in and after a combat operation that things like that can happen and do happen. I know bad things happen in war, people do things in war they would have never thought possible. I don’t see making a pariah out of them and holding the armed forces up for contempt. War is war, bad things happen in war; peace is preferable if at all possible. Leave the Marines alone. What they did was no worse then what has happened in all wars. To point to this indiscretion and say this is a  blanket statement about all of our troops is wrong. I don’t know what I would do in war, I don’t think anyone does until they are in that situation. This does not rise to the level of a war crime as the news seems to want to push it!