by Jay Kitts

Created on: February 16, 2007   Last Updated: March 19, 2008

To her credit the Senator has showed some consistency in a position for a while on the topic of energy independence and in what was surely a mistake actually was open and honest for once. After Exxon reported its 2006 earnings Clinton said "I want to take those profits and put them into an alternative energy fund that will begin to fund alternative smart energy alternatives that will actually begin to move us toward the direction of independence." The prospect is so frightening and clearly stupid at the same time that it is nearly impossible to believe it is given credence. What makes it even more stupefying is it has been tried before, less than thirty years ago, with disastrous results, and yet people like Sen. Clinton propose to do it again. It was Jimmy Carter's Windfall Profits Tax, and it decreased domestic oil production and increased annual oil imports. Even pro-Carter folks admit the projected collections (revenues are earned) from the tax were about five times higher than the actual taxes collected and that does not even account for the high tax compliance costs which ended up eating up even the small amount of additional tax collected. That is why more than 250 economists have signed on opposing any sort of tax like this. It is why a repeal of the tax was passed under Reagan even though there was a Democrat-controlled legislature.

This and any other host of programs Hillary will support is a thinly-veiled power grab and nothing more. She wants the federal government to take over healthcare. And energy production. Federal government has already taken over public education. Have you been to a DMV or tried to comply with the country's ridiculous tax code lately? Do you really want the same bureaucrats in control of anything more than they have already wrested from you? Free enterprise works. If unencumbered, private businesses could increase energy production and pursue economically viable energy alternatives and the costs would decrease simultaneously. Sen. Clinton's plan is to go in the opposite direction and have the government in control of more of the nation's resources, and it is a failing strategy.

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