looters.

Via Tam, we get another look into the head of the probable Democrat front-runner for President in 2008.

Hillary sez:

"The other day the oil companies reported the highest profits in the history of the world. I want to take those profits..."

That's right...she has the gall to stand on a stage and publically announce her intent to appropriate the legitimate and legal earnings of a legal business because she thinks they earned too much money last year, because she thinks she can find a better use for them, and because she is convinced that she has legal and moral standing to do so.

By what right, and under which authority? For whose benefit?

Oh, by the way...here's a detail about the evil Plutocrats at ExxonMobil that the Socialists fail to mention every time they moan about the record profits (as if "profit" is a dirty word.)

ExxonMobil made $39.5 billion in profits last year.

ExxonMobil paid $100.7 billion in taxes last year.

That's right, they paid two and a half times the amount of their profits to Uncle Sam in return for being allowed to do business. The real record profit beneficiary last year was the U.S. Treasury.

From the Tax Foundation, we learn some interesting facts:

"[Between 1977 and 2004] the 29 largest domestic energy firms earned a collective $630 billion after adjusting for inflation. These profits varied dramatically—from a low of $7.9 billion in 1995 to a high of $42.6 billion in 2004—based upon world market demand, supply, and international events.

In contrast, the taxes paid or remitted by domestic oil companies have been consistently far greater than their profits and now total more than $2.2 trillion (adjusted for inflation) over the past quarter century. The largest share of those taxes is federal and state gasoline excise taxes. In 2004, governments collected $58 billion in gasoline excise taxes. Overall, governments have collected $1.34 trillion in gasoline excise taxes since 1977. [emphasis mine]

Today, U.S. consumers pay an average of 45.9 cents per gallon in gasoline taxes. The federal gasoline excise tax is 18.4 cents per gallon while the average state and local tax is 27.5 cents. The vast majority of these taxes are levied at a flat rate per gallon—regardless of whether a gallon of gas costs $1.49, $2.49, or $3.49. Thus, the effective rate of these taxes can vary wildly, from roughly 31 percent in the former case to 13 percent in the later."

The government can, and does, fleece the oil companies (via gasoline excise and other taxes) and the consumer (via gasoline taxes at the pump) at the same time, to the tune of trillions of dollars over the last few decades.

And now this vest pocket Marxist has the gall to lay claim to the money that's left after the IRS has already extorted their "fair share" on behalf of the Collective. You see, nobody should be allowed to make that much money in her world.

America never was a capitalist country. It came closest in the days of the "robber barons" (the ones who actually built up the infrastructure of the nation in the late 1800s), but it slowly turned into a sludge by gradually adding socialism into the mix in the course of the 20th century. Now we actually have the first contender for President who openly advocates dropping the "Lite" label from her particular brand of socialism and just go all-out.

Looters.