This is Getting Ridiculous!

Ok, the earlier post was intended to be a break from my serious posts, but the criminal farting stories are getting out of hand.

Florida Boy Arrested for Gas Attack

I'm only going to say this one more time--farting is not a criminal offense! In fact, disrupting school classes, unless accomplished by some criminal act, is not in and of itself a criminal act. What ever happened to getting swats or detention for acting up in class? Holy cow!

I promise this is not going to become a blog about passing gas. I just had to get it out of my system (pun fully intended).

Battery? Seriously!?!

Ok, this was just way too funny to not write about. I was playing around on the web and ran across this article from back in September of this year.

Man Farts on Cops

I clicked on the link thinking this is going to be hilarious, and it didn't disappoint. But strangely enough, a man farting on cops was not the funniest part. The funniest part was that in addition to charging him for drunk driving, they also charged him with battery of a police officer! WHAT???

Was it the fact that he moved his chair closer to them and raised his leg, or was it that he fanned it in their direction? Or, maybe it because his fart was especially odorous? I guess we'll never know.

The moral of this story--be very careful about who you fan your farts toward. While delivery provides the most humor, it can also get you in a lot of trouble!

Dumbest Protest Ever

Let me go ahead and say this from the start--I am not against protesting. I think very few protests are effective as they are more akin to hissy fits and temper tantrums than anything else. But protesting is a free speech right. However, some protests go too far.

I ran across this headline yesterday on the Drudge Report. Take a moment to read it and then come back to this post.

PETA plans nude protests against Houma circus

Wow...where to start...

Let's start with the quote by one of the protesters that nudity is just one way that the organization attempts to draw attention to animal abuse. Let's see a show of hands from all the guys out there that have ever seen a naked woman and immediately thought about the horrors of animal abuse. I don't see any hands. That's because God did not wire men in such a way that the female body would trigger sympathy for circus animals. Women, I will let you comment if you think such tactics have a more focused effect on women. I kind of doubt that it does.

You know what would make this even more entertaining...if the National Organization for Women (NOW) would show up and protest against PETA for putting a naked woman in a cage. Of course, NOW would first have to interview the naked lady to make sure she voted for Obama before advocating for her rights. Then they could protest by putting a really fat, hairy, naked guy in a cage. Now that would be funny!

On one final note, I would like to point out the small blurb about the ACLU suing the City of Shreveport and 6 of its police officers for arresting these naked women at a similar demonstration. Apparently the idiot lawyers for the ACLU don't understand the concept that free speech is not without limits. I'll save my rants about the ACLU for other posts.

The moral of this post--make sure your protest activities have some relevance to what you're protesting. It really is that simple.

Windfall Profits Tax--Part 2

In my last post, I explained what the Windfall Profits Tax is and how the oil industry is unfairly punished and demonized for being such successful market participants. In this post, I will explain who really reaps a windfall profit at the pump. I apologize for such a long post, but there's a lot that needs to be said, so bear with me.

I've done some internet research on how much profit ExxonMobil makes per gallon of gasoline, and it's somewhere between $0.05 and $0.08 per gallon. The trouble with calculating profit per gallon of gas is that a barrel of oil is used to produce more than just gasoline. The basic premise for this calculation is to convert barrels to gallons and then divide the total after-tax profit by the number of gallons produced. For purposes of this discussion, we'll just assume the higher number--Exxon makes $0.08 profit per gallon of gas. I will give the disclaimer now that Exxon made less than $0.08/gallon over the last 2 quarters when it set 2 new records for quarterly profit because the price of crude oil, which amounts to about 70% of the cost of production, has been MUCH higher over the last 2 quarters than a year ago. With crude coming back down, Exxon's profit margins should go back up a little.

So, moving on...

There are some per gallon numbers that are definitive and not in dispute--TAXES. The federal government takes $0.184 per gallon right off the top. On average, state governments take $0.22 per gallon off the top. The state of Texas charges a $0.20 tax per gallon. So, if you live in Texas, for every gallon of gas you pump into your vehicle, you pay $0.384 to the government. Click on this link if you want to see how much tax other states pay. These taxes don't include other fees such as environmental and underground storage fees.

The math from this point on is pretty simple. As a reward for pulling oil out of the ground, processing and refining it, shipping it to downstream retailers, and creating thousands of jobs for Americans, Exxon makes $0.08 per gallon in profit. As a reward for doing absolutely nothing, the government makes $0.384 per gallon in profit.

However, it doesn't stop there. Not only are liberals ok with the government making $0.30 more per gallon of gasoline than the companies responsible for all the work involved in getting it to the pump, some of them want to sit in their lofty positions and take pot shots at the oil companies. For your reading pleasure, I have posted a few quotes below:

"Arlen Specter says Congress should consider taxing the windfall profits being reaped by the oil companies, which I think is a no-brainer. These guys aren’t entrepreneurs — they are pirates."
— Geraldo Rivera on Fox’s Geraldo at Large.

"The estimates are that the six large U.S. [oil] companies will have a total of $135 billion in profits for the year 2006. Don’t consumers have a right to be angry?"
"The public looks at a total of $135 billion over the year, that’s larger than the gross domestic product of Israel, and says isn’t that an obscene amount?"
— Co-host Charles Gibson to ConocoPhillips Chairman James Mulva on ABC’s Good Morning America.

No, Mr. Gibson, the profit made by state and federal governments for doing absolutely nothing is what is obscene. And, while we're at it, how many people do you know use the gross domestic product of Israel as a benchmark for what is or is not a lot of money? Ridiculous!

But, this one is my favorite. For all the cracks people take a George W. Bush for being a stupid moron, why didn't this clip get more press?



For all the talk about oil companies and executives being so greedy, as explained by Maxine Waters, the federal government isn't happy with ONLY making $0.184/gallon. They want to run the whole show.

Now, I don't want this post to be misleading. Theoretically, state and federal governments use these tax dollars to build and maintain roads and transportation infrastructure. Of course, we all know some of this money gets diverted to pet projects (what we call "pork-barrel spending"). But, it's not like legislators are taking these dollars and sticking them in their collective pockets. However, they would like you to believe that oil company executives are doing that, when in fact, profits are used for a variety of purposes such as reinvesting in oil producing assets, maintaining refining infrastructure, creating new jobs, and rewarding investors who purchase stock in oil companies. If anyone should have a problem with oil company executives getting paid too much, it's the stockholders. So, I'm not sure how Big Oil's reinvestment of profits is any different from the government spending tax dollars on improving transportation infrastructure.

Let's do one more math exercise before I end this post. Let's assume you're paying $2.00 for a gallon of gas right now. If the oil company cuts it's profit per gallon in half, you pay $1.96/gallon. On a 20 gallon fill up, you save a whopping $0.80! Now, if both the state and federal government cut their profits in half, you pay $1.80/gallon and save $3.84.

I hope this all makes sense. In conclusion, oil companies make large profits because they work hard, take risks and go through a lot of trouble to produce a product everyone needs. Government makes large profits because it lies to people about oil companies being greedy. So, who is receiving a windfall profit on gas? I'll let you answer that one.

Windfall Profits Tax

In the last 6-9 months we've heard a lot about a "windfall profits tax" that a lot of democrats want to impose on large oil companies. As the public was paying nearly $4 for a gallon of gas, a lot of people shouted their approval of sticking it to Big Oil (translate, ExxonMobil) for pillaging the wallets of the common "Joe" at the pump. But, have you ever thought about the effect an additional tax would have on the price at the pump?

First, let's clear up exactly what the windfall profits tax (WPT) is. It's not actually a tax on profit margins at all. It's an excise tax on the difference between the market price of crude oil and a base price created by federal statute. It was originally enacted in 1980 (passed during Jimmy Carter's administration, but didn't take effect until the next year) to steal (there's no nicer term for it) profits oil companies were making due to crude oil price increases caused by the OPEC oil embargo. That's right...the federal government thought it was deplorable that a company would pull oil out of the ground and actually try to sell it for market price, even though that high market price was not created by the oil companies. Anyway, the tax was repealed in 1988 during Ronald Reagan's administration because it produced only about 20% of the federal tax revenue that was anticipated, and because the tax only affected domestically produced crude oil, and therefore increased dependence on foreign oil exports.

No legislation has been introduced to revive the tax since 1988. However, according to a Wall Street Journal article, in 2007, 51 senators voted to impose a 25% WPT on any oil companies whose profits grew by more than 10% in a single year. Can you figure out which political party most of these votes came from without me telling you? I'll give you a hint--it's the party that has made a platform out of redistributing wealth. To quote Senate democrat Dick Durbin, "The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy." If comments like that don't scare you, you need to wake up and shake the cobwebs out of your brain!

So, back to the question...what effect would a WPT have on what consumers pay at the pump? Based upon what you hear in the mainstream media, these oil companies would be forced to pay this tax for making too much money, which would have a deterrent effect causing the price of a gallon of gas to go down. WRONG! An additional tax is an additional expense that gets passed on to the consumer just like every other expense.

Let's look at a simpler example that everyone should be familiar with--the state sales tax. When you go to a store and buy a shirt for $7.99, you actually pay (in Texas) $8.65 ($7.99 + 8.25% sales tax). What you may not understand is that the great state of Texas imposes the sales tax on SELLERS, not BUYERS. It's the seller that passes the cost of that tax onto you, the consumer. See how that works?

Now, back to oil companies. Quiz Time: The federal government imposes a tax on oil companies. Who do you think is going to pay that tax? That's right! You are.

See how simple these things are when you apply a little logic. Now, next time you hear a congressman (or woman) spouting off about imposing a windfall profits tax on big oil to protect you, send them an email or give them a call to let them know you're not as big of an idiot as they think you are.

My Entry Into the Blogosphere

Well, I'm finally taking the plunge. This election has made me realize that there are lots of things I want to say, most of which people probably either don't want to hear or don't care about, but that need to be said. I don't pretend to know everything, or even very much, but some things can be explained or refuted with simple logic. I'm realizing more and more every day that people are abandoning logic for emotion. I don't think most of these people are stupid; they just haven't had much logic presented to them. And since people are inherently lazy, they become convinced of the truth of whatever they are told most often or with the most repetition instead of thinking for themselves.

In that vein, this blog will be mostly devoted to explaining how I see things from a logical point of view. Most posts will be arguments against things that I see in the media or hear coming from the mouths of politicians that simply don't make sense when any degree of logic is applied. In an effort to make full disclosure of things in my life that may color how I view things, I am one of those evil "evangelical" Christians that people hate so much. Since I believe the Bible is the Word of God and constitutes a user's manual and road map for my life, obviously the truths of the Scriptures will influence how I think. So, now you know.

Posts will not come every day because I simply don't have time blog every day. But I'll try to maintain a steady supply of posts for your reading pleasure. My first substantive post will be coming soon!