Whiny leftists need reality check

At a recent press conference Sen. John Kerry was upset as he snarled as only an angry liberal can, "Oil companies in America are reporting record profits. Record profits."

When did profit become a dirty word? When did it become bad to be successful? Probably somewhere around the time it became good to be a teenage mom and go on welfare.

I wish the oil executives would face the media. They could say something like:

"What are you complaining about? What do you think we do with our profits? Buy fancy cars and homes? Well, we do, actually, but nearly all the money goes to looking for more oil and following environmental rules that you want us to follow. You should want us to make more profit. Anyway, we make less profit per gallon than your beloved government takes in taxes."

Gas prices may be setting a record, but on this issue Congress has set a record for inanity. What else are we to say about an anti-"gouging" bill passed last year by the House that would make it a crime to charge "unconscionably excessive" prices, "tak[e] unfair advantage of unusual market conditions," and "increase prices unreasonably" during an emergency?

Please. Lawyers will get rich debating vague words like those. Laws are supposed to be clear so we'll know in advance what's legal and what's not. But there's nothing clear about those "crimes."
That's not legislation. It's legislative posturing by the liberal fools in our Congress. Considering the perverse incentives of electoral politics, I'm amazed this bill got only 284 votes.

And Congress should know better. After Hurricane Katrina, Congress had the Federal Trade Commission investigate price gouging, and so the FTC studied price spikes going back years. But it found "no instances of illegal manipulation."

If the politicians do enforce anti-"gouging" rules, it will be akin to capping prices, and we tried that before. It was a disaster. Drivers had to wait in long lines, and some couldn't get any gasoline. Only when price controls were lifted did supplies rush in, and only then did prices go back down.

Why did prices spike recently? It's just supply and demand. Demand is up 3 percent, while supply is up just 1 percent.

And gasoline is still a bargain. Think about what it takes to bring it to us: Drills must bend and dig sideways through as many as seven miles of earth. What they find has to be delivered through long pipelines or transported in monstrously expensive ships, then converted into three different formulas of gasoline, moved in trucks that cost more than $100,000 each, and shipped to gas stations that have to have lots of expensive equipment to make sure we don't blow ourselves up filling the tank. Even after all that, gasoline is still cheaper per ounce than the bottled water gas stations sell.

There's no dirtier word in English than "gouging." But we've had enough unpleasant experience with price controls to know that all they do is create shortages.

Who, but the politician, benefits from that?