Barack Obama proposes that we seize the profits of the oil companies and use them for $1,000 "energy rebate" checks to every working family in America. That is what he said in his speech in Lansing, Michigan on August 4, 2008, entitled "New Energy for America." Economist Donald Boudreaux pointed out that seizing all oil profits would still not be enough to fund these $1,000 giveaway checks.If the government is going to target an industry it has vilified in the public mind, loot all its profits, and then use the money for giveaway checks to buy votes, then what has our nation become?
If the government can do that to the oil industry, then why can't it do the same to any other industry, or group of people, that it successfully paints as unpopular? What then has happened to the whole notion of private property?
Why couldn't President Obama then decree that every owner of a four bedroom home take in two homeless people? Surely there would be room for them somewhere. Why couldn't he just seize every gas guzzling SUV, sell them for scrap metal, and use that money for $1,000 rebate checks to every Democrat voter as well?
This is why people say Obama is a socialist...
(Source: Peter Ferrara's commentary in the American Spectator. Read the rest of his fine article here.)
