Big Oil Update

UPDATE: The Wisconsin Department of Revenue today sheepishly confirmed what I said before. They were careful not to appear as opposing Doyle's hairbrained "can't-pass-it-on" tax, so they just put out a statement that their analysis showed that it would inevitably raise gasoline prices as much as $.05 per gallon. They also declared that such a law would be almost impossible to enforce. Trust me, this won't faze the pinheads in the least. It will be full speed ahead.

UPDATE II (5/11/07) Well, Department of Revenue be damned! Apparently the fact that it will raise gasoline prices and the fact that they can’t enforce such a law are not enough to stop Jim Doyle from being a demagogue on this issue. His press conference was pathetic. The highlight was when he invoked poll results as justification for going after “big oil.” (BTW, does that mean “little oil” is off the hook? You know there are small oil companies.) He declared that this is a good tax because “the majority of people in Wisconsin support it.” All I could think of was a quote I recently read in a Jonah Goldberg column. “The people of Nebraska are for free silver, and I am for free silver,” proclaimed William Jennings Bryan. “I will look up the arguments later.”

I wonder how the poll question read. I’m thinking it went something like, “Would you favor taxing the crap out of the big oil companies, as long as we can guarantee they can’t pass it on to you?” I think it would be hard for the typical high school drop out to answer that any way but “yes.” By the way, they would also answer “yes” if you asked them if they’d like to get a free Playstation 3, but that doesn’t mean we should give them one. He launched into a bit about how oil companies benefited form the roads we build here and then generously offered that he doesn’t expect for them to pay for ALL the roads, just a portion. And of course he couldn’t let a microphone pass by without mentioning big oil profits.So I’m going to point out, again, that the typical profit, industry wide, on a gallon of gas is between 8 and 9 cents. While the Wisconsin tax alone is 32 cents per gallon. So whatever profits they make in Wisconsin, the state is making four times as much (which apparently is not enough.) And keep in mind that the oil companies actually do something. They find, pump, transport and refine that oil into gasoline before shipping it to Wisconsin. On the other hand the state of Wisconsin does nothing other than collect their cut.