Windfall Taxes

Last Wednesday the Senate called a group of representative executives of the oil industry to a meeting in Washington D.C. in which they were asked to justify the fact that they had made very large profits.

Even though it's been in the news a lot, I thought I'd just repeat that for the benefit of those of you who already heard about this but thought you had accidentally fallen into a Twilight Zone special in which Stalin and the pope team up to take over the world. Consider this a public service announcement; I assure you that you are still living in what is left of America, and this did actually happen.

In an interview on MSNBC Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) accused oil executives of having "the highest profits that we've seen in history for the oil companies", contriving to make that a derogatory remark by also calling the profits "inexplicable". Scarborough echoed this sentiment by also labeling the oil prices, and subsequent profits, as inexplicable. (In related news Salazar and Scarborough are currently winning the People's Republic of America Award for invoking the vague concept of 'The People' the most times in an interview. See if you can find a more atrocious example and you'll win the vague concept of 'A Prize'!).

This opinion on the cause of profits is in line with the recent bustle about imposing a windfall profit tax on the oil companies. A windfall profit is money which one wasn't expecting, with the connotation that it was due to luck, eg. inheritance. A windfall tax is one-time direct tax on unexpectedly large profits. You see, if the profit is unexpected, inexplicable, then it isn't wrong to steal it because the oil companies didn't earn it to begin with. *wink, wink*

I haven't been able to find a reporter, a political commentator, or even an oil executive who will say it. So, I'll say it; these companies are selling a product. That means that they expend effort and/or capital to create a value and then trade it. This particular value that they create is at an extremely high demand. That is how they justify their profit, because there are a lot of people who are willing to pay what they charge for oil. And the reason they are morally entitled to all the profits is because they get the crude oil (by buying or collecting it), they refine it into gasoline, They do research in how to make it better, and they ship it to easily accessible stations for purchase. If you think I sound like the little red hen, then fantastic! That hen had a fucking point.

Terry Pratchett

To anyone who happens to wander by; I highly recommend Terry Pratchett and most especially his novel Going Postal.


"Ordinary men had dreamed it up and put it together, [...] across the frozen spines of mountains. They'd cursed and, worse, used logarithms. They'd waded through rivers and dabbled in trigonometry. They hadn't dreamed, in the way people usually use the word, but they'd imagined a different world, and bent metal around it. And out of all that sweat and swearing and mathematics had come this ... thing, dropping words across the world as softly as starlight." ~Terry Pratchett

This Just In: Competent Professor Found!

I underestimated my classes this semester, and overestimated my willingness to do homework; so I ended up dropping out of my Calculus class which left me with only 11 credit hours. In order to keep my financial aid I need to maintain a least 12 hours; enter the 1 credit hour GS 175: Information Strategies.

While going over the syllabus my professor states that she wants to make this "more than just a one credit course". This is code for: I'm going to assign a lot more busy work than is necessary. Sharkey says that we are going to spend the entire course preparing for the final project, which is to create a 7-minute movie documentary about a chosen topic. What does making movie documentaries have to do with proper methods of gathering information? I don't know, she didn't care to explain.

Then came a miracle, the class was too large and had to be split; half the students (including myself) were assigned to a new professor. I have been to the edge of hell and returned to find a promised land!

My new professor, Alexius, says: "this is a one-credit course, let's treat it as such". What she is lecturing over, what we're working on, is actually about information strategies. It is even threatening to be useful! I just finished giving a presentation with my group on using Academic Search Elite, which is a article database hosted by Purdue University. I told the class about how you can use difference specifications to limit or expand your search results and Alexius added informative commentary on Boolean qualifiers; it was enlightening! While another group was presenting information on library catalogues they weren't sure what the Library of Congress is. Working in a library, I was able to explain what it is and how it's different that Dewey Decimal; and the other students were genuinely interested in knowing! It's like I've stumbled into this tiny little world inside the university and it's ... education!

We spent the rest of the period discussing what types of research would be personally useful to us; next week Alexius will assign a specific topic to each us of us based upon what will help us learn what we want to know. She then announced that it would only be necessary to meet once a week to do the work she's planned.

I'm floored. It's like I'm actually being educated, and I don't have to bend over backwards and take it up the ass to do so! It's sad that such a competent professor is so surprising.