Minnesota Free Market Institute

^{This article was originally published at Townhall.com. Comments welcome there.}

It has become popular for politicians to advocate going after oil companies for their seemingly outsized profits. Otherwise rational people turn red-faced with anger when they think about the tens of billions of dollars flowing into the coffers of “big oil.”

The most often talked about “solution” to—really punishment of—big oil’s big profits is the imposition of a “windfall profits” tax. Such a tax would set an arbitrary limit to what oil companies can make and then slap an extra tax on profits if they exceed that limit.

Now set aside the question of whether it makes sense for politicians to determine what profits companies should earn; a belief that politicians should be the arbiters of economic rewards seems to be a continually recurring idiocy that we will have to fight indefinitely.

Also set aside the fact that oil company profits are actually much more modest than the profits in other industries, including agriculture which has seen its profits recently skyrocket faster than oil companies have. Nobody is calling for confiscating farmers’ profits, which are bolstered substantially by agriculture subsidies and mandates that would make oil company executives blush if they we offered similar treatment.

Instead, let’s just examine the immediate and discernable results from the imposition of such a tax. What, exactly, would happen in the oil markets if Washington decided to impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies?

^{This commentary originally appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press Thursday, July 31, 2008. Comments welcome there}

Regular readers know I expend a lot of column inches railing against big government and unnecessary taxation. I don't see a virtue in being ranked in the top 10 highest-tax states, and I don't believe increasing taxes is going to get us a 'better Minnesota.' So when I say 'well done' to the Minnesota Department of Health, I probably have some explaining to do.

The media have been reporting about and praising the Minnesota Department of Health for its key role in unraveling the mystery cause of the salmonella outbreak that had baffled federal investigators for months. In less than two weeks after the first case in Minnesota, MDH investigators traced the source of the outbreak that sickened more than 1,200 people in 43 states and Canada to jalapeno peppers grown in Mexico, shipped through wholesalers in California and Texas.

A contributing reason for Minnesota's quick and accurate investigation is centralization of responsibility and authority to investigate epidemic outbreaks. In many states, county health departments take the lead and only report up to the state; here, the MDH is in charge of investigations from the first recognition of an outbreak.

Predictably, some progressives are latching onto the "Case of the Tainted Jalapenos" to justify high taxes and expanded government. If you're of the progressive ilk and hoping that my praise for the MDH signals I am about to recant my contrarian ways and "admit" the benefits of big government, you will be sorely disappointed.

^{This Column was originally published at Townhall.com Comments welcome there.}

Well, the secret is out. Conservatives' willingness to destroy Mother Earth in pursuit of financial gain now makes sense.

The missing fact that helps explain the seemingly inexplicable willingness of Conservatives to destroy the planet was revealed last week by former astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell. You may or may not remember Mitchell as the astronaut who holds the record for the longest moonwalk.

Dr. Mitchell has broken a long-standing wall of silence and revealed that our government-and governments around the world-have been in secret contact with alien beings from another planet. Mitchell revealed the aliens to be "little people who look strange to us."

Mitchell still refuses to put a name to cigarette-smoking man and other top government officials in on the conspiracy, but details are sure to follow. We can surely know that they are a cabal of neoconservatives.

The details don't matter as much as this one fact: we now know why conservatives have felt free to destroy the Earth. They have negotiated passage to a new, better, and cleaner world elsewhere in the Universe!

Those little grey men with the big eyes and short, lithe bodies probably drove a hard bargain for passage to a new world. Who knows how many DVD players and Plasma TVs it took to entice them to open up their world to human settlement? It may even be that conservatives' insistence on opening up ANWR and the continental shelf to oil drilling is part of their plan to pay off the aliens

How else to explain conservatives'' propensity to doubt the wild claims of environmentalists about the imminent destruction of the planet? Conservatives first ignored Rachel Carson and her warnings about the coming "Silent Spring" that would follow from capitalism's raping of Mother Earth. Now conservatives are casting doubt on the claims that the Earth's climate is ultimately driven by mankind's reckless burning of fossil fuels.