But I have to wonder.  If the government is entitled to steal oil company profits just because they're successful, then why stop there?

Why not confiscate a portion of Google's fat annual profits–the company's 2006 earnings were some $3 billion on revenue of $10.6 billion–and use it for some relevant national goal? The search-engine company is, after all, profiting from technological infrastructure it didn't even build, an "information superhighway" (to use a quaint term) that came out of a government defense project. It's time to pay Uncle Sam back. When Sen. Barack Obama officially announced his own presidential bid last weekend, he called for a new Internet initiative. "Let's lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities and rural towns all across America," Obama said.

So there you go. A portion of Google's profits, as well as those perhaps from Amazon, Yahoo!, and eBay could be funneled into a government-managed fund to pay for laying down fatter pipe. Heck, it's too bad that some candidate missed an opportunity back in 2004 to advocate the confiscation of home builders' profits to help low-income renters buy their own McMansions. Of course, profits at Lennar, Centex, and Toll Brothers aren't what they used to be, thanks to the housing bust. And if oil prices drop, neither will those at ExxonMobil or Chevron. And if the economy sinks, Google's bottom line won't look so healthy, either.

The reality of course is that if Doyle were to somehow create a law which would tax oil companies without passing it on to consumers (which is dubious at best), then the result would only be less oil because there is less incentive to sell it, which will drive up the price even more as supplies fall... just like when Carter did it in 1980:

Look at what happened when oil companies were hit with the windfall profit tax that President Carter signed into law in 1980. According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, as recently unearthed by the Tax Foundation, the windfall profits tax–a real bear to administer–had two nasty side effects: 1) It didn't raise as much money as forecast. Instead of raising $320 billion between 1980 and 1989, it raised only about $40 billion; 2) the CRS determined that the windfall profits tax had the effect of decreasing domestic production by 3 to 6 percent.

Not that a good logical argument has ever deterred the government from creating a new tax.  Read the whole thing, and then weep at what our government is trying to do to us.

Seriously... Sealand anyone?