Politics as usual....

Flashback to last week. I had just gotten back from classes and decided to flip through the channels for a bit before starting on some humanities reading. After a few minutes, I stumbled onto the Senate Finance Committee's meeting on C-SPAN. They happened to be discussing whether or not the government should subsidize oil exploration. It probably would have been best if I hadn't seen this particular discussion because it was frustrating as all hell. For once, those on the Left were actually against subsidizing an industry. However, it was the Right that was pulling for the subsidies. How can a conservative, a person who is supposedly fighting for laissez-faire capitalism, say that they want to use the taxpayers' money to finance a highly profitable industry's oil exploration? Easy.... politics. Obviously those in favor of subsidizing exploration are getting campaign money or some form of kickbacks.

I'm sorry, but when a company is making record profits (in the billions) they do not need the government to stuff more money in their coffers. If finding more oil is in the companies best interest, and these days it most certainly is, then they will be more than willing to finance their own exploration. If the Right wants to save face, they need to show that they believe in the power of private enterprise by abandoning this ridiculous idea that highly profitable multi-billion dollar oil compainies can't finance their own exploration operations. It's a sad excuse for getting campaign money, and you look like idiots in the process.