Opinion Forum

We need a Reasonable Everything Board (REB)

January 20th, 2012

Six reasonable Democrats in the House (please excuse the redundancy) want a Reasonable Profits Board (RPB) to impose additional taxes on sellers of oil and gas.

Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a “Reasonable Profits Board” to control gas profits.

The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a “windfall profit tax” as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit.

The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 percent to 100 percent on all surplus earnings exceeding “a reasonable profit.” It would set up a Reasonable Profits Board made up of three presidential nominees that will serve three-year terms. Unlike other bills setting up advisory boards, the Reasonable Profits Board would not be made up of any nominees from Congress.

This is an excellent idea whose time has come and which will be far more effective than price controls, so successful in delightful and prosperous Venezuela. Unfortunately, it is only one small step and does not go far enough.

“Reasonable” is universally good, just as “unreasonable” is universally bad. That’s why we need instead a Reasonable Everything Board (REB). Unreasonable (i.e., all) opposition to our beloved ~~savior~~ President Obama and therefore to his policies is bad, unreasonable, irreligious, racist and must therefore be eliminated. Reasonable (i.e., all) support for him is good, reasonable, religious, post-racial, necessary for our national survival and must therefore become obligatory. No statutory guidance is needed to define “reasonable” because all reasonable people know what it means and President Obama, as has been his consistent practice, will appoint only reasonable members to the REB.

The REB will decide which ideas, policies, statements, groups, blogs, other news and entertainment sources, opinions, political organizations, religions, foods, sexual practices, financial practices, pets, clothing, jewelry, nations, household expenditures and everything else are reasonable (good) and which are unreasonable (bad). These decisions will not be reviewable by any court because courts can be unreasonable. It will enforce its decisions by reasonable taxes of between fifty and one hundred percent or more as the REB see fit, also not reviewable by any court. This is necessary because the Federal Government, fettered by unreasonable voters and the unreasonable opposition members they sent, unreasonably, to Congress has been thwarted in its reasonable attempts make life in the world at large and even in the United States reasonable; it’s a hard job and therefore only the Federal Government can do it to for us.

As with the proposed but minuscule RPB, the far bigger and more powerful — as befits our great and powerful nation — REB will have complete latitude (as well as longitude) to decide what is “reasonable” without statutory guidance from an obstructionist and therefore unreasonable Congress. This is necessary in order to achieve its unquestionably reasonable goals. It will, of course, create and save money as well as jobs by consolidating countless federal agencies and departments including the EPA, SEC, FDA, FCC, DOD, DOT and many others. Determining which agencies will be consolidated, and therefore the resultant financial savings and jobs created or saved, will be within the province of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (PCEA) and it is therefore premature to speculate about the tremendous savings and creations certain to result.

This proposal will be opposed, unreasonably, but we must fight all the way for it.

(This article was first published at The PJ Tatler.)

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: board, Democrats, gas, oil, profits, reasonable, REB, RPB, satire, taxes
Categories: Humor, News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

One Response to “We need a Reasonable Everything Board (REB)”

Tom Carter | January 21st, 2012 at 12:49 am

I couldn’t believe the stupidity of this idea when I first read about it, but once you look at the politicians pushing it, it’s more understandable. Pure, raw politics. The oil industry has a lower profit margin on sales of gas than many other businesses have on the sales of other products, but oil companies are a great whipping post for leftist ideologues whose ideas are driven by ignorance. Thankfully, the House majority will never go along with it.

By the way, I volunteer to serve as chairman the REB committee on women’s undergarment design. That’s the kind of hands-on job that could do a lot of good!