Kucinich's 100% Oil Profit Tax Idea Goes Unchallenged at CBS

A sample of my latest article available at MRC's BusinessandMedia.org. For the full article, click here.:

It’s not every day a politician calls for a 100-percent tax rate on national TV. Even the most liberal-friendly of journalists would be inclined to question such a punitive idea. But when former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich called for such a tax on the “windfall profits” of oil on the July 28 “Early Show,” CBS’s Hannah Storm didn’t even bat an eyelash.

Opening an interview segment with the liberal Rep. Kucinich (D-Ohio) and the libertarian Cato Institute’s Jerry Taylor on the so-called windfall profits tax, Storm asked Kucinich how such a tax would “translate to consumers and help the people who are paying at the pump.”

The former Cleveland mayor replied that “when you start imposing some discipline, a 100-percent tax on excess profits, then the oil companies aren't going to be making $1,300 a second like ExxonMobil is.”

Yes, he said 100 percent. Rather than pressing Kucinich on the 100 percent figure or how he expected it to lower the price of gasoline, Storm asked Taylor for his rebuttal.

Yet when Taylor finished explaining how the Congressional Research Service found that a similar tax in place in the 1980s actually raised prices, Storm pushed Taylor with a talking point that echoed Kucinich’s rhetoric.