Dennis Kucinich and 5 other Congressmen are again pushing for a windfall profits tax with teeth. Or maybe it’s just a convenient way to extort campaign contributions from the oil-and-gas industry. Either way, they have recently sponsored a bill to Congress called the “Gas Price Spike Act of 2012”. It is the old theme that politicians know the correct prices, how much profit a company should earn, what kind of cars that people should drive, and how we should get to work and the grocery store. The right price, however, cannot be known by any politician.

Many major websites were blacked out on Wednesday in protest of SOPA and PIPA, the internet regulations being discussed in Washington. They brought some much-needed light to the workings of Congress, which is good, but in the grand scheme of things, those acts are just a tiny tip of the iceberg. It is amazing and a bit disconcerting to realize how many people trust the government of the United States to do what is right and good and in the best interests of all people.

Picture the Serengeti plains, with a gazelle grazing nervously. Picture also a cheetah carefully stalking, planning its next meal. Suddenly it springs to action and the gazelle takes off running. If he catches the gazelle, the cheetah is satisfied and builds energy for another chase. If he misses, the gazelle gets to live for another day. The gazelle’s win is the cheetah's loss, and vice versa, the law of the jungle.

I recently saw a picture designed to shock the sensibilities of any American with more than meager subsistence. It was a composite photograph with starving, emaciated children from a nameless African nation on one side. On the other side were shoppers with their carts overflowing with toys and frivolities. The piercing comment was “Define necessity.” The image makes for an emotional capture of the viewer, and it is good to recognize that there really are starving people in the world, but the implication is that the people on the right are the cause of situation on the left.

The American economy has been in the doldrums for several years, as have those of dozens of other countries throughout the world. The overriding assumption has been that the government must do something about it. From the beginning of the economic tempest, politicians have been playing fast and loose with other people’s money, trying to convince taxpayers that, if one stimulus package fails, it’s just because it wasn’t big enough or stimulated the wrong parties. The next one will be just right. The unpalatable reality is that politicians and their economist buddies don’t have the answers.

President Obama’s speech in Kansas has been the focus of this column for several weeks, not because it was especially poignant or presented anything groundbreaking, but rather because it conveniently represented so many of aspects of his faulty and incoherent worldview that it invited more commentary than could be afforded in a single short article. The President gave homage to Teddy Roosevelt, the first progressive president, a man who Mr. Obama said was determined to perfect America.

The President, in his Kansas speech, railed against those who promote “our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government,” saying “I’m here to say they are wrong.” He stressed that “We are greater together than we are on our own.” Those words are true, but in a different sense than he was trying to imply. His idea was that self-interest, rugged individualism and a healthy skepticism of government are bad.