Politics: Imagine an America where the government decides what profits are acceptable. Imagine our country with the oil industry nationalized. Impossible? Not with Democrats in control of Washington.

One California Democrat, saying out loud what many on her side of the aisle have been thinking for some time, has threatened to seize the oil industry.

"This liberal will be all about socializing, uh, uh . . . would be about . . . basically taking over and the government running all of your companies," Rep. Maxine Waters told oil executives on May 22 during yet another show-trial congressional hearing.

Socializing, nationalizing — the term doesn't matter. But the result is the same. Oil industry takeovers are disastrous. Does Waters really want the U.S. to go the way of Venezuela, Iran, Bolivia or Mexico? Those nations that have nationalized their domestic oil operations and have suffered economically because of it.

And as wretched as their situations are now, their economic prospects are even poorer as long as their corrupt governments continue to control their oil industries.

Meanwhile, Waters' colleague from Pennsylvania's 11th district, Rep. Paul Kanjorski, is proposing a federal "Reasonable Profits Board." Its members would be charged with determining when oil and gas companies' "profits are in excess."

Forget that it's impossible to objectively define what's "excessive." When the energy companies' profits increase, so will their federal taxes.

Like many in his party — including Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has threatened to seize oil company profits for her political projects — Kanjorski believes the laws of economics are malleable to someone as smart as he. He's apparently deluded himself into thinking the mere threat of taxing oil companies' windfall profits will encourage them to keep their prices low.

In actual practice, though, the opposite happens. If the energy industry were relieved by Washington of its "excessive" profits, its incentive and means to explore for new sources of energy and develop them would vanish. The only response the market could have is to raise prices to forestall shortages as the supply is drained.

Skeptics who want to check the data need to search no further than the eight-year 1980s run of the energy industry windfall profit tax. During that time, domestic oil output fell to its lowest level in two decades. With domestic companies unable to extract more crude, the country's dependence on foreign sources rose by 8% to 16%, according to the Congressional Research Service.

It's possible Kanjorski knows better but is simply grandstanding for the voters back home. Remember, this is the lawmaker who admitted that "We, the Democrats . . . didn't say it, but we implied that if we won the congressional elections, we could stop the war. Now anybody who's a good student of government knows that wasn't true. But, you know, in the temptation to win back the Congress, we sort of stretched the facts."

It matters not, though, if Kanjorski is driven by ignorance or political opportunism. The outcome would be the same.

Kanjorski's plan sounds like an East German nightmare and Waters' as if it were taken from a fascist manifesto. But they're only a small taste of what we'll get if the Democrats keep both chambers of Congress and win the White House this fall.

By this time next year it will seem that Sen. Barack Obama's proposal to bully American businesses — through what's cynically called the Patriot Corporation Act — is the least harmful of all the economy- and spirit-crushing legislation being rammed through Washington.

IBD