Exxon Mobile is having a tough week, with its stock slipping from a high of $84 per share to near a yearly low of $79 per share today. As one of the most widely held companies in America, the 20% drop this year is bad news for many pension funds, retirement accounts, insurance companies and mutual funds. The investment community expects Exxon to be more profitable. When it does not reach profit goals, the life savings of millions of average American are reduced.

So what better time for Sen. Obama to announce a new tax on Oil companies to fund a rebate scheme sending $1000 to a select group of Americans. Sen. Obama didn’t say who gets the checks, but he did say that the Oil Companies would pay with new taxes.

A basic concept of a corporation is that ownership is by the shareholders. The shareholders of public oil companies represent a broad group of investors who have placed their trust that oil companies will provide them with adequate returns on investment.

As Senator Obama puts it “While Oil Companies and shareholders need incentives to run well managed businesses that invest in efficiency and innovation, a significant share of the record profits the big oil companies have been making have nothing to do with their management skill….Obama simply asks that big oil companies contribute a reasonable share of the windfall profits they receive from high oil prices over the next five years to pay for emergency assistance to families”

The notion tossed out by Sen. Obama by that there is some faceless glob of a corporation out there that is eating all your money is childish. Corporations are owned by huge number of shareholders, all of whom lose when Sen. Obama decides to tax them to fund his wealth redistribution plans. Profits from a business either go to the shareholders, or back into the business. There is no other place to put profits, contrary to Sen. Obama’s superstitious view of capitalism.

Taxing American savers to fund American spenders strikes me a as mindless left-wing tactic. So much for the media myth that Sen. Obama is “tacking to the center”