Michael Kinsley: Well, Well

You don't have to hate oil companies to want an excess-profits tax.

By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, April 28, 2006, at 6:16 AM ET

In, I guess, the early 1990s, when I worked for CNN, I found myself one evening at a Washington reception, chatting with an oil-company executive and another from a defense contractor. The oil man said, "How's business?" How's business! Delighted and emboldened by the discovery that businessmen actually say this to one another, I arched a conspiratorial eyebrow and said, "Well, we could use another war."

The defense contractor said, "So could we."