Our politicians are showing they know less about economics than kids who run a lemonade stand.

If you tell the kids you are going to tax them for every pitcher of lemonade they make, a lot of them will quit the business. If you tell the remaining kids you will start raising those taxes on the lemonade they make, they will quit too.

This common sense ain’t so common around Washington. The tax-lovers in Congress are kicking around various tax ideas. For this term and for the next term.

For instance, some want to tax oil producers. For producing oil. They already do tax them, of course. But now they want to raise those taxes. For oil they produce in this country.

They also want to slap a new tax on the oil and gas that companies produce from deep-water leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

Duhhhh. Double duhhhh.

Don’t we want more oil? More oil and gas produced here? So that we won’t need to import so much of the stuff? So that we will not be so easy to hold to ransom by Hugo Chavez & Co.?

Evidently these politicians do not want our companies to find and produce more oil and gas. If they did they would lower taxes on producers. To encourage them to find more.

Instead, they want to raise the taxes. Economics 101: The more you tax some activity, the less you get of it. Politics 101: Forget anything you ever learned about how markets work.

Maybe they think if they hurt the oil supply our country will convert to solar, wind and Prius hybrids. And by these moves we will dramatically reduce our use of oil.

For that we can give them our annual Head In The Sand Award. These technologies will only scrape the surface of energy use here for decades to come.

Some politicians want to raise taxes on the money foreign companies invest here.

Triple duhhhh.