Castro, Chavez, and Goldberg?

Floating around the internet is this bit of intellectual fluff from Jonah Goldberg defending Palin against the charge that her "tax the wealthy oil companies" program in Alaska is more socialist than Obama's "repeal the tax cut on the top income bracket" plan (ed: We are all socialists now!):

In Alaska, the people own the oil as opposed to in Ohio where the people don't own Joe the Plumber. That's the system that Sarah Palin inherited. It's also the system that produced a lot of political corruption, which is the logical result of the sort of corporatist policies favored by Barack Obama. Sarah Palin did much to clean up that corruption. Obama never dreamed of doing anything comparable in even more corrupt Chicago. The tax increase on oil companies in Alaska may or may not have been well-advised (my in-laws have very strong feelings on the matter). But as a philosophical matter comparing Barck Obama's argument that we should soak succssful [sic]small businessmen to spread the wealth is really not comparable to the steward of a resource owned by the citizens of Alaska in effect renegotiating the deal to more favorable terms for the owners.

Apparently, Goldberg believes that the people own the national resources in America. While this is news to you, me, and everyone but the ISO, it would seem to suggest that allowing oil companies to make billions in profits exploiting our natural resources while providing crappy jobs and polluting the environment is the ultimate form of wealth redistribution. I mean, wouldn't a smart government be renegotiating these "deals" until oil company profits were so low, that Exxon decided it just wasn't worth it? (Understanding that, for now, neoliberalist ideology runs so deep that the notion that the government could exploit those resources in the name of the people just as efficiently and cheaper is a non-starter. Now that's Socialism with a capital 'S'!). Every dollar they keep is a dollar the people lose, no? It's our oil, they're our dollars.