Letters to the Editor
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LeCastor
Where did you get your law degree? In a box of of Kellog's corn flakes?
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George Frost
George Frost is an advisor to Hillary Clinton, which should have been noted in his bio.
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George Drinking Waaay Too Much Kool Aid
The headline says it all! George Frost, I think you need several months--maybe longer--in Detox!!!
Kate Madison
Depoe Bay, Oregon
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Of course he's consultant to Clinton
Remember that shell game piece scribbled by that Clinton con artist Sean Wilenz?
This is the sequel to that stupidity.
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@LeCastor I'll STF later
This whole tax credit concept is supposed to provide relief to real people stretched to the limit. If the price of gas stays the same or drifts higher, there will be no relief, no pyschological benefits.
And you must have missed the memo. We're all anti-elites now. In fact, I'm about to conclude a deal with Slyvester McMonkey McBean for exclusive use of his elite-off machine.
If I remember correctly only about half of all Americans own some type of stock through a variety of investment vehicles. And the distribution curve is pretty steep, meaning the top 15% own a huge percentage of the market. So the average blue collar joe or josephine is not getting dividends or cool equity appreciation off of this asset inflation bubble. I hope you are short the USD and long commodities!
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Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord Obama in vain, Joan
He probably doesn't care, but his acolytes are a pretty insane bunch of foaming crazies. I will call this article the official demarc past which Salon readers stopped pretending to latch on to sanity and reason or even demonstrate a grasp of facts. It is now just a snarling pile of partisans high on their own blood lust. But the sad thing, the really sad thing is that the day Obama wins his followers will become the craven pussies they always were. We'll read endless boring explanations why inaction, failure and inertia are good and strategic and not their fault.
This by the way is how you wind up with dictators, not by dictators directly but through weaklings who can't stand up to them, who appease and dawdle and stab each other for a place on the dais.
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Electro Robot
Go suck the titanium tit of one of Hillary's obliterating nukes, we thank you as always for another in a continuing series of your lame assed rebukes.
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manos99
You make my point for me, thank you. thank you. thank you.
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Wow
I thought today's Shapiro piece was empty and vacuous, but this one beats it all around. Would it be too much to suggest that if you're going to write about economic issues, you know something about it?
By the way, that's not being an "elite" so much as actually knowing wtf you're talking about. Which Frost obviously doesn't.
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Robo
As always -
It's on the house asshole.
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Dnedrow...
A smart cookie.
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It could work..
A band-aid works when a child has an ow-ie.
Let's just use band-aids as our entire economic policy.
Oh wait. I guess we're already doing that.
George Frost; Stupid or Evil?
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Gas tax holiday is a gimmick
Atrios does a good job explaining the Economics 101 reason why McHillary's gas tax holiday is a bad idea. See:
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_05_04_archive.html#7688244025544756344
If you want to do something to help consumers save $30 this summer, you'd do better by giving every American a $30 tax refund. At least then the oil companies wouldn't be getting a big chunk of the benefit.
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What a surprise!
Obama WRONG???
Quelle surprise!!!!
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This is getting really embarrassing.
Someone get David Talbot on the phone.
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They call him a winner of a spinner
His name is George Frost
He once was brillant consultant
To the candidate who lost.
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Should we be told who Mr. Frost is supporting?
According to the HuffPost's FundRace, a George Frost who is an attorney in Berkeley, California, has donated $400 to the campaign of Hillary Clinton and nothing to anybody else. Obviously, can't be 100% certain this is the same guy as our trusted author, but I'll take my chances on it. Not sure what the ethics book says, but the fact that Mr. Frost is a supporter of Sen. Clinton might be worth mentioning in his biography, especially in an article critical of Sen. Obama.
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Full Disclosure: George Frost has contributed to Clinton's campaign
He has contributed at least $250 to Clinton's campaign this year, according to my quick yet stellar research. I am not sure why I clicked on this article, but I definitely know why I am no longer paying for a Salon subscription. I'll just go back to reading Glenn Greenwald until he abandons this site. I am sorry for sounding rude, but this is one of the worst, unsubstantiated articles I have ever read (and no, this is not an attack on HRC--it's a comment about Frost's biased writing).
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Backers of Hillary's gas tax holiday should give it up
Basically, it is absurd to say that a summer-long price drop of this tiny magnitude will have any long-term effect at all.
This statement was offered as a defense against the argument that a gas tax holiday would stimulate demand. But it is an equally valid description of the financial benefits a tax holiday would offer- tiny.
A gas tax holiday is an offer to believe in the memory of cheap oil. Perhaps oil prices will drop significantly again, but perhaps not. The risk adverse, smart thing to do is bite the bullet and figure out how to reduce demand, not to engage in pandering activities that won't do much one way or another.
Obama did learn from Illinois' gas tax holiday. Sure, 60% of the tax cut may have made it to the pump price (quiz: where'd the other 40% go?), but 100% of the lost revenues either resulted in more debt, loss of services, or were funded by other taxes.
Consumption taxes may not be popular, and risk being regressive, but they are the most economically efficient taxes around.
Go, Obama.
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Political donations . . .
As two commentators have pointed out there are two donations on record totalling $650 for 1Q2008 (Jan. $400 and Feb $250).
I do smell a bit of a conflict of interest -- one that should have been disclosed at the absolute minimum. More stringent standards would say that the article probably shouldn't have been run.
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George Frost is an advisor to Clinton's campaign?
Someone pointed out: "George Frost is an advisor to Hillary Clinton, which should have been noted in his bio."
If this is true, why didn't Salon make this clear?
YOU SUCK, SALON!!!
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Unscientific Criticism
First, let's just note that the study referred to in the article does not even offer itself as a definitive proof. It is full of the word "suggests". It notes "mixed" data. It is only one study, and there is no offering by Mr. Frost that the study has been peer reviewed nor the effects reproduced. So the implication that this is accepted scientific fact is wrong.
Second, let's also note that there's no offering that Obama even knows of the study. So the implication that he is ignoring science is ridiculous. I love science. I studied science in college. But I don't know all of science. What I do know is that if I say something I think is true based on what I know and someone says I'm an idiot because there's a study showing the opposite, that is not a fair debate.
Third, let's notice that the author has not offered evidence that he brought the study to Obama's attention and asked for comment. Rather, he has merely asserted that Obama is wrong and offered an obscure report. That's shoddy journalism.
What we have here is someone who is rushing to debunk a candidate rather than a policy. What has the vague form of an article trying to say "hey, this guy is going to cost us money" actually is an article saying "I don't care if this article costs us a good candidate, as long as I stir up a bunch of readers into a furor for the sake of Salon getting some attention."
Let's just hope that if this article has the apparently intended effect of causing damage to Obama, someone does a one-time study of similar kind on the effect of shoddy journalism on the world, and "suggests" firing the journalist.
There is every evidence that Obama is willing to make hard decisions and stick to his guns while at the same time being willing to reflect on past decisions and admit to the possibility of mistakes. A unique combination we're not seeing in the other two candidates.
That very fact means he'd probably relish discussing this matter if it were brought up in a decent way as a topic for legitimate discussion rather than a trap to get someone the choice of (a) defending his opposition to something he didn't know he opposed or (b) defending his being a flip-flopper.
And, frankly, we need someone with the guts to stand up and say "maybe it's ok if things are more expensive sometimes because we shouldn't be doing them anyway". That wasn't a message he was saying this time, but it's what we need to elect a leader to do, because the problems of peak oil, climate change, and our economic plight really call for it.
If Obama is to fail to get elected, let it be over something real about which there has been a substantive and deliberative debate. This kind of nonsense is beneath Salon and makes me regret my recent decision to subscribe.