Letters to the Editor
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Welcome back Obamabots!
Axelrod must have been very anxious about the upcoming primary to let you go off shift for a few hours. It's almost a relief to see you back accusing Salon of being biased without even bothering to read the article. It restores a sense of normalcy. There were a couple of Obama puff pieces while you were gone, but I suppose that praising Salon for printing those would have distracted you from your GOTV effort. You might want to take a few hours off from attacking Walsh and Salon, though. Axelrod will need his army in the trenches tomorrow if Obama has any chance of not losing Indiana. Nitey Nite.
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that has been obama's default position this whole campaign
when in doubt or when he starts sinking in the polls, attack hillary.
oh sure, it's not about bill clinton anymore or them being "racist" but he has stayed true to form.
he has no ideas of his own so he just attacks others.
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@sonofloud
I agree. Barack Hussain Obama is a seething, bloodlusting caultron of rage. The white hot rage of a thousand suns. We must stop this violent sociopath before he starts a killing spree or something. Angry, bad man!
Hillary '08!!
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Hi
Pity 230 of the nation's leading economists disagree with Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and George Forst. Who exactly is George Forst and what qualifies him to spout his nonsense on Salon? Nothing? Then please stop perpetuating this nonsense.
Eliminating the gas tax certainly did not help in IL.
1. It saves consumers pennies a day.
2. It doesn't even save them that unless the gas companies magnanimously pass it on to consumers, which they didn't do in IL and have no reason or incentive to now.
3. It encourages consumption of fuel precisely when we need to be conserving it, both for environmental and economic reasons.
4. It depletes the fund needed to maintain our infrastructure precisely when we need it the most -- remember the bridge?!?
5. It flies directly in the face of our energy policy / global warming policy.
Please don't insult our intelligence, George. Salon's readers aren't the "low information" voters Hillary is seeking. Stop lying to us.
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Spiritguide - What a load of crap
"The price of gas is determined by supply and demand, those who bid on commodity futures due to world events, and the current value of the dollar." Sure it is. Just like Enron didn't screw with natural gas prices.
The laws of supply and demand only work in a free economy, and our economy is anything but a free economy. I expect you live in a big city. Because if you don't, how will you absorb fuel costsd like you propose?
5 or 6 dollar a gallon gas doesn't seem like a problem to you? Wait until you see you food prices, or maybe you won't see any food at all. How long do you think farmers can continue to grow YOUR food at the price of fuel. How long do you think truckers will continue to transport YOUR food at these fuel prices.
We need a short term solution so that a long term solution can have time to take effect.
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This doesn't help.....
If we are just going to cater to ignorance and low information voters then we will fix none of the problems we have. If that is elitist so be it. Math is a stubborn thing after all, and the "facts" in this article are poorly presented at best. As an earlier poster noted the federal scheme being kicked around now and the bill passed in Illinois are completely different. The Illinois measure was a percentage of the price and, like sales tax, levied at the pump. So the burden was mainly on consumer. Where as the federal tax is a flat tax that is levied during production. So the oil company pays half the tax and passes the other half onto the consumer. I won't try to get into inelastic supply curves or anything, but I do find it ironic that the same candidate and her supporters who trumpeted the praise of economists for her health care plan now dismisses those same experts as elitist because they say her gas tax holiday is foolish.
But by all means if winning is the goal. Appeal to the highly coveted low information individual out there. These are the same lies we are always told and we will reap the same results.
The hard truth is we need to change our gas consuming habits. The very notion of the gas holiday retards that. What we have here is an example of one politician trying to be honest and level with us about what our problems are and offering a more economically sound solution (though possibly painful), and one who is willing to say what ever is necessary to win regardless of what the facts maybe.
We have already had one president who casually ignored facts. I don't know if we can handle another.
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Burn, Hillary, burn
Tell you what: why don't y'all pool your resources, buy ten or so gallons of gas, tie Hillary Clinton to a stake somewhere in Denver, and burn her alive (with a trial first, of course, to prove once and for all she's a witch)? This could not only be a great fundraiser for the Democrats, it would solve the primary deadlock, and be a source of deep pleasure for many in the blogosphere. Count on Axelrod to bring the hot dogs and matches.
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more HRC-boosting silliness
I don't care who wins between Clinton and Obama, as I think they both leave a lot to be desired. Nevertheless, this is one of your more ridiculous articles-- wouldn't an economist's take on the gas tax proposal have made more sense than a lawyer's?
Oh, that's right-- economists are virtually universal in regarding the gas tax holiday as a horrible idea!
One additional thing Frost doesn't address is the opening the barn door effect-- will Republicans start demanding that all sorts of necessary taxes be suspended as a consequence of Hillary's legitimizing of McCain's position, accelerating our government's spiraling descent towards insolvency?
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I'll tell ya what's taxing..
..that gasbag Clinton!
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mmmm that's good McCain balls
People talk about a various organ of media's bias in favor of one or the other candidate, but everyone forgets the Media's bias in favor of their one true God™, dollars and the corporate paymasters who give them out! The Right Wing Machine has snapped its loving steel arms and jaws around McCain, completely closing ranks. In the relative quiet, the media realizes nobody is saying how bad the Democrats are and feels remiss. So to fill in the gaps they find ways to line up and tell us all how revolted we are, even if the polls indicate clearly we are not.
Coverage about how this is tearing the party apart and how it advantages McCain is surely becoming the rule, not the exception. Who gives three ounces of precious precious petrol about the thrice damned gas taxes and windfall profits except wonky wonkerton and his wonkettes? (not wonkette™ one presumes)
The only thing, only only if only thing is, I really wish we'd be able to make clear to the media how quickly we plan to "form up" once the nomination process is over. The supposed anti-McCain right wing is delighted to turtle around the man from Arizona just to tweak us on the left. Not only that, they have no reason to believe we'll do the same, because our attitudes make it believably that we're happy to get rolled every time by God's Little Fascists! They foment this shit because we're stupid enough to keep eating it and calling it ice cream!