Letters to the Editor
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Ouch!
"The McCain gas tax plan is a giveaway to oil companies, disguised as a gift to consumers"
and Hilldog is just a copycat!
That's just insult to injury.
I wonder how much research her team did before announcing, me too, me too.
I read in a different post that the Tax break comes out to a little over $23 per person.
Wopee, now I can get my kid some braces.
Obama might win in November after all.
P.S. I doubled my tax break and gave it to Obama.
The teeth will have to wait.
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Pandering At Its Re-Finest
Disclaimer: I posted a version of this over at Huffpost first and seeing as I don't want to write it out again...
In 2005 the ANNUAL amount of fuel consumed by passenger vehicles was 541 gallons. Factor in everything else (trucks, etc.) and it rises to 743 gallons. That's annually. So in the best scenario, under Hillary's pandering plan, the average family would save a whopping $100 a year. Maybe more. Maybe less. But that's for the whole year. Hillary is proposing suspending the gas tax only for the summer. I'm no economist but I do know the seasons and summer only makes up one quarter of the year. So wow, best case scenario is that people save $25-$35. And as all these leading economists are pointing out here, it's pure hokum that that will even happen. At best one said, people would save 9 cents on a gallon. Or a whole $12.50. What a true friend of the blue collar workers Hillary turns out to be. They can MAYBE buy 3 or 4 shots of whiskey under Hillary's spectacular plan.
At any rate, it's likely this won't ever happen so maybe they'll just drink to forget that a gallon of gas dropping from $4 to, say, $3.91, doesn't really do much at all. But hey, pander away, Hillary. And of course, John. Never you mind that the plan has been called "pointless" and "a cheap political gimmick," by respectfully, Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, who, while admittedly an Obama supporter, seems to agree with every other leading economist that it is just that, a cheap gimmick.
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Everyone Knows it's Stupid...
except for the two big panderers in the race. Even Bush knows it's stupid.
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Senator Clinton loses points from me on this issue
For the reasons given in the article, which seem rather obvious, the "holiday" is a bad idea. Senator Clinton is in the wrong on this one. If she actually pushes for this in Congress, even with the offsetting tax, then it's even worse. I doubt President Bush would sign a bill with the offsetting tax in it so it would probably either be passed without the tax or not at all anyway.
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Come On Alex
No one wants to read about actual economics here. Let's get to the real issues. So, can we please get back to Obama's former minister and flag pins, please?
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There's a better way to reduce gasoline prices
Rationing.
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Clinton Knows it’s Bad Policy …
Clinton is a smart woman. She knows this is bad policy. She just doesn’t care. She’s done the political calculus and figures this proposal will get her X number of votes and that’s what matters in the end.
It’s just like her vote on Iraq. She’s not stupid; she wasn’t fooled by the rhetoric. She knew Bush had nothing, but she calculated that she needed to look ‘tough’ and to hell with principle.
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holiday??
Isn't the answer not a tax holiday, but MORE taxes?? 18 cents per gallon seems obscenely low to me (and I'm guessing the oil companies just love that it's a flat fee and not a percentage).
I'm being a little short sighted I know...at this point there's precious little you can do - raising taxes would just mean they companies will raise the prices accordingly. They've ascertained that the public WILL pay $4/gallon. Had they raised taxes at the pump earlier, then the oil companies would've been forced to keep the oil prices within a range that people would find agreeable.
btw - I saw today in the elevator news that Royal Dutch Shell made $9 billion (that's BILLION) last quarter.
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Haven't seen this mentioned yet ...
But what happens at the end of the summer? Gas prices are going to suddenly jump up 18 cents when the tax gets re-applied? Imagine what'll lead the newscasts THAT evening.
Oh, there will be a collective amnesia, of course, and calls to make the "holiday" permanent. Those who oppose this, who insist on adhering to the schedule of this deal now under consideration, will be demonized as "voting to raise your taxes."
Collectively, Americans are stupid, greedy, selectively forgetful, and easily distracted by colorful lights and happy buzzwords. A "Gas Tax Holiday" is, hands-down, the absolute apotheosis of the borrow-now-pay-never mentality that's gotten us into most of the troubles we're in today.
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Sad, but Hillary is just exploiting people's ignorance
No disrespect, but honestly regular people do not understand the economic arguments of this idea. They only understand that their gas prices would go down so they'll hop on board.
Hillary knows this is a failed policy. Her windfall profit tax is also a failed policy. She is clearly doing this political pandering just to get votes. It's obvious to anyone that is somewhat educated on the issues.
The problem with this is that in an election year, you can't really give people the brutal truth of why gas prices are they way they are and their future. Simply put, we are reaping what we have sown. Americans need to get their wallets slapped and to make it hurt to realize that our energy policy is totally unreliable and not sufficient for our economy. Enough of this whining, crying and bitching about how you can't pay for gas anymore. Everyone is in the same situation.
What needs to happen is people need to get up and demand people actually look for long-term solutions to our reliance on oil for transportation. It is so clear to anyone that looks at the situation to see that our entire economy is reliant on the most volatile region in the world. Forget solar and wind energy, that doesn't power cars, trains, ships and planes. OIL does. We really need to work towards real solutions to our transportation energy issues and throughout this campaign no one seems to want to take it head on. Instead we get political pandering crap like this from McCain and Clinton and to be fair, little of nothing from Obama.
Perhaps it's not politically viable to tell voters that these high gas prices are going to be around for awhile and until we get a leader that implements a long-term plan, which means you won't see relief anytime soon, nothing is going to change no matter how much crying you do about it. However, voters need to wake up and realize this and soon or there will be bigger problems than not being able to afford to go on vacation this year.