Any other country at any other time, and there’d be nothing complex about this:
Democrat Barack Obama took a hit yesterday when rival Hillary Rodham Clinton put up an Indiana TV ad highlighting his opposition to a summer-long suspension of the gas tax. Today he fought back with an ad that says the suspension would save consumers maybe $25 and wouldn’t bring down prices…
I’m here to tell you the truth. We could suspend the gas tax for 6 months, but that’s not going to bring down gas prices long-term. You’re gonna save about 25, 30 dollars…or half a tank of gas. That’s typical of how Washington works. There’s a problem, everybody’s upset about gas prices – let’s find some short-term, quick-fix, that we can say we did something even though, even though we’re not really doing anything.
Democratic support of the gas tax repeal is kind of typical: “We scoffed at Bush in 2000 for offering everyone ‘only’ a $300 refund, but we’re willing to smear each other over $30.” Democrats: Like Republicans, but 1/10th.
And of course, we wouldn’t even get that $30; the Tax Policy Center says prices would rebound almost “immediately.”
“Unless the goal is to temporarily boost profits for petroleum refineries and foreign producers, the proposal makes no sense,” says Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center.
And at least Hillary wants to replace the money with taxes on the oil companies, as unlikely as that notion is. McCain, as far as I know, offers no such compensation. Either way, as Matthew Yglesias notes, this kind of “[policy] gimmickry” is harmful to America:
But when national leaders act as if they believe current fuel costs are a passing phenomenon to be weathered with short-term measures, then at least some voters are going to believe them and make bad personal and political decisions that we can ill afford. A lot of electoral gambits are nonsense without being actually harmful, but McCain and Clinton are making problems worse just with their rhetoric.
(Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to see, say, truck drivers offered a repeal and consumers offered a boost in gas tax, but the average voter who doesn’t drive for a living would have to be crazy to make a gas tax suspension some sort of make-it-or-break-it issue.
The average American voter.
Would have to be…crazy.
Ah, shit.)
27 Responses to “Obama tells complex truth in TV ad. HUGE mistake”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
“…The average American voter.
Would have to be…crazy…”
…and of course, that’s the problem. Not that the average American voter is clinically crazy, but when it come to these kinds of decisions they are often functionally crazy.
Deciding on a vote and the consequences of that vote are so disconnected from each other you can drive a truck through the gap. And that’s exactly what the Reichwing has done for the last 40-years, by taking advantage of the difference between what a politician has to say to get/stay in office, and what actually needs to be done.
We’ve been trying to have our cake and eat it too for so long we don’t know any other way to live.
But woe to the person who tries to treat people as adults and tell the truth. The punishment for that is neverending…
God I hate this country sometimes…
Why should truck drivers get a break? Their industry is subsidized by the government-provided highway infrastructure in place. Plus, trucks wear out roads more than an individual’s car.
Why should truck drivers get a break?
Because they’re usually independent contractors who only get paid X amount per mile by the company they contracted with, and they have to make up the rest out of their own pocket if prices go up.
Better to add a tax to the end users that receive the trucked goods than to penalize the guys at the bottom of the ladder who have no recourse.
I guess truckers yesterday or the day before staged a “protest” outside of the white house. In order to show their displeasure at high gas prices, they staged a convoy that would go by the white house.
Nothing says “gas prices are too high” like wasting a bunch of gas.
My thought when I first saw this McCain proposal was, “How stupid does he think we are?” Does he really think that people out here in California will be excited to go back to paying a mere $3.80 a gallon instead of $4.00 a gallon?
What Mnemosyne said. Their industry is subsidized, but just like Average Driver won’t see much return on subsidies to the oil industry, Average Trucker doesn’t see much return on subsidies to the trucking industry.
By the way, I’m not in favor of blindly accepting gasoline-based trucking as our main source of transportation of goods for the next 100 years, but I’m also not in favor of a bottom-up method of getting away from it.
We need more money for highway structures, not less. $0.18/gal is not a dint even when gas costs 20+ times that.
We need to raise, not lower the tax on gas while leaving that on deisel alone or raising it in a staggered fashion.
Word. I work with civil engineers. They’re all groaning & rolling their eyes at the idea of losing even more money to maintain the nation’s infrastructure.
Wouldn’t temporarily eliminating gas taxes just encourage people not to conserve gas, thus increasaing demand, thus increasing the price?
Some Americans are not so stupid as to fall for the gas tax vacation. A CNN poll showed only 1% supported McCain’s plan, 14% supported Clinton’s idea of making oil company’s pay the taxes, and 85% agreed with Obama.
And yet the story on all of the cable talking head shows is going to be, “Obama campaign makes another costly mistake! Americans don’t like politicians who don’t pander! John McCain is the most manliest manly man who ever lived for proposing to save people in the Heartland 20 cents a gallon on gas!”
Mnemosyne:
The disconect between what the American people actually want and what the media tells us we want is truely striking.
This is going to be a fascinating election, because there’s a huge gap between what the media tells us and what people are actually experiencing, and most people can’t keep that kind of cognitive dissonance going for very long.
When 81 percent of the country says we’re “on the wrong track,” the media is going to have a very hard time convincing us that the trivia they’re obsessed with should have any influence on the election.
Our national elections have become an on-going poll answering the question: what percentage of American voters are gullible enough to believe to keep swallowing the MSM’s Beltway BS?
Here, doggie, doggie … gotta nice biscuit for you — made of pure chocolate!
Commercial trucks use diesel fuel, not gasoline, and the federal excise tax on diesel is 24.4¢ per gallon, not the 18.4¢ per gallon that gasoline is taxed. In addition, many states have higher excise taxes on diesel than gasoline.
Two other things have raised the price of diesel fuel well above that of gasoline. When hurricane Katrina devastated refineries along the gulf coast, the remaining (and rebuilding) refineries concentrated on gasoline rather than diesel, because we burn twce as much gasoline in this country; that increased diesel scarcity.
Second, the federal government toughened pollution standards for diesel, requiring an “ultra-low” sulphur content, plus a lower sulphur content for off-road equipment; where I used to maintain two diesel tanks (a heating oil and plant equipment tank and an over-the-road fuel tank), now I need three, as I have three grades of diesel.
On top of the three different sulphur contents, each grade of diesel must be dyed a different color, so that a law enforcement officer can see what grade of diesel a trucker is using just by looking in the tank. That adds costs as well.
In the end, all of the diesel fuel taxes are paid by the end consumer: if the truckers cannot pass it along in the freight charges, they go out of business. When you buy a gallon of milk, you are paying someone’s diesel fuel taxes — along with a whole host of other taxes!
“When you buy a gallon of milk, you are paying someone’s diesel fuel taxes — along with a whole host of other taxes!”
OMG! You mean I had to pay for the infrastructure (the road, etc.) the trucker used to get my gallon of milk to the grocery store where I bought it? THAT’S SO UNFAIR!!!
…or not. The roads did not spring forth from the head of Zeus, they were commissioned and paid for by the government - which has to get the money from somewhere.
Dana, this is basic civics. Do you really think it should work some other way?…
“When you buy a gallon of milk, you are paying someone’s diesel fuel taxes — along with a whole host of other taxes!”
So essentially you’re saying that there’s no such thing as a free lunch (or in your example, cheap milk). At least you acknowledge the validity of Heinlein’s TANSTAAFL adage.
It’s a shame that McCain and the neoCons pander to the Republican base’s moronic notion that there is such a thing as a free lunch (or in McCain’s case, cheap gas). But when a large portion of them believe that the Invisible Bearded Sky Man™ will provide, I guess it makes sense for them to take the suckers for all they’re worth.
LukeB May 1, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Why should truck drivers get a break? Their industry is subsidized by the government-provided highway infrastructure in place. Plus, trucks wear out roads more than an individual’s car.
because majority of consumer goods are transported by trucks, including farming product.
Want easy way to temporary hold inflation down, that would be the trick.
Diesel price is exploding (specially with the war going on). Pentagon is the no.1 diesel user.
All in all it’s pretty fubar situation for truckers and farmer.
I am opposed to a hike in gas taxes for anyone. For the past 11 years, I’ve lived in small towns that require driving 1 or more hours to get to a larger city for medical/dental/eye care or buying things more than household/food items (tires, appliances, clothes, shoes). Most people in these towns have enough trouble affording things as it is.
Want easy way to temporary hold inflation down, that would be the trick.
I agree that the truckers are getting hosed, but we have to stop looking at quick-fix band-aid solutions. American consumers are going to have to understand that their oil addiction means they’ll have to continue to pay taxes at the pump, and pay increased food and goods prices dues to the trucking companies (not individual truckers — willing to make an exception for small O-and-Os) being taxed directly for their drivers’ use of diesel.
They can call the consumer tax the George W. Bush Gas-o-leen Tax (in honour of his down-home reg’lar guy image) and the trucking industry one the Richard Cheney Diesel Tax (due to his more corporate orientation).
The situation is FUBAR for everyone, but after 8 years of wasted opportunities it’s time to pay the piper.
ouch… Bloomberg is not happy. (How is he going to pay for NYC road maintenance?)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/01/bloomberg-slams-clintons_n_99698.html
Bloomberg Slams Clinton, McCain Gas Plan: “Dumbest Thing I’ve Heard”
Speaking to reporters at City Hall, Bloomberg said of the gas tax holiday, “It’s about the dumbest thing I’ve heard in an awful long time, from an economic point of view. We’re trying to discourage people from driving and we’re trying to end our energy dependence … and we’re trying to have more money to build infrastructure.”
Thing is, there no guarantee people would even get a benefit from not paying the gas tax. The prices would most likely just go up to what they were before (because that is the price the market will bear), and the oil companies will pocket the difference.
And, not even truckers are for this. Because they know it will just put infrastructure at risk without helping gas prices in any meaningful way.
I’m a company driver. This means I don’t pay for the 150-200 gallons of fuel I use every week, the company does. But I see the results of poor infrastructure every day.
A gas tax holiday is a dumb idea from the get-go. Even on diesel, the figure I heard was a savings of about $700, or a tank and a half of fuel.
Owner-operators and small companies are going out of business faster than ever. Some of them are leasing on to big companies to survive. But in the end, we’ll all have to go to switchgrass biodiesel/recycled deep-fryer grease, or the industry will die.
Even my husband, a school teacher, is trying to figure out how to rig up a distance learning classroom so he can avoid his commute.
Your post title is so elitist, Auguste!
I don’t feel the need to even read the post.
[and I strongly agree with your perception of the collective intelligence of the US voters…what are we who are so much smarter than the targets of ads and promises from the McSame/Clinton going to do?]
Hillary’s become a republican. face it.
She’s ended the Democratic party forever. Because she wants to win. And she’ll become a Republican to do it.
She supports vaporizing Iran, cheap bushy-type-bribe ploys like this gas tax holiday, and follows Rove’s race-baiting, sue-to-change-the-electoral-rules playbook.
She’s a Quisling to the party, and her husband has become a sickening insult to the ex-presidency.
Wait, actually, he blew most of his second term on being a jerk who couldn’t NOT fuck fat chicks in the oval office, so he jumped the shark ages ago.
Wow, you totally had me until your last, bigoted sentence, thatisacutewhatever.
Well if its biological, a pyramic would be a small predaicious ant with a triangular face, almost always found in leaf litter they build their nests under bark or rocks. So as they say …. if the foo sh****s etc.
Those truck driver protests annoy me. How about, instead of demanding the “right” to cheap gas, demanding that your employers compensate you for increased fuel costs? You could even demand that the government legislate something to that effect. When fuel prices started going up, municipalities allowed cab drivers to increase their fares. Why exactly can’t the federal government do the same for truck drivers?
It’s just utter nonsense.