The Paul Tsongas Memorial Pander Bear Award 04/30/08
As you can imagine, it has been extremely difficult to choose an award winner with the two Democrat POTUS candidates locked in a death match. Even though Obama preaches “new politics”, he has shown himself to be no slouch when it comes to down and dirty “old politics”.
But as it turns out, I have my very first bipartisan Memorial Pander Bear Award—-to John McCain and Hillary Clinton. Let’s hear it for “working (and pandering) across the aisle”!
The award is for the awful idea the federal government should waive the federal gas tax of 18.4 per gallon on gasoline and 24.4 diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Oh, yeah, that will fix our energy problems that began during the Carter Administration.
Not one economist endorses this shameless bit of pandering and all say it will make matters WORSE! But when you’re a politician on the hunt for votes, economists , and the long term policies and solutions that will solve our problems, be damned!
McCain set forth this idiotic idea on April 15th in a speech about his economic policies, but recently Hillary Clinton also endorsed the idea.
Hillary Clinton and John McCain (and Barack Obama who proposed this idiotic idea when he was Illinois State Senator, but wised up): The Pander Bear salutes you!
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“QC Examiner Hates Hare”—Quincy City Desk Blog
“Backward thinking, deluded right wing fool…”—The Oracle
email: qcexaminer-at-msn-dot-com
It is political pandering for vote at its most brazen. Still I am torn between the idea. I am sure we could all use the short term financial relief. On the other hand that money has already been spent by our government which means something else gets short-sheeted. Now if I thought they would shuffle money and it was some pork project that would pay the price, it would not bother me. But pork is sacred among politicians, so something useful would feel the cut.
Comment by thescoundrel | May 1, 2008
If you look at the second link in my post, some of the reasons a Federal Gas Tax Holiday is a bad idea are:
1. Encourages consumption—supply and demand.
2. Loss of construction jobs since road repair/construction are paid for by gas taxes.
3. Loss to US Treasury estimated at 8.5 billion, if not more.
4. Even a stupid Congress is unlikely to pass it, and if they did, Bush would veto it, since he has nothing to lose and he can FINALLY take the high ground.
This is a prime example of how politicians make our problems WORSE, not better. Pandering to farmers by subsidizing ethanol has caused food shortages—-gee, whodathunkit? The Laws Of Unintended Consequences always come back to bite us (never the politician/perps who have jobs for life) in the collective keester.
We should have been exploring domestic sources of oil, but noooooo, the environmentalist lobby convinced politicians that saving moose/marine habitat was more important than paying corrupt and anti-US governments for oil.
Sheesh! I’m still not convinced our political class has the will to do the right thing concerning energy policy—if waiting in line at the gas station in the 70s didn’t do it, it ain’t gonna happen until there is some apocalyptic event to force politicans to disregard their special interest groups and actually work for the American people as a whole.
I probably won’t live that long.
Sheesh!
Comment by qcexaminer | May 1, 2008