Um. Nobody's Driving To Work

I think the biggest, er, driver of Americans driving less is the impact of taking a few million-odd people out of the workforce. I'd like to believe that increased consciousness of greenhouse gases or love of mass transit is a factor, but let's get real.

However, now would be the perfect time to increase gas taxes to more properly price the externalities of gasoline use, when it would affect less consumers and prices are relatively low. Plus, gas taxes fund transportation (mostly highways, but that could change), which means jobs. Not likely it will happen, however.

Yay Deal.

So Abel's tears found a floor, and the deal is now done. It's a terrible, terrible deal. Let's first focus on what Maldonado got, which is less than meets the eye.

• He got his open primary legislation on the ballot, but not until June 2010. Arnold was interested in it, and so it was likely to get on that ballot anyway. This won't help Maldo in 2010, which was probably a condition of the deal. Considering that it affects Congressional races as well as legislative ones, I expect Nancy Pelosi to go all in trying to defeat and I don't expect it to pass. Open primaries have lost on the ballot in the past.

• The constitutional amendment banning legislative pay increases during deficit years passed; the amendment cutting all legislative pay during a late budget failed.

• The 12-cent gas tax increase was cut, replaced with a slight increase to the state income tax, federal stimulus money (which was always going to fill in because it was more than budgeted for) and $600 million in unspecified line-item vetoes from the Governor, which are going to be ugly. Let's just say that the huge corporate tax cut is not the first place Arnold's going to look.

Now, that's what Maldonado got. Among the other goodies in this budget, besides the corporate tax cuts and the privatization of state highway projects and the are:

• A $10,000 tax credit for homebuyers, but only if they buy new construction. So a "developer bailout" when there is all kinds of existing inventory sitting on the market and lowering property values inside communities. And now there's an incentive for them to stay there. Great.

• Large commercial vehicles are exempt from the increase in vehicle license fees, because... gee, I have no idea. This is perverse, the opposite of what we should be taxing, which are inefficient vehicles.

• Rental car companies can pass VLF increases on to customers, which they probably would have done anyway, but this makes it even easier.

• One provision allows for the delay of retrofitting of heavy diesel equipment, which will maintain poor air pollution in at-risk communities, and let's face it, kill people. Don't believe me, take it from the Chairman of the Air Resources Board, Mary Nichols: "There are people who will die because of this delay."

Dan Weintraub is right - this is a budget the GOP can be proud of, because it's a profoundly conservative budget. Because they hold a conservative veto over it. And they get the best of both worlds - they don't have to vote for the budget en masse so they don't have to own it. In short, the hijacking worked. And that's a function of process, not personality.

As Jean Ross says, "If this year’s budget negotiations don’t increase public support for reducing the vote requirement for approval of a budget and tax increases, it is not clear what will."

...there are two initiatives that have entered circulation that would repeal 2/3 for budget and taxes, and replace it with an arbitrary 55%. It should be majority rule. But it's about to gather signatures. Budgets and bad policies can eventually be changed if the process is changed.

Congestion Pricing and San Francisco

When I lived in San Francisco, though I was out in the Richmond I spent a couple years without a car using public transit without much of a problem. Between BART, Muni, rideshare on the Bay Bridge and the ferries there are plenty of opportunities to get around throughout the city. It can be a bit of an ordeal but it is well within the realm of possibility. That hasn't stopped Bay Area commuters from expressing anger about a proposed congestion pricing scheme.

America's second most congested city could become the first to institute so-called congestion pricing to try to reduce downtown traffic, improve the environment and raise money for further transit fixes. A similar effort failed earlier this year in New York City [...]

The online reaction was fast and furious.

"Why should I have to pay to drive on public streets?" asked one reader. "Driving has gone the way of smoking," wrote another, adding that "it is easy and right to pick on drivers."

Congestion pricing, said a third, "would be a regressive tax on those who don't have good public transit options..."

People pay lip service to wanting to reduce their carbon footprint, and then bristle at tangible steps toward it. I hate to quote Tom Friedman here, but he's right - re-engineering America into a post-carbon future without a specific price signal like congestion pricing or a carbon tax is going to be impossible. There are plenty of different ways to go about this. California is experimenting with raising the gas tax as part of the work-around budget. Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski is mulling over a mileage tax. Congestion pricing has worked in London, and toll roads as a quicker option are present across the country. The point is, as Friedman says:

The two most important rules about energy innovation are: 1) Price matters — when prices go up people change their habits. 2) You need a systemic approach. It makes no sense for Congress to pump $13.4 billion into bailing out Detroit — and demand that the auto companies use this cash to make more fuel-efficient cars — and then do nothing to shape consumer behavior with a gas tax so more Americans will want to buy those cars. As long as gas is cheap, people will go out and buy used S.U.V.’s and Hummers.

There has to be a system that permanently changes consumer demand, which would permanently change what Detroit makes, which would attract more investment in battery technology to make electric cars, which would hugely help the expansion of the wind and solar industries — where the biggest drawback is the lack of batteries to store electrons when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. A higher gas tax would drive all these systemic benefits.

The congestion pricing proposal in San Francisco has another appeal - reducing traffic and allowing people to increase their productivity simply by getting to where they need to go faster. That includes the street-based public transit options as well. Ultimately, if the congestion pricing money is used smartly, to enhance mass transit options, it makes complete sense to try it.

Points For Creativity

This is kind of a gangster move by Darrell Steinberg. It doesn't raise the gas tax for consumers as much as it looks. It's a maneuver to get around the 2/3 vote. The gas "fee" is implemented on a majority-line vote, and the real increases are to the income tax, sales tax and the oil severance tax. The actual increase in gas fees would be about $0.13 cents a gallon. Gas has decreased about $3.00 a gallon since the summer. Really, I just appreciate the creativity to get this done at all.

The first part of the plan is a quarter-cent sales tax hike that will bring in the state an estimated $1.6 billion in the next fiscal year.

At first blush, that would seem to require a two-thirds vote. But Democrats insist that technically they won't be voting to raise the tax.

Instead, they will be voting simply to stop paying that amount to local governments. With that money not flowing, local sales taxes have a trigger to automatically rise ¼ of a percent.

So the move is a de facto tax hike and the state saves money by not paying local governments.

The second part of the equation is just as complex.

In a single bill, Democrats will eliminate the sales and excise taxes on gasoline and replace those taxes with higher income taxes, sales tax and an oil severance tax.

The total revenues collected will turn out the same in that bill.

But the Democrats will then vote on a different piece of legislation to replace the old gas sales and excise taxes (which only went to transportation needs) with a gasoline "fee," to be set at 39 cents per gallon.

Because they are raising a "fee" and not a "tax," Democrats believe (and they say their lawyers have approved) they can do this will a majority vote.

If you want to look at the ACTUAL tax increases that would result, I think oil severance is a no-brainer, we're the only state in the union without one. The sales tax and the income tax hikes and the gas taxes are pretty flat, although lower-income residents use public transit more than others, so there's a patina of progressivity. I would prefer a millionaire's tax. But in this time of crisis, a little shared sacrifice makes sense.

And as I said, it's the out-of-the-box thinking that makes this a winner in my book. As well as Steinberg's hard-core rhetoric:

After the longest budget stalemate in California history and a month-and-half of gridlock in a special session, Steinberg claimed Democrats had "made every effort to engage our Republican colleagues in a bipartisan strategy to make a dent in this budget deficit."

"They're very clear," he continued. "They are not going to put up a single vote to raise the necessary revenue."

"You have two choices," Steinberg said. "You can either continue to sort of bang your head against the wall and hope that they will change their mind or you can govern. And we believe the higher responsibility is to govern."

"The message to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle is we want you to engage in governing with us. But now and beginning Jan. 1 in the next budget session, we will solve this problem either with you or without."

Hilarious.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The Controller, Treasurer and Finance Director today voted to freeze all state construction projects at the worst possible time. Halting these projects hits every piece of the state: a veterans home in West LA, fire protection in forested areas, five schools in Compton, a school for the deaf in Riverside, highways, hospitals, basically anything with a shovel. In a statement, Controller Chiang was pained to make this vote but had no choice. There's simply no money and without revenue enchancement or cutbacks the state is staring into the abyss. The Democrats in the legislature had to do something. Steinberg's maneuver is very good stuff when seen in that context.

The Nature Of The Problem

Yesterday may have been the day Barack Obama thought "holy crap".

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Monday blamed "irresponsible decisions" by the Bush administration and Wall Street for the country's economic woes as government officials said the budget deficit would soar to record heights next year [...]

Obama said the economy needs both short- and long-term fixes, including another round of "stimulus" measures from Congress to revive the economy and a longer-term focus on renewable energy to curb high gas prices and on universal health care to trim costs. He said he would move "rapidly and vigorously" to respond [...]

Obama didn't name the Bush administration, but his implication was clear.

"We can't afford, I believe, to keep on doing the same things we've been doing," said Obama. "We have to change course, and we have to take immediate action."

Though the Depression was in full swing by 1932, I don't think FDR campaigned fully on creating a New Deal. He responded to events because he had no choice, and wasn't interested in just putting masking tape on the problem. Obama might be headed to such a reckoning. We know now that the next President will face an immediate half-trillion dollar shortfall, meager growth in the range of 1%, maybe 50 million uninsured, and a crumbling infrastructure that will require hundreds of billions to make safe. Those are the macro trends; at the micro level, people are hurting.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve's "beige book" of economic indicators from around the country portrayed consumer spending as "mixed, weak or slowing." The report, which gleans anecdotal information eight times a year from businesses across the nation, added that retail sales were "subdued" in Atlanta and "grim" in Dallas. Amid falling sales for discretionary items, the lone upbeat note was an uptick in electronics purchases.

Automobile sales, usually a reliable marker of consumer readiness to spend and borrow, were "uniformly weak" in every part of the nation, the federal report said.

Adding to the gloom, the National Assn. of Realtors said Thursday that sales of previously owned homes fell in June to their lowest level of the last decade [...]

For Steve Baker, 36, a propane gas service technician in the Indiana town of Warsaw, the $600 rebate was split between paying down his credit card bill and buying a weed-eater to contend with the lawn pests that afflict farmers and homeowners in his rural community.

"It was something I needed but I didn't think I'd be able to get until much later," he said.

The extra stipend came in handy but did nothing to ease Baker's anxiety about the nation's financial doldrums.

"It was like getting an end-of-the-year bonus at the beginning of summer," he said. "It was nice, but it didn't make me feel better about where the economy is going or where my financial picture is headed."

People aren't blinded by quick fixes because the structural problems are simply too big. Obama has to grasp this fundamental truth. His policies are already headed in the right direction, and clearly his knowledge of the economy far outclasses his opponent, who actually thinks we can shame the oil companies into giving some of their profits back.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But (economists) all say that . . . the oil companies, the gas companies are going to absorb … any reduction (in the gas tax).

MCCAIN: … they say that. But one, it didn’t happen before, and two, we wouldn’t let it happen. We wouldn’t let it — Americans wouldn’t let them absorb that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How would you prevent that?

MCCAIN: We would make them shamed into it. We, of course, know how to — American public opinion. And we would penalize them, if necessary. But they wouldn’t. They would pass it on.

So you have a faith-based economics versus a reality-based economics. You have a tax system that rewards wealth versus one that rewards work. What I hope, however, is that Obama is understanding the actual reality and set to truly reward the working class at the expense of the big money boys who caused this unbalanced, catastrophic financial picture.nationa

Ignorant Or Calculating?

At least the latest Clinton pander - her vow to break up the OPEC cartel- has some manner of logical sense in that I can't see anyone in the US being against that if they thought it could actually happen, which, um, it can't. But Yglesias and others are right - the price of gas is not rising because of a cartel, it's rising because global demand is skyrocketing, particularly in China and India, and as demand rises, the price rises. I really don't think there's a whole lot of extra supply out there that oil-producing nations aren't pumping - at $120 a barrel they'd be idiots not to get as much out of the ground as possible.

I'm fairly certain that Clinton knows this, as do most politicians who are afraid of telling the truth to cash-strapped American consumers. But Clinton, at least, isn't really interested in reality, she's interested in using the issue as a blunt instrument to show voters that she's "on their side" and Obama's some elitist fruitcake.

On a related note, Lambert Strether has lost his mind. But in his defense, it made for one of the better Sadly, No posts ever.

Look, forget about the usefulness or uselessness of the gas tax holiday for a moment. Put aside the fact that Obama, unlike Clinton and McCain, is clearly in cahoots with Chevron executives to hoard all the extra ketchup packets that could be feeding working families throughout the Rust Belt for decades to come. Is it not abundantly clear that both Democrats’ plans for phased troop withdrawals from Iraq will save taxpayers orders-of-magnitude more Ramen packets than thirty bucks’ worth? Important as it is to keep the noodle-wolf at bay, is this not the issue upon which we should be judging these candidates?

Indeed.

UPDATE: I could also mention that a gas tax holiday would cost millions of dollars and thousands of highway construction jobs, and that past experience with gas tax holidays suggest that the savings are not passed on to the consumer, but I won't. Oh wait, I just did!

The Clinton McCain 419

This letter at the new site Gas Tax Scam is hilarious.

CONFIDENTIAL/URGENT POLITICAL PROPOSAL

Dear Sir

First we must solicit your confidence in this issue. This is by virtue as being utterly confidential and "top secret".

We are SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON, the wife of the former United States head of state, PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, and also SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, friend and associate of current head of state PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH. We got your contact through business inquiries as we were searching for contacts of a citizen who can help save our and our family's political careers since our country has been frustrating us.

We are top officials of the United States Senate Government who are interested in importation of oil into our country with funds that are presently trapped in the FEDERAL TRANSPORTATION TRUST FUND dedicated to improving transportation. We wish to send this money to overseas accounts in the MIDDLE EAST but cannot due to restrictions in Congress Transportation Equity Act requiring that this money must be spent to build roads, bridges and high speed trains.

If you accept we will deliver to your a sum of 30 DOLLARS in the summer 2008 in form of a "GAS TAX HOLIDAY". You will then deliver this money to accounts of our friends in Middle East by taking it to your nearby gasoline station where they have information to forward the money. Please supply your bank account, social security number, address and your vote in DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES AND NOVEMBER GENERAL ELECTION.

It's surprising that a proposal that, after all, at its heart cuts taxes on driving does not have a plurality of support. It's kind of a freak occurrence (a contested primary with few other differences in policy forces the traditional media to actually cover the issue in a substantive way, and the unanimity among experts forces them to insert that into the debate rather than the more expected he-said she-said), but it does show what can happen when people get all the facts and are able to think for themselves. A pander only works when it's actually popular.

Of course, this is not really about the gas tax, but about Clinton's gambit to paint Obama's supporters as not real people. It's code for the "elitist" label that she's clearly been trying to stamp on him. And none of this changes the fact that superdelegates keep moving against her and the window of opportunity to actually win the nomination is closed. It just pisses off those Democrats who have been paying attention. Understand that this entire gas tax kerfuffle only aids Republicans in their effort to perpetuate a stereotype against Democrats.

Carrots and Sticks On 'Roids

I'm trying to square this. Tim Russert goes on Meet The Press today and basically tells Barack Obama that we're about to bomb Iran with airstrikes. At the same time, America has joined all major powers in offering an INCENTIVE program to Iran in exchange for them halting their nuclear program.

LONDON, May 2 -- Six world powers agreed Friday to offer Iran a new mix of incentives to curtail its nuclear program, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced here.

After meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and top foreign policy figures from Russia, China, France and Germany to discuss Iran's disputed program, Miliband said the group "reviewed and updated" an offer made to Iran in June 2006.

He declined to disclose details of the package, but said it is aimed at showing Tehran "the benefits of cooperating with the international community."

Is this the ultimate "good cop/bad cop" scenario? Or did Rice and the Administration sign on to the incentive plan knowing it would fail, giving them no choice but the military option?

Expect the worst with these people is my motto.

...Also, Obama was very good on the gas tax pander, while Clinton tried to paint people who study economics for a living as the elite. One audience member shot her down on that:

"I do feel pandered to when you talk about suspending the gas tax," the woman said, adding: "Call me crazy but I actually listen to economists because I think they know what they've studied."

Obama And The Energy Future

Friends of the Earth, the newest and most forward-thinking environmental group, endorsed Barack Obama today, mainly because of his stance on the gas tax suspension.

“We endorse Senator Obama because we believe he is the best candidate for the environment,” said Friends of the Earth Action President Brent Blackwelder. “The ‘gas tax holiday’ debate is a defining moment in the presidential race. The two other candidates responded with sham solutions that won’t ease pain at the pump, but Senator Obama refused to play that typical Washington game. Instead, Obama called for real solutions that would make transportation more affordable and curb global warming. He showed the courage and candor we expect from a president.”

Experts agree that gas prices are likely to decline only slightly under a Clinton-McCain “gas tax holiday”—if they decline all. Instead of signing onto this gimmick, Obama has called for long-term solutions that would limit oil consumption by requiring cars to be more fuel efficient and expanding transportation options including passenger rail.

So Hillary Clinton is not only content to call for pointless proposals that would potentially eliminate hundreds of thousands of highway construction jobs and do next to nothing for working people, she's happy to lose all of her allies in the environmental movement over it. Obama is right - this is a function of status quo political thinking:

He used the tax holiday — an idea that Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, also supports — to illustrate the Democratic Party's need to set itself apart. "When we're offering the same things that John McCain is offering on the cheap, that means we are not presenting a truthful response to the challenges we face in America," Obama said. "We can do better than that this time."

Now, Clinton's team is countering with the fact that Obama voted to suspend the gas tax in Illinois a few years ago. Right, and he LEARNED from it that the oil companies do not pass that relief on to the customer. He also knows that George Bush isn't going to impose any tax burden on oil companies.

"At best, this is a plan that would save you pennies a day for the summer months - that is, unless gas prices are raised to fill in the gap, which is just what happened in Illinois when we tried this a few years ago," Obama said.

"Meanwhile, unless you can magically impose a windfall-profits tax on oil companies overnight to pay for the holiday, it could imperil federal highway funding and cost Indiana more than 6,000 jobs," Obama said.

In the short-term gas prices are going to be high; it's a fact of life in a country where the fuel efficiency is too low and the driving distance is too long. There are plenty of things you can do in the long-term to reduce people's expenses, help save the planet from the ravages of global warming, kickstart the economy and enhance quality of life. It's steps like investing in high-speed rail and mass transit, improving the fuel economy of the national fleet of cars (which was in last year's energy bill, much to the dismay of lawmakers who like their SUVs), eliminating coal-burning power plants (good for Kathleen Sebelius) and investing in wind, solar and biomass, and eventually spurring those investments with money from a tax on carbon that will actually be an economic engine:

If there's a paradise for environmentalists, this Nordic nation of 9.2 million people must be it. In 2007 Sweden topped the list of countries that did the most to save the planet - for the second year running - according to German environmental group, Germanwatch. Between 1990 and 2006 Sweden cut its carbon emissions by 9%, largely exceeding the target set by the Kyoto Protocol, while enjoying economic growth of 44% in fixed prices [...]

The main reason for this success, say experts, is the introduction of a carbon tax in 1991. Swedes today pay an extra 2.34 kronor (20p) per litre when they fill the tank (although many key industries receive tax relief or are exempted). "Our carbon emissions would have been 20% higher without the carbon tax," says the Swedish environment minister, Andreas Carlgren.

"It was the one major reason that steered society towards climate-friendly solutions," reckons Lindberg. "It made polluting more expensive and focused people on finding energy-efficient solutions."

"It increased the use of bioenergy," concurs Professor Thomas B Johansson from the University of Lund, a former director of energy and climate at the UN Development Programme. "It had a major impact in particular on heating. Every city in Sweden uses district heating [where steam and hot water are piped to a building in a particular area]. Before, coal or oil were used for district heating. Now biomass is used, usually waste from forests and forest industries." [...]

Today, environmental measures are common throughout the country. Take Linköping, Sweden's fifth biggest city, which is running its fleet of buses and rubbish lorries, a train line and some private taxis on biogas, from methane produced from the entrails of slaughtered cows.

Similarly, Stockholm's central station is planning to harness the body warmth of 250,000 daily commuters to produce heating for a nearby office block. The body heat would warm up water that would in turn be pumped through pipes over to a new office block. And King Carl Gustaf XVI last month had all the lights at royal castles turned off for an hour to back an energy efficiency campaign.

While our gas tax pays for highway construction, it's structured essentially the same way as the carbon tax. This is what Hillary Clinton wants to eliminate for the sake of a few votes in Indiana.

I believe that Obama's base of support among young people will spur him to fiercely confront climate change in his first term, for environmental, economic and national security reasons. We aren't going to get off fossil fuels overnight but we can make a difference. But not if conventional Washington thinking rules the day.

Quote-Unquote Experts

The Clinton campaign, the campaign pushing the pointless gas tax, represents the serious adults.

“There are times that a president will take a position that a broad support of quote-unquote experts agree with. And there are times they will take a position that quote-unquote experts do not agree with.”

Talk about "creating your own reality."

I don't want to keep finding these parallels between Clinton and Bush, I really don't...

UPDATE: This is fucking pathetic. And the thing is that amplifying the right-wing smear machine to official Washington probably works. It does, however, happen on both sides and it's a necessary consequence of rabid partisanship and the easy facility of linking things around.

UPDATE II: Ouch. And Mark Udall is an uncommitted superdelegate. This is another reason why Clinton's gambit is so tactically stupid - by trying to bully Congress into passing this cynical policy, she's alienating the very people she needs to actually get the nomination - uncommitted supers. Mark Udall probably saw the next eight years flash before his eyes and he didn't like it.

"The so-called ‘temporary gas tax holiday' that Senators Clinton and McCain propose won't deliver this needed relief. This will not create the economic relief they say it will, because prices will continue to rise until we address the real source of this problem. We do need to provide immediate relief for families hard-hit by spiraling gas prices, and we can do that by demanding the President stop adding to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This will ease the production crunch that is causing these skyrocketing gas prices.

"Senator Clinton claimed yesterday that I either stand with her on this proposal or stand with the oil companies. To that I say: I stand with the families of Colorado, who aren't looking for bumper sticker fixes that don't fix anything, but for meaningful change that brings real relief and a new direction for our energy policy. We can't afford more Washington-style pandering while families keep getting squeezed.

"It is exactly the kind of short-sighted Washington game that keeps us from getting real results to our energy problem. Experts across the ideological spectrum agree that it will increase the deficit, drain money away from Colorado roads and bridges, and hurt the environment, all without actually making prices lower for drivers."

Good Way To Attract Superdelegates

Anger them by forcing them to take sides in your pathetic pander game.

After several days of back and forth between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over whether a summer-long elimination of the gas tax would help or hurt, Clinton took a hard line, asking her colleagues in Congress to take sides.

“I believe it would be important to get every member of Congress on record,” Clinton told supporters at a rally in southern Indiana. “Do they stand with the hard-pressed Americans who are trying to pay their gas bills at the gas station or do they once again stand with the oil companies?

“I want to know where people stand and I want them to tell us, are they with us or against us when it comes to taking on the oil companies?” she added.

Do you understand that, if the skies opened and made you President, you would have to DEAL with those members of Congress, and you're setting off by squeezing them in some triangulating nonsense? Do you think they'll take kindly to that?

Hill, c'mere a second. The oil companies won't suffer one iota from this. They'd pass a lot of a windfall profits tax on to the consumer. The consumer would see no change between eliminating the gas tax for a few months and the inevitable raised prices, in part due to the increased consumption that normally causes gas to go up in the summer. Nothing would change. And you know this. Yet you persist, and absent legislation, by the way - so Congress is supposed to "choose sides" on a non-existent bill?

This is the stupidest, worst piece of cynical politics of the entire cycle. Yes, WORSE than Obama's Harry and Louise ads. This reveals that Hillary Clinton will do nothing to impact global warming if it stands in the way of votes. That's a sin of the highest order at this crucial time. She's not to be trusted on this, or anything for that matter. I know that white working-class voters making under $50,000 aren't the target audience of this site, but I impress upon any of them who are to take a moment to think about the implications of this.

UPDATE: I should add that McCain doesn't know what he's talking about either. Low-income Americans drive the least because a lot of them can't afford a car. And beneficiaries of any cut in gas prices would be rich people driving Hummers and SUVs.

Good Response

Obama on this gas tax nonsense.



I like that they didn't feel the need to quote Krugman or Friedman or every economist alive talking about how silly this is. He just said it in his own words, and tracked it back to the central message of his campaign. And it's refreshing to see a major political candidate treat Americans like adults.

I have, of course, no idea if it'll work. But I'd like to think that it's so different from Bush that it will.

Clinton, The Environment, And Trust

Matthew Yglesias gets to the nub of Hillary Clinton's pathetic gas tax pander.

This is basically the environment/energy/transportation equivalent equivalent of Obama's anti-mandate fliers and it makes it very hard to imagine that she's prepared to try to do anything about climate change.

Exactly so. Clinton will sacrifice the fight against global warming for the sake of getting someone's number for a news cycle or two. Global warming is a real and present danger to mankind - just ask the US military. Calling on an increase in driving for three months to fix a political problem when it would add greenhouse gas emissions to the air is just a horrendous strategy. Also, it wouldn't accomplish anything, despite what partisan hacks like Jerome Armstrong think. Actual economists and even the traditional media are assailing this stupid pander. And the Clinton hacks know it:

Clinton aides think that even if the measure is a limited way to reduce gas prices, it allows the candidate to bash oil companies and cast her opponent against an idea that has political appeal.

That's what Clinton is signaling here, that politics are preferable to policy (I also think they are bad politics - with 18-29 year-olds turning to Democrats in record numbers and concerned about global warming, why would they continue to trust Democrats if a President Clinton sells out the environment?). This is backed up by years and years of triangulation from her husband's administration. This is why I never preferred her in this race.

...as a side note, I know technology is most likely to get us out of the global warming fix we're in, but do we have to gravitate to every science fiction possibility to solve the problem? Giant vacuums? Really?

UPDATE: Great, I hope everyone's happy, now I agree with Tom Friedman. Gah.

Beware The Pander Storm!

This ad on gas taxes is simply disgraceful.



Obama said no to gas taxes for all the right reasons - because it's bad policy that would do little more than give oil companies more profits. Adding a windfall profits tax (which I'm sure former oilman President Bush is just eager to sign) just makes it, as Paul Krugman says, pointless. The windfall profits will pay for the highway fund, the oil companies will add to gas prices to cover the taxes, and consumers will pay the same price at the pumps. It's the most ridiculous shell game I've ever seen, and Hillary is counting on no-information voters to buy it.

Then there's the "Clinton supporters can't use the Google" ad:



Really, we're going down the "Obama has no substance" road? REALLY?

Come closer, Jason Kinney. Here's Barack Obama's website. There's an entire section with his position on issues! There are white papers galore! And he's even explained those proposals in speeches! And in newspapers! And leading economists preferred them! Imagine that!

This is the worst kind of political pandering - with handouts to voters that aren't handouts, raising questions about the opponent that aren't questions. What a bunch of rubbish.

(By the way, if you want to use David Ignatius' boneheaded intellect as a selling point, go ahead. Really makes you look smart.)

We're Still Talking About The Gas Tax?

I can't believe this panderrific gas tax holiday is still being discussed in serious circles. Suspending the gas tax would crush the already hobbled construction industry and do next to nothing for consumers. Well, maybe I can believe it, because Hillary Clinton is being an opportunist to the extreme, suggesting a combination of gas tax holiday and windfall profit tax that would probably put (a) the same amount of money in the federal highway fund, (b) the same amount of money in the pockets of oil companies as they pass the tax on to consumers, and (c) the same amount of money paid for by consumers at the pump. In other words, a whole lot of legislation signifying NOTHING. Except making a few voters in Indiana feel good.

We need to massively stop oil consumption if we are to reach any reasonable goals on global warming and stimulate the economy through green energy technology. Suspending the gas tax is a diametric opposition to those goals, and massively stupid besides.

UPDATE: You know that gas is going to be incredibly pricey for the rest of our lifetimes, and without diversifying sources of fuel and lowering demand there's nothing we can do about it, right? Also, you know this, yes?

OPEC’s 13 members plan to spend $150 billion to expand their capacity by five million barrels a day by 2012. But OPEC will need to pump 60 million barrels a day by 2030, up from around 36 million barrels a day today, to meet the projected growth in demand. Analysts say that without Iran and Iraq — where nearly 30 years of wars and sanctions have crippled oil production — reaching that level will be impossible.

I don't have to pull out my "No war for oil" sticker, do I?

UPDATE II: Paul Krugman, who is scrupulous and honest no matter what people have said about his "vendetta" for Obama, stays true to his scruples and explains why Clinton's proposal is completely pointless and why Obama should be credited for keeping his strong stance against this.

From Academia To Psychology

This is the second time in as many days that John W. McCain has dismissed the real concerns of real people who are struggling, suffering and dying in service to policies he wholeheartedly supports.

You might remember that McCain threw out a concept for a summer gas tax holiday to ease the burden on those paying high prices at the pump (a buck-eighty at a time for a 10-gallon tank... why, that'll end poverty in our time!). It was roundly criticized for providing little to no stimulus for working families, especially when contrasted with his desire to massive cut corporate tax rates. It'd also eliminate every highway construction job in America for three months and cause a spike in gas prices in September right before the election. So to say it was an unserious proposal is pretty on the mark.

Today, McCain tried to explain the rationale for his plan.

I think psychologically, and a lot of our problems today are psychological, confidence, trust, the uncertainty about our economic future, the ability to keep our own home, this might give them a little psychological boost. Let's have some straight talk, it's not a huge amount of money. A little psychological boost, that's what I think it would help.

It must be comforting to the single mother who can't survive on the minimum wage, or the steelworker who just got laid off, that they were offered a psychological boost. Because that's really the whole problem, right? Apparently McCain is taking the Green Lantern theory of geopolitics into the economic arena. Since he analogizes everything to a basic contest of will, it makes sense. We're apparently going to fight the economy through steely-eyed resolve, and improve people's lives through sheer force of command. Never mind the structural inequality problem, or the deregulation that led to a crumbling financial marketplace, or the credit crunch which has led to decreased consumer spending and a wave of bankruptcies, or the massive uptick in foreclosures (I love how McCain thinks the ability to keep one's own home is a "psychological problem" and not, you know, an "I don't have the cash" problem). It is the height of condescension to write off economic struggles as nothing more than something going on inside the heads of the unwashed masses.

I'll tell you what, though. McCain's right about one thing. The country is experiencing major psychological problems. Only thing is that they come from hundreds of thousands of sick veterans who were traumatized during his endless war in Iraq.

Some 300,000 U.S. troops are suffering from major depression or post traumatic stress from serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 320,000 received brain injuries, a new study estimates.

Only about half have sought treatment, said the study released Thursday by the RAND Corporation.

"There is a major health crisis facing those men and women who have served our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Terri Tanielian, the project's co-leader and a researcher at the nonprofit RAND.

"Unless they receive appropriate and effective care for these mental health conditions, there will be long-term consequences for them and for the nation," she said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The 500-page study is the first large-scale, private assessment of its kind — including a survey of 1,965 service members across the country, from all branches of the armed forces and including those still in the military as well veterans who have left the services.

Its results appear consistent with a number of mental health reports from within the government, though the Defense Department has not released the number of people it has diagnosed or who are being treated for mental problems. The Department of Veterans Affairs said this month that its records show about 120,000 who served in the two wars and are no longer in the military have been diagnosed with mental health problems. Of the 120,000, approximately 60,000 are suffering from PTSD, the VA said.

We're going to see deeply disturbed Iraq and Afghan war vets on our streets for decades. It's the residual cost of an unnecessary war that did not make us any safer. McCain's present to them is to deride the question of the initial invasion as an academic argument, and by describing the very real economic pain they feel as just "psychological." The fact that he wants to throw military families out of their housing is just a cherry on top.

Somehow, after this set of statements, we're not all talking about how McCain is an elitist. With this kind of corrupt thinking, I can tell you he's certainly not elite.

UPDATE: Barack Obama, of course, wants to give veterans the care and respect they deserve, and also pull our troops out of a dangerous and counter-productive situation in Iraq, just like a SNOB!!!!1!

McCain's Economic Adventure

OK, I'm sick of talking about this debate, so let me talk about John McCain. It turns out, and this is going to shock you, that he's more interested in corporate balance sheets than working families.

Sen. John McCain yesterday offered sweeping rhetoric about the economic plight of working-class Americans, promising immediate assistance even as he spelled out a tax and spending agenda whose benefits are aimed squarely at spurring corporate growth [...]

In yesterday's speech, McCain played to his maverick image, taking corporate chieftains to task for their "extravagant salaries and severance deals." He even called out by name Angelo R. Mozilo, the chief executive of imploding mortgage giant Countrywide, and James E. Cayne, former chief executive of Bear Stearns, which was bailed out by an emergency line of credit from the Federal Reserve Board.

"In my administration, there will be no more subsidies for special pleaders, no more corporate welfare," McCain said.

But much of what he detailed was a corporate special pleader's dream: a cut in the corporate income tax rate, from 35 percent to 25 percent, a proposal to allow businesses to write off the cost of new equipment and technology from their taxes, a ban on Internet and new cellphone taxes, and a permanent tax credit for research and development.

The only tax that really does anything for a non-CEO, the gas tax holiday, is deeply irresponsible and would eliminate practically every construction job in America since gas taxes finance road improvements.

Then he got into real trouble with this remark:

In so many ways, we need to make a clean break from the worst excesses of both political parties. For Republicans, it starts with reclaiming our good name as the party of spending restraint. Somewhere along the way, too many Republicans in Congress became indistinguishable from the big-spending Democrats they used to oppose. The only power of government that could stop them was the power of veto, and it was rarely used.

If that authority is entrusted to me, I will use the veto as needed, and as the Founders intended. I will veto every bill with earmarks, until the Congress stops sending bills with earmarks. I will seek a constitutionally valid line-item veto to end the practice once and for all. I will lead across-the-board reforms in the federal tax code, removing myriad corporate tax loopholes that are costly, unfair, and inconsistent with a free-market economy.

Sounds like his usual focus on relatively tiny expenditures like earmarks instead of actual wasteful expenditures like Cold War-era weapons systems. But there's a catch - one of the earmarks that McCain's experts (well, not his experts, he shuffles it off to the Congressional Research Service) identify as an earmark is aid to Israel.

Whoops!

Here's where a progressive Middle East group like J Street will be helpful, because the very mention of cutting aid to Israel, whose economy is in better shape than ours, yields gasps out of all proportion. But cutting them off completely in the name of fighting earmarks shows how stupid the focus on the technical designation of how a bill gets appropriated truly is. And it's going to get McCain in trouble, just like mentioning any popular program that you schedule for cutting will get a politician in trouble. Republicans always say that government is wasteful, but never mention the wasteful programs, because... they're shameless liars, basically.

60 Minutes of Hell

I'm punishing myself this afternoon by watching the Hardball college tour at Villanova University with Chris Matthews and the exalted John McCain. It's about enough to make you throw up.

The show starts with Tweety asking McCain how he's different than Bush, which is not a question but an opportunity for McCain to ways to set himself apart from Mr. 28%. So this being a college crowd he starts in with a discussion about how he believes in global warming and that man is to blame and how we need to reduce our reliance on greenhouse gases, that the consequences of inaction are too great. This is the guy who this morning - THIS MORNING - called for a gas tax holiday for the entire summer, which would surely increase greenhouse gas emissions.

No follow-up from Tweety.

Then he asked the leading question "You also have a different view on torture," and McCain got to make his serious principled face and say "We should never torture anyone in American custody... we're in a war for hearts and minds, and if we're not any better than our enemies then it makes it harder to people to choose.... Abu Ghraib was (the insurgency's) greatest recruiting tool... We should not do anything that our enemies do. It's a very important question about what kind of country we are." McCain, of course, supported Bush's veto of the intelligence authorization bill that would have banned torture techniques like waterboarding from the CIA's menu of interrogation options.

No follow-up from Tweety.

Then there was a discussion on Iraq, where McCain got to say how the war was mishandled and how he was the only one to criticize Rumsfeld and call for his head. None of that is true.

No follow-up from Tweety.

Matthews gave McCain a free hand to spin his 100-year comments, saying that he was describing a situation after the war is over, but of course he's willing to keep troops there until the war is over, so I don't see the difference. McCain admitted that the Maliki move into Basra had a downside to it and actually said "maybe I'm digging for the pony here," but this was an unforced error, as Matthews followed up absolutely nothing.

Then he went to the student questions, which they pick beforehand, by the way, and the first guy asked if McCain considered himself a "typical white person" (a hit on Obama), and the second guy took a hit on Hillary Clinton's beer-and-shot photo-op. This gave McCain an opportunity to play the serious bipartisan maverick and say that he wants a respectful campaign free of character attacks. He must have been napping when his suspended staffer Soren Dayton started pushing "Obama is an elitist" messaging, or when his number one surrogate Holy Joe Lieberman agreed with a right-wing radio host that Obama might be a Marxist, and his campaign adviser Karl Rove agreed.

Tweety came back and called out those two students for asking "wise-ass questions", because he hasn't focused on non-issues his entire, you know, career. And then, Tweety came back from break and immediately asked if Obama was an elitist. After McCain said "no" but then went on to talk about how elitist the comments were, Tweety asked his first follow-up question, which was essentially: But given his upbringing, WHY is Obama an elitist?

I'm telling you, they should put this thing in a time capsule. It's a symbol of everything that's wrong with the media.

... Just have to add this section when McCain boldly denounces 527s and says that he'll work to stop them during the general election, and that he intends to attack Obama for breaking his word if he opts out of the public financing system, and there's no mention of the fact that McCain is currently a fugitive from justice, breaking the law with each passing day by spending excess money while remaining inside the public system for the primaries.

Shoot me in the mouth.

UPDATE: Apparently the kid that asked the question about Hillary "hitting the sauce" is Fox News anchor Steve Doocy's son. Having worked in television, there's no way that the Hardball folks didn't know about this unless they're complete boobs.

Cornering The Market On Bipartisanship

Shorter John McSame: the key is to trap the troops:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, seemed to give a thumbs down to bipartisan legislation that would greatly expand educational benefits for members of the military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan under the GI Bill.

McCain indicated he would offer some sort of alternative to the legislation to address concerns that expanding the GI Bill could lead more members of the military to get out of the service [...]

Officials in charge of Pentagon personnel worry that a more generous and expansive GI Bill would create an incentive for troops to get out of the military and go to college.

And while that might be great for the individual troop, it could be bad for the military, which is already under stress after more than five years fighting two wars.

On his campaign plane this afternoon, McCain said he and allies in the Senate are working on an alternative to the bill, but would only support something that included incentives to stay in the military.

"We are working on proposals of our own  I'm a consistent supporter of educational benefits for the men and women of the military," McCain said. "I want to make sure that we have incentives for people to remain in the military as well as for people to join the military. ... I've talked a lot about veterans' health care, so we'll continue to talk about those issues and how to care for vets. I know I can do that, having been one."

This sets up the false choice that we can either give troops the educational benefits they deserve or have a military that isn't broken. Quite a few people enter the military for the educational benefits anyway, so an expanded GI Bill would help on the recruitment side, which is just as important as retention. Second, McCain's proposal is premised on the idea that you should make it virtually impossible to leave the military, forcing the economically disadvantaged to re-up. Republican policies have already made civilian life a struggle for the lower and middle classes; this is a proposal to break the trust of promising aid in exchange for national service. It's a symbiotic relationship that made this nation the most prosperous on Earth in the 1950s.

The way to repair the broken military is by leaving Iraq, not by holding current troops hostage by lessening their prospects in civilian life, or bribing mercenaries in foreign countries to sign up. And education benefits is not some sort of handout like welfare.

"We owe them something," Flavin said of his comrades. "They've given life, limb, everything there is to give. The people who bore the most pain and suffering are the people who could use these benefits."

McCain's figuring that he's going to need more soldiers for all those wars he's planning to start while in office. A military that makes good on its promises and is only used when absolutely necessary, after all, wouldn't be in Iraq. But what this shows, in the final analysis, is that the only "bipartisan" solutions that matter to McCain are his own solutions.

Two sources (neither at Common Cause) who spoke on condition of anonymity told me about McCain's attempts to remove former president of Common Cause, Chellie Pingree, from her job. Common Cause, a non-partisan group devoted to open government, was in some ways the field operative for McCain-Feingold in the Senate. But soon, according to my sources, Pingree saw that this regulatory scheme was too full of loopholes; in particular, she realized that it would lead to too much confusion about what various sorts of organizations could do or not do.

Like many others at the time, Pingree concluded that straightforward public financing was the answer. This wasn't what McCain wanted to hear. In an effort to remove Pingree, McCain's operatives made phone calls to Common Cause board members, funders, and anyone else they thought they could persuade or intimidate. McCain's efforts failed, but they showed that he was willing to attack an ally the moment her judgment veered away from his own [...]

One point to add to Cliff's account is that the line that McCain's agents took in trying to oust Pingree was that she had hurt the organization's "bipartisan credibility." Yet what constituted a loss of bipartisan credibility? It was McCain alone. If McCain was happy with the organization, they could call themselves bipartisan; if he turned on them because they didn't follow his agenda, they lost their bipartisan cover, because even if there were other Republicans who supported reform, he occupied the entire space. This was a staggering amount of power for one politician to have over an organization that was meant to be a watchdog on politics, and McCain used that power ruthlessly.

This is where I lost my admiration for McCain. And as I've watched McCain's modus operandi on other issues, such as the torture legislation, I've continued to see echoes of the Common Cause episode: Corner the market on bipartisanship. Move to claim the position of bipartisan intermediary, and then use that position ruthlessly to serve his own purposes or sell out his allies, because they are dependent on the reality or perception of bipartisanship. As a study in the art of exercising power, it's quite impressive. Until people see through it.

This works when you have a power center and are in demand. It's less effective when you're running a partisan campaign. Those bipartisan allies on military issues won't be bullied into supporting his vision of the GI Bill. Bipartisan allies on the environment know that McCain is shamelessly pandering to voters by calling for a gas tax holiday that would increase driving and greenhouse gas emissions. Bipartisan allies on campaign finance reform won't look kindly upon his campaign manager making the rounds of top lobbyists in DC. McCain's perception as a bipartisan leader will fade with these continued policy shifts, and he will morph into the picture of the current figurehead of the Republican Party.

Loretta Sanchez And The Defense Machine Hustle

As usual, it would be better to quote this Digby post verbatim, but let me just give you the relevant section from the article in question:

(Loretta) Sanchez, Orange County's only Democratic member of Congress, voted in 2002 against giving President Bush authorization to invade Iraq. More recently she voted to begin pulling troops out within 90 days.

Tuesday night Sanchez said she could not support the protesters (who want to cut funding for the war) because the $145 billion in Iraq war funding was in the same bill that would provide money to build the C-17 aircraft in California.

"I never voted for this war," she said. But "I'm not going to vote against $2.1 billion for C-17 production, which is in California. That is just not going to happen."

Sanchez has been consistently against the war, and she cannot be fully blamed for protecting her constituents. But she's constrained by the fact that a major military contractor in her district has a gun to her head. Particularly in California, but all over the country really, the massing of the war machine has a definite impact on policy. They put their factories in all these different districts, so that shuttering an obsolete weapons system will be met with enormous resistance. This ensures that you can never decrease military spending or even keep it the same. And eventually, all these systems have to be justified. Through war.

This is approximately why the nightly news has all of these ads for Lockheed Martin and Boeing on them. I can't buy a 757, but Boeing can keep that news network in line by threatening to drop their ads if they stray from the party line.

Here's Digby:

It's just another way that big money distorts our politics. Sanchez's statement makes it quite clear that the "power of the purse" is not about stopping anything. It's about funding all kinds of things that have been set up over many years to keep politicians like Sanchez in line. She really does have to answer to her constituents --- many of whom make their living off the military industrial complex dime. You can't blame her.

I don't even think public financing will stop this. You're talking about thousands of constituents' jobs. And California embodies this problem as much as any state in the union. It's something we really have to think about. How do we, after 60 years of massive military buildup, put this genie back in the bottle?

(This isn't limited to defense, by the way, John Dingell's attempt to upend CAFE standard legislation preferred by the Speaker comes from him protecting his constituents, just as resistance to gas taxes comes from legislators protecting theirs.)