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Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2008 / The Toxic Avenger

The Toxic Avenger

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Tonight the New York Times will explain why Hillary’s Gas-taxofacism Awareness Week is more than just the ordinary kind of stupid.

Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida has been fighting to cut 10 cents from the state’s gasoline tax for two weeks in July. Lawmakers in Missouri, New York and Texas have also proposed a summer break from state gas taxes, while candidates for governor in Indiana and North Carolina are sparring over relief ideas of their own.

If experience with such gas tax “holidays” is any guide, drivers would save less than politicians suggest. But that is not necessarily the point.

“It’s about trying to serve the people and trying to understand and have caring, compassionate hearts for what they’re dealing with at the kitchen table,” said Mr. Crist, a Republican.

He added, “I’m supposed to respond to the people and try to make them happy.”

[…] When Illinois and Indiana suspended about 7 cents of their state gas taxes in the summer of 2000, prices fell by an average of only 4 cents, according to a study by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, which opposed the plans. Drivers saved no more than $2.50 a month, while each state lost tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue.

Previous gas tax holidays caused other problems, too. During the last gas tax suspension in Florida in 2004, people hoarded gasoline, driving up demand and prices.

Hillary obviously didn’t write these proposals herself. So what? Gas tax holidays have zero support from experts, a terrible track record and would mostly languish among the other symbolic clutter that state legislatures push around every day if Hillary didn’t push the issue to the front of the news. Her support gives a dumb idea credibility.

Many state legislators are not that bright in the best of days. Add frantic constituents and the recession economy playing merry-merry with no-deficit state budgets and you have a population of people looking very anxiously at the next election.

A good number will follow Hillary’s lead right over a cliff. Or off a bridge.

I-35W collapse
Photo by James Lammens via Flickr user lfred_benway

Reader Interactions

22Comments

  1. 1.

    xephyr

    The same people who are moved by Hillary because of her gas tax tomfoolery might have also enjoyed the the little signs my classmates would occasionally attach to each other in the 7th grade that read “kick me”.

  2. 2.

    Dennis - SGMM

    In the words of the great William J. Le Petomane:

    We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately! Immediately! Immediately! Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!

  4. 4.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    Spot on with that picture from Minneapolis. Every time I hear or read something about the Gas Tax Holiday that collapsed bridge is the first thing that comes to mind.

    Many state legislators are not that bright in the best of days.

    True dat. Here in NM Democrats have controlled the state legislature since statehood (1912) and I have no idea how most of those half-brights get re-elected. It’s actually scary how stupid some of them are. My state rep just resigned because he got elected mayor of a local town. The person replacing him hasn’t had two synapses fire simultaneously since Rumsfeld was SecDef (the first time!).

    OK I’m drunk and rambling so I’ll just have another shot of tequila and call it a night. Cheers!

  6. 6.

    nightjar

    “It’s about trying to serve the people and trying to understand and have caring, compassionate hearts for what they’re dealing with at the kitchen table,” said Mr. Crist, a Republican.

    Yup, Hillary and Crist, another helping please of that delectible dish of compassionate conservatism, and when that’s gone, a full plate of phoney baloney for the common folk to chew on. Same meal, different election.

  8. 8.

    Halteclere

    Even if this national tax holiday COULD be implemented in time for the summer driving season (crafting the legislation and getting the President to sign will be easy enough, right?), the benefit to the consumer would only be seen for about two weeks.

    In those two weeks, since the increases in cost most likely would continue, the price of gas will have increased such that the price at the pump will have resumed what it was when the holiday was enacted. Then afterwards, as the price continued to rise, consumers would only have a hollow, pyrrihic victory for consolation.

  9. 9.

    vwcat

    Pandering to the panderer. It doesn’t help with cable news talking about how smart she is pandering to the rubes in middle america and lying to them. It’s great politics.

    Obama is stupid because he is telling the truth from experience (and me, I live in Illinois), but, no, he’s still stupid and Hillary is right and this is what they are telling the voters.

  11. 11.

    jrg

    There should be no gas tax, because gas should be free.

    We would not even need gas if the liberal scientists focused on bringing us flying ponies instead of breeding human-animal hybrids in their secret labs.

    Furthermore, if said flying ponies had square bungholes, there would be plenty of small bricks available as a building material to fix our deteriorating roads and bridges.

  12. 12.

    Brachiator

    vwcat Says:

    Pandering to the panderer. It doesn’t help with cable news talking about how smart she is pandering to the rubes in middle america and lying to them. It’s great politics.

    The media elites love it when they can demonstrate their contempt for the rubes by praising Senator Clinton’s phony disdain for elites.

    It’s a perfect circle.

  13. 13.

    myiq2xu

    John, lay off the kool-aid. Obama is wrong:

    CBS News says Obama voted for the temporary lifting of the tax three times in the state Senate. The tax holiday was finally approved during a special session in June of 2000, when Illinois motorists were furious that gas prices had just topped $2 a gallon in Chicago. The moratorium lifted the state’s 5 percent sales tax on gasoline through the end of 2000.

    Obama told constituents that gasoline prices would drop: “Gas retailers must post on each pump a statement that indicates that the state tax has been suspended and that this temporary elimination of the tax should be reflected in the price per gallon of gas.”

    During one state Senate floor debate, Obama joked that he wanted signs on gas pumps in his district to say, “Senator Obama reduced your gasoline prices.”

    Now, running for president, Obama says the tax reduction was a complete failure, and that “the oil companies, the retailers” ended up benefiting most because they raised prices by the entire amount of the tax cut.

    “I voted for it, and then six months later we took a look, and consumers had not benefited at all,” Obama said. Having learned this hard economics lesson from his Illinois “mistake,” Obama now argues that a federal tax holiday also will fail for the same reason — the oil companies will take it all.

    But Obama is wrong. He did not learn this lesson. In fact, the only scientific study done on the pass-through of the tax holiday savings to Illinois consumers (and those in Indiana, as well, whose citizens enjoyed a similar holiday) found that it actually worked to a large extent.

    The study is titled “$2.00 Gas! Studying the Effects of a Gas Tax Moratorium,” by Joseph J. Doyle Jr. and Krislert Samphantharak. Download the PDF here. The authors concluded that “the suspension of the 5% sales tax led to decreases in retail prices of 3% compared to neighboring states. And when the tax was reinstated, retail prices rose by roughly 4%.”

    This suggests that the tax holiday delivered at least 60 percent of the tax savings to motorists.

    You carefully neglect to mention that the temporary reduction in the gas tax will be made up for by a windfall profits tax on the oil companies, so no bridges will collapse because of it.

    But mentioning it would totally invalidate your latest CDS rant, wouldn’t it?

    The holiday works in practice, but you get your panties in a bunch because it won’t work in theory. Meanwhile, Obama has zero, zip, nada, zilch to offer in it’s place.

    Herbert Hoover advocated doing nothing when the Great Depression hit. How did that work out for him?

  14. 14.

    misc

    Um, so how does this pie filter thing work again? I need to get rid of myeq1/2xu.

  15. 15.

    r€nato

    yeah, if only Hoover had proposed a gas tax moratorium, we would never have had that commie pinko FDR impose socialism and start WW2.

  16. 16.

    mightygodking

    You carefully neglect to mention that the temporary reduction in the gas tax will be made up for by a windfall profits tax on the oil companies

    Yes, because they will be able to get sixty votes to pass a windfall profits tax in the Senate any day now. Republican Senators might be willing to pass tax cuts – hence McCain offering up a tax holiday as a solution – but tax increases? Good luck with that one.

    The holiday works in practice

    I note that in the article you quote, the author claims that gasoline inventories in the United States “are currently very high,” so therefore there’s no danger of increased demand causing gas shortages. Unfortunately, he’s wrong – gasoline inventories have taken a hit, which in turn caused the price of oil to rise.

    Also:

    The authors concluded that “the suspension of the 5% sales tax led to decreases in retail prices of 3%

    A three percent reduction on gas prices right now is three bucks on a hundred-dollar fill-up. Say your hypothetical driver fuels up twice a week over the gas tax holiday; that’s a savings of $72 for a fairly high-use driver. A more conservative driver, fueling up once a week, will save $36. And this assumes the high end of fuel costs, remember.

    Frost’s article doesn’t actually disagree with any of Obama’s arguments; he just thinks that a one-time thirty to fifty bucks’ savings for the average driver is a worthwhile use of the ten billion dollars it’s going to cost.

    Unfortunately, nobody else agrees with him. Except you and John McCain and Hillary Clinton, of course.

  17. 17.

    Justin

    So the only way to fund infrastructure is to tax end-users for fuel consumption that they have no choice but to consume, since we have practically no public transit infrastructure in this country? I am all in favor of carbon taxes in general, but the way the market is structured there is often really no way for that tax to cut back on usage. You have to drive to work, you have to drive to school, you have to drive to doctor appointments (if you’re lucky enough to have health care). Why tax the people who feel it the most instead of those who are making off with fortunes while the rest of us struggle?

  18. 18.

    Paul

    A good number will follow Hillary’s lead right over a cliff. Or off a bridge.

    Up here, the DFL controlled Legislature managed to ram through a small increase in the gas tax, overrriding Gov. Pawlewnty’s veto. This small increase, only a few cents, is now being portrayed in ads by Republicans as a “60%” increase in the gas tax.

    SuperAmerica declined an offer from the Republicans to have these ads appear on the monitors they now have above their gas pumps.

  19. 19.

    ccham44

    Agree that the gas-tax “holiday” is nonsense, but the title of this post reminded me of random news I heard recently:

    A “Toxic Avenger” musical will be opening soon, first in New Jersey, then onto Broadway… that is teh Awesome.

  20. 20.

    Gus

    Why does anyone answer myiq? He’s the very definition of a troll, just stirring shit up. He knows the gas tax holiday is pandering, unless he’s even stupider than I thought.

  21. 21.

    chopper

    You carefully neglect to mention that the temporary reduction in the gas tax will be made up for by a windfall profits tax on the oil companies, so no bridges will collapse because of it.

    yeah, good luck with that this summer. i’m sure the oil man in the WH will totally not veto a bill taxing the shit out of exxon. shit, he wouldn’t have to, any bill trying that wouldn’t even get out of committee. get your head out of your ass.

  22. 22.

    Tim F.

    If we swap a gas tax with a tax on oil industry profits and make it revenue neutral, the price at the pump will stay exactly the same.

    Give the Hillary camp some credit, I thought that it would take years of Democratic government to bring the magical thinkers and fucking morons out of the leftwing woodwork. Clinton accomplished the job in months.

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