Clinton’s gas tax demagoguery

Here’s Dmitry on Clinton’s (and McCain’s) plan to suspend the gas tax during the summer:

First, Clinton’s gas tax plan is regressive, meaning its benefits increase with income. The poorest people obviously don’t drive and therefore reap nothing from the proposal; those slightly better off do drive, but can’t afford to spend much on gas, tax or no tax; and those who already tend to spend most on driving will benefit most from the repeal of the gas tax, since they’re the commodity’s prime consumers. To propose a regressive tax cut and then turn around and use “elitist” as a pejorative is ignorant at best, dishonest at worst.

Senator Clinton is certainly not ignorant, but ads like this one suggest that she is more than a little bit dishonest (CNN):

Hoping the proposal to suspend the gas tax will resonate with
working class voters in Indiana and North Carolina, the Clinton
campaign launched a last-minute ad in those states Monday that sharply
attacks rival Barack Obama for not supporting the measure.

“What has happened to Barack Obama?” an announcer states in the new 30 second spot, among the campaign’s most bruising to date.

“He is attacking Hillary’s plan to give you a break on gas prices because he doesn’t have one,” the ad’s announcer also says.

The ad comes on the heels of a weekend marked by heated
back-and-forth between both campaigns over the issue. Obama’s campaign
launched an ad Sunday that called Clinton’s proposal to suspend the gas
tax a “classic Washington gimmick” and argues that oil companies will
keep the extra proceeds from the suspension of the gas tax and will not
pass the savings onto drivers.

The Clinton campaign countered that Obama is siding with the oil
companies over hard working voters increasingly pinched by the price of
gas.

“Siding with the oil companies?” Here’s a quote from Newsweek:

But as we pointed out last week,
economists say that Clinton’s plan isn’t likely to save any money at
all. Lower gasoline prices would simply trigger demand, but since
refineries are already working at full capacity in the summer months,
the supply of gasoline (at least in the short term) is pretty much
already fixed. Any price reductions that might appear initially would
quickly be wiped out by the increased demand that would lead consumers
to bid up the price of gas until prices returned to their pre-tax
holiday levels. That means that the 18.4 cents per gallon that drivers
currently pay in federal taxes would instead be transferred to the pockets of oil companies.

Frankly, suspending the gas tax and redirecting that money into the pockets of oil companies, is quite possibly the best thing you could do for the industry.

Imagine if we can applied the “ignorance is strength” logic that the Clinton campaign is employing to everything. For example, the 1953 coup against the Iranian president:

Random adviser – “Hey, the Iranians just elected some guy who wants to nationalize the oil companies.”

Other random adviser – “I heard.”

Random adviser – “Do you know what we should do? Safeguard our corporate interests by using the C.I.A to sponsor a coup against the president and install an American-supported military dictatorship.”

Other random adviser – “Um, that doesn’t seem like such a hot idea.”

Random adviser – “Why not?”

Other random adviser – “You know, we could end up creating a virulent strain of anti-Americanism which could spread to the entire gulf region and eventually encourage certain groups to launch devastating terrorist attacks against us.”

Random adviser – “So, I guess you just hate America, eh?”

Yep. That’s about right.