Senator “Too Busy Campaigning” is looking for a cheap date

I’ve noticed that Hillary’s ideas are often derided as “stupid” by the OFB. In fact, my earliest memory of sitting up and noticing her campaign was while reading something at the Washington Monthly and a commenter condemned her stupidity for suggesting a freeze on adjustable-rate mortgages & foreclosure moratorium. This was back in December when a lot of people were still thinking that the housing bubble might be popping but, we’d probably have a “soft landing”. We don’t hear THAT talk anymore.

But, apparently her ideas are still stupid. This time it’s the Gas Tax Holiday. Which everyone from millionaire reporters to creative Obama Blogger Boyz knows will solve exactly nothing. The Gas Tax Holiday will do nothing for global warming or our dependence on foreign oil, will delay needed highway repairs and will only save an average of $30.00.

hmmmm. Oh Really?

Here’s a quote from one of Hillary’s press releases announcing the Gas Tax Holiday. :

American families are hurting now. They need a President who will focus every day on ensuring that they can make ends meet. That is why today, Hillary is discussing her aggressive plan to address the problem of skyrocketing gas prices. Hillary’s plan includes:

• Imposing a windfall profits tax on oil companies and using the money to suspend the gas tax for the peak summer months;
• Closing $7.5 billion in oil and gas loopholes and using the funds to provide assistance for lower-income families to pay their energy and grocery bills;
• Cracking down on speculation by energy traders and market manipulation in oil and gas markets that are driving up the price of oil by at least $20 a barrel;
• Pressuring OPEC to increase oil production, including by filing a WTO complaint against OPEC countries
• Stopping new additions to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and standing ready to release oil to counter market spikes and reduce volatility.

This plan builds on Hillary’s long-term plan to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and address global warming. She has committed moving America towards energy independence by cutting foreign oil imports by two-thirds from 2030 projected levels, more than 10 million barrels per day.

Checkout the bits I put in bold — She is clearly talking about short-term financial relief while at the same time keeps her eye on the goal of finding long-term solutions to our energy problems. And that windfall profit’s tax would mean those critical highway repairs will still happen right on time. (whispering) Could it open the door for a long-term windfall profit tax?

But what about the money? Isn’t this pure pandering? $30 isn’t worth anything these days, is it? (snort)

Lambert (My Secret Love) says it best:

As alert reader gqmartinez points out, $30 is a month’s worth of food, if you need to live on ramen noodles. And as alert reader BDBlue points out, it’s 15 weeks worth of school lunches for one of your kids.

I’ve done that math, because after the dot com bubble burst, that was the situation I was faced with, and I was lucky, because my situation only lasted for months. Except I can top gqmartinez: My survival formula was dollar store spaghetti sauce. You can get two days out of a jar, and even with spaghetti, I could still get change back from my thirty! That was before things got really bad, and I went to the cans of generic pork and beans, 4 for a dollar. Plus, since by that time the gas and the electricity were off, I could heat the beans with the hotplate after stringing an extension cord out into the hall and plugging it into a socket I’d screwed into the light for the purpose. Too risky to boil water that way, I felt. What if I heard someone on the stairs and had to cut the power when the spaghetti was only half boiled?

$0.25 a day.

And Lambert doesn’t quit there, finding this useful quote from Salon:

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.

Meanwhile, Obama is looking for a cheap date and $30 would pretty much cover it:

Barack Obama dropped in on a busy coffee shop in downtown Durham, N.C., on Monday and bought 15 slices of cake, announcing to those crowding around him, “I’m treating you.”

The bill for 15 slices — six of vanilla pound cake, seven of lemon pound cake and two red velvet — came to $26.95. “Oh, I can handle that,” he said, “You guys are a cheap date.” The Democratic presidential candidate handed out plates to patrons and several reporters after paying the bill with cash. He stuffed a $10 bill in the tip cup.

“Can I sit down and have my cake?” he asked . . . .

I swear, he really said that.

(Tags stolen from Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)