Why don’t you people stop arguing about the economics and work out the math for yourselves? How much money will you personally save from a 5% reduction in gas prices?

I crunched some numbers yesterday and here’s what I found: I’m planning a trip to Niagara Falls with my girlfriend this summer, and the gas tax holiday would save us less than $15 on the trip.

If your commute is far enough that you fill up your car once a week, you will save about $35 in three months. Not $35 per month, $35 total.

Does this chump change really sound like it’s worth costing the Feds $10 billion in revenue? I say it’s not worth it; you may disagree, but at least work it out for yourself.

Don’t trust the economists, Susie, trust the candidate who’s been caught lying so many times it isn’t even funny. The man who wrote the article isn’t any more qualified to evaluate economic policy than any other member of the public.

What’s most disturbing about this is how otherwise intelligent people are taken in by a charlatan like Hillary Clinton. If the Democrats choose her, I’m going for Ralph Nader or the Libertarians. Even McCain would be better. At least he’s morally qualified for the office.

that doesn’t change the fact that on the tax holiday issue in 2008 obama is right and clinton is wrong. being wrong on a similar issue in the past doesn’t mean you are wrong on that same issue for all time, especially when you change your position to the right one.

“just curious - why does obama get kudos for his “mature adult” behavior changing his view on the gas tax but clinton gets endlessly derided for her position on iraq?”

This seems pretty apples to oranges. Obama took the right position against the gas tax pander, possibly as a result of learning from past experience. Good for him. Clinton took the wrong position on the Iraq authorization and has refused to admit it was a mistake, or that anyone could have responsibly assumed Bush would fuck stuff up with the power he was granted. Then she went and voted for Kyle-Lieberman

and edwards gets a pass on that but not clinton?

Edwards wrote a NYT op-ed a long time ago calling the vote a mistake and making peace with the anti-war movement. Clinton has not, and has been battling the anti-war left as hard as (maybe harder than?) she has the pro-war right.

and obama’s not the only one proposing windfall taxes on the oil companies

Correct. They both are. But Clinton proposed offsetting that tax on the Oil companies with a giveaway to the oil companies. As Krugman put it, “pointless, not evil” except that the odds of President Bush signing a windfall profits tax into law are slim and none.

This information is all readily available in the public domain.

Then we get a long detailed post on his credentials … that clearly shows

… he is not an economist or research analyst

… with absolutely no attempt to refute his support for Clinton.

Yup posting lots and lots of totally irrelevant information sure convinces me he’s fully and completely qualified to comment on something he has no qualifications to comment on.

Maybe that was intended to be funny? Otherwise - just sad.

Of course, everything I think I know about this comes from the same old corruptable sources, so it could all be hogwash.

IIRC, Indiana HAD a state gas-tax holiday a few years ago; it would be interesting to see what the result of that was. But even so, the supply situation has tightened considerably over the past couple of years, so there’s good reason to doubt that a gas-tax holiday would benefit consumers.

And really: it would be much, MUCH easier to get the gas-tax holiday passed than to get the compensating profits tax passed. In fact, I’d expect the GOP to let the gas-tax holiday sail right through congress, but obstruct and use a profits tax as a rhetorical club for the general election (”See! They want to raise taxes!”).

So please explain: how does a gas-tax holiday increase supply or reduce demand?

and obama’s not the only one proposing windfall taxes on the oil companies.

George Frost is a member of CivicActions and serves as its General Counsel, advising the firm on the full panopoly of legal issues, as well as taking an increasingly active role in client development and strategy.

George worked for more than a decade as a reporter and editor for a variety of “old media” publications, including the San Francisco Examiner, Anchorage Daily News, and Newsweek. Upon obtaining his law degree from the University of California Hastings College of the Law, he joined a San Francisco law firm (later merged with Perkins, Coie), where he specialized in complex litigation, IP and media law. Among the firm’s clients were the Hearst Corporation, Gannett, NBC Dateline, as well as various “new media” startups. In 1998, George was named “Rainmaker Associate” by National Jurist’s Associates Magazine.

George left Perkins, Coie in 1999 and joined with Spencer Hosie to form the successful boutique law firm Hosie Frost Large & McArthur, where his practice focused on antitrust and other complex business litigation, IP, and media/new media matters. Recent major representative matters include: State of Louisiana v. Chevron U.S.A., a royalty fraud trial on behalf of the State of Louisiana that resulted in a $111 million jury verdict against Chevron, and Burst.com v Microsoft Corp., an antitrust and IP action in which he assisted in obtaining a $60 million settlement with Microsoft. George recently resigned as a partner at the firm and is continuing a solo practice advising startups on IP matters.

George has been an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Francisco Law School, where he taught media and new media law, and recently served as special counsel to the California Senate Judiciary Committee. He remains active in First Amendment and other issues.

“HE’S A FLIP-FLOPPER!!!!”

really, its priceless.

and trolly mctrollerson, oh great defender of the white race and proletariat, we still await your explanation of HRC’s famous “screw ‘em” comments…

This appears to be the best response Clinton supporters could muster. It’s pathetic.

Oh and that supposed “gottcha” that some folks seem to think they have “discovered” about Obama voting for such a program in Illinois? He talked about that and it’s failure to produce results as a reason for his current position. See, that’s what mature adults do when they make a mistake - they admit the mistake and learn from it (sort of like Edwards did with his vote to authorize the Iraq war). I realize that’s hard to recognize this after so many years of Bush-Clinton-Bush, but it’s time to look beyond the entitled class for our leadership.

Obama has proposed a program that gives many times MORE money back, especially to the poorest folks:

“Supports windfall profits tax on oil selling at or over $80 per barrel. Proceeds from the penalty would go toward relief mechanisms for consumers, funding and expanding LIHEAP”

Hmmm, seems like someone poor enough to need LIHEAP might prefer hundreds of dollars towards their oil bill over that $30 from the “gas tax holiday”.

Why do Clinton supporters want to piss ion the poor people like that?

OK - this time Senator Obama, if we put your silly tag on all the pumps across the country can we count on your vote again?

Ignoring the fact that he previously voted for this type of measure, you simply can’t ignore Obama’s comments on the working class ‘bitter’ people who ‘cling’ to guns and their religion and then piled on by Axelrod who gets on NPR and says that the working class white people don’t vote for Democrats anyway…it’s no accident that Obama lets everyone else pander to the populist issue (remember that this concept of gas tax holiday was originally floated by McCain).

Obama is intent on pissing off enough voters in this election to make his collapse legendary.

The desperate nature of her extreme pandering and the utter hypocrisy of her new “I want to be more and more and more like McCaine” ploy is a bit frightening. She’s not dumb enough to not realize that she is pushing an idea that will never work, but she pushes away in order to buy votes from unsuspecting shills.

She does not even appear to be making any real effort to even get the bill she introduced passed. I wonder if she and Bill privately laugh at the voters and contributers they are conning with this act.

Additionally this report scatters caveats throughout about market conditions and includes stated assumptions around supply and demand forces not acting independently to drive price changes. They certainly have not studied anything even remotely approaching the price drivers from the rapidly increasing demands in China and other developing nations.

If that’s not enough, they also state several waffles around the fact they they used limited time frames and list other weaknesses in their comparative data sets.