Will A Gas Tax Holiday Help?

copyright © 2008 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

Americans speak of the divide within this country.  Most accept the labels.  We are a nation of Red states and Blue regions.  People define themselves as Conservatives or Liberals.  

For some years now, the Bush administration has set upon a course of filling up our strategic oil reserves.  He was doing this long before Congress, in 2005, via its Energy Bill required the Bush administration to actually expand the reserve to 1 billion barrels of oil.  

I will not claim any expertise on this topic, nor on the types of oil being marketed, but I have been paying attention to this simply because of rising oil hence rising gasoline prices.  Perhaps others with some expertise might share some of their knowledge with us.

What I have heard estimated is that the US Gov't, via Bush, is purchasing about half of what is purchased in our county.  Further, I have heard that we put nothing but the finest of oil into our reserve, the light stuff, at top dollar paid on the open market.  Follow me over the fold, if you will...

Asthma has been on my mind lately, because a child in my extended family was recently diagnosed with it after going to the hospital for respiratory problems. The chronic disease is one of the leading causes of hospitalization in children.

In addition, at least 20 million American adults are estimated to have asthma.

Yesterday was World Asthma Day, in connection with Asthma Awareness Month.

Join me after the jump to read about five policies our society should implement, as well as five steps individuals can take, to reduce the incidence and severity of asthma in our households and across the country.

As the ad campaigns intensified before tonight's primaries, Hillary Clinton made the seriously Energy Dumb decision to promote a gas tax holiday as a way of demonstrating her supposed affinity for "the hard working American middle class."  Too bad the gas tax holiday won't help anybody's pocketbook but the oil companies. I guess Mrs. Clinton missed the memo from every single energy and economic policy expert out there! (Seriously, every one of them!)

While his opponent pandered for votes with empty promises of $30.00 in cash, Barack Obama, to his very strong credit, took the Energy Smart position and called the gas tax holiday proposal what it is: "a pander," a cheap trick to buy your vote.

Read on to watch Obama's clear, honest, Energy Smart response on the gas tax holiday (speaking on Meet the Press earlier this week)...

Hillary Clinton and John McCain support seriously Energy Dumb gas tax holiday

There's Energy Smart, like Mark Udall and this slate of Energy Smart US Congressional candidates.

Then there's seriously Energy Dumb, like touting a temporary gas tax holiday as an appropriate response to high gas and oil prices.  

Hillary Clinton solidly aligned herself last week with the Energy Dumb camp, vociferously supporting a gas tax holiday first proposed by Energy Dumber John McCain that amounts to blatant pandering for votes.  

Because I believe this is the defining issue and moment in the campaign, I have repeatedly posted what I and others think of the Clinton/McCain gas tax holiday idea.  From how dumb it is and destructive it could be (here and here), to how the media has difficulty rendering opinions in policy debates (here), to how Clinton is trying to paint experts as elite and opposition to her inane, DOA proposal as elitist (here), to how it puts Clinton squarely in the George Bush, faith-based way of making policy (here).

Today, both Hillary & Barack were on the Sunday morning news shows.  Now we can watch video where they both speak directly to the issue.

The last time I checked, Sen. Robert C. Byrd had not endorsed Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton for president, which I thought a good move considering how much I want him to keep focused on the election of his long-time state director Anne Barth to the House of Representatives in WV-02.

Why has the gas tax pander set me off so much?

Let me give you five reasons: Dominic, Louise, Catherine, Will and Oliver. They are ages 6, 4, 4, 2 and 9 months respectively. I happen to care about them a great deal.

If you were me, you would, too.

My nieces and nephews are truly children of the 21st Century. They will see the legacy of the environmental policies we enact...right now. They will also live to see the legacy of all that we don't do, as well.

We don't have time for a "gas tax holiday." We all know that's true. It's bad policy, it's DOA in Congress and it sends exactly the wrong message to the voters about future legislation we need to pass on energy and our environment. But, let me be clear, we have even less time for the politics implicit in a "gas tax holiday." And the reality of that, the political games being played by Bill and Hillary Clinton and their surrogates have only reconfirmed my opposition to the campaign of Hillary Clinton for President.

Let me explain...

I'm going to keep this short and sweet.  The Huffington Post has the story here

(Cross posted from the Drexel Democrats)

To put the McCain Energy Policy Watch on your blog, copy the following code into your blog (and close the embed tag).

embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://drexeldems.googlepages.com/McCainEnergyWatch.swf" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" height="240" width="180">
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On September 30th, 2000, a mere 38 days before the Presidential election, then Presidential hopeful George W. Bush put forth the energy policy. Barely a month before the election, and a full three months after Al Gore laid out his energy proposals, the American public hardly had a fair chance to evaluate the merits (or lack thereof) of his proposals. The question of whether the media or the public were interested in evaluating the merits of either proposal is another one entirely, with a probably depressing answer.

The Ohio state Senate unanimously passed legislation setting strong new renewable energy and energy efficiency standards last week, sending the bill on to Governor Ted Strickland for signature.  Sub. Senate Bill 221 establishes a 12.5% by 2025 renewable energy standard (RES), making the Buckeye State the 26th state in the nation to adopt a renewable energy requirement for electric utilities (see this previous post on numbers 24 and 25).  The legislation also includes a strong energy efficiency standard that is expected to result in a 22% cumulative reduction in energy usage by 2025.

Several Louisiana newspapers carried the Associated Press version of the Baton Rouge Advocate article on the Loren Scott & Associates study on the economic importance of the Port Fourchon energy complex.

In the style that has become expected of studies for hire, the report lays out the case for which it was produced, namely that getting more money to raise the road to the the port is a very important project. However, in making the case, it ignores the reason that the road must be raised — a sinking coast and rising sea levels.

While America's Fossil Fools seek to continue America's oil addiction, Abu Dhabi's Masdar Initiative is setting off on a serious path toward a 21st century, renewable energy future. Last month,Masdar and the Spanish firm Sener announced the formation of Torresol Energy, a joint venture to build large-scale concentrating solar plants (CSP) around the world.

Here in Kentucky's First Congressional District, we call our Congressman Exxon Eddie. It is a fitting moniker. Not only because Eddie owns a lot of Exxon and Chevron stock that are making him richer on the backs of the American consumer, but because Exxon Eddie uses his votes to be a shill for the Big Oil Industry. Lets look at some of these votes.

The GOP has decided who its opponent this November is most likely to be, judging by who they're targeting in their new oppo research feature:

[S]tay tuned Friday for a new RNC research document that rounds up Obama's week -- a "hypocrisy" primer, from public financing to off-message advisers to energy policy. Think they have a pretty good sense of who they're going to face?

The feature, called " This Week in Hypocrisy," appears on the GOP website (http://www.gop.com) and is sent out as a press release to news organizations. The talking points from Friday, and the general strategy embodied in them, are already starting to percolate through the right-wing blogs and the right-wing media.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

From the very beginning it’s been obvious that the overall strategy of the Clinton and Obama campaigns has been non-confrontational; critical, of course, but not in a way that even comes close in an attempt to fundamentally altering the American political landscape should they get the chance to implement policy.

End the war in Iraq, yes, but nothing about militarism, imperialism or the massive military-industrial complex.  Energy efficiency, yes, but no easily achievable total energy independence, no universal health insurance, no massive industrial or educational investments, no desperately needed tax reform, no calls for stringent corporate regulation, very little in the campaigns that truly threatens the status quo.

Ed Markey and Henry Waxman are no Fossil Fools!  The two Chairmen and Congressional Climate Champs released a new bill yesterday calling for a moratorium on any new coal plants that do not capture and sequester their greenhouse gas emissions.  

The ban would stay in place until Congress adopts and implements comprehensive global warming regulation and is designed to addresses the largest new source of global warming pollution — new coal-fired power plants that are being built without any controls on their global warming emissions.

Cross-posted from WattHead - Energy News and Commentary...

Thanks to some researchers at the University of California, we now know that people actually use more energy during Daylight Saving Time (DST).