Alrighty! On special request from casperr I am not only
- Handing over the DIDS for campaign shout-outs and bragging rights but
- Starting this week, you will get TWO chances to crow crow crow about your 2008 Campaign related DIDS - Tueday evening circa 7PM EST, or Sunday evening circa 9PM EST... which is right now.
Other DIDS and chat are welcome, as always. However, given the hard work put forward by so many Kossacks to get America working and back to work by electing more progressives and Democrats (among them, that Barack Obama fellow) I agreed with casperr that it was time to provide a venue for you, the organizers, the phonebankers, the canvassers, the donors, the voters, the cool and righteous peeps out there doing it, to have your chance to take a bow, to pat yourselves on the back and to just take a deep breath and say, gosh darn it,
Damn RIGHT I Did Something!!!
The floor is yours, folks. :)
Useful Linky Goodness - from Casperr
Oh, my special DIDS du jour
I figured out today a way to take advantage of the fact that oil prices are currently very sensitives to movements in the foreign exchange value of the U.S. dollar.
The big financial worry right now is the value of the dollar will sink, the price of oil in dollars will soar, and the petro-economy we love to wish would just quietly go away would go away with a very loud, unfortunate crash because unlike other civilized societies the United States had no backup plan attall for the absence of readily affordable gasoline fuel for private automobiles.
So, my idea was to finance this bailout (we'll table the particulars of oversight and who the heck qualifies it for now) with 30 years of a 1.5% Federal tax on gas increase.
That translates at the moment to a whopping 6 cents more per gallon in most areas of the country.
On the expectation that fuel prices will increase in future starting at an average 9.1% a year and leveling off over time as demand decreases, that means we'll cover the deal.
Not bad financing. Wish I could get a 1.5% mortgage. Must be nice.
Of course, as the expectation is that in nominal dollars oil and gas will cost a bit more in 2038 than it does today. I cap it at about $26/gallon on my total SWAG chart.
Point is, this move shows how relatively easy it is to do things like, oh, balance the Federal budget.
And when we demonstrate things like this, it bolsters confidence in the dollar, which due to its role in the pricing of oil means
- the dollar is worth morth, so
- oil is cheaper by the barrel and
- things like gasoline, milk and orange juice and a host of other goodies are cheaper too and
- if you have to import them like you might from Brazil if you like orange juice a stronger dollar means less foreign debt and
- last I checked being in hock to other countries is half the dilemma right now.
Of course, it'd be easier if we did not have to give our 6 pennies to the gallon to billionaires, but that's another issue which the tens of thousands of phone calls to the Congress critters are taking care of. I hope.
Of course, as I was warned in conversations today - there are people who would rather pay $22/gallon, now, than suffer a 1.5% tax hike, on principle.
Guess what?
They might get their change.
Oh, in case you are wondering I think this bailout plan is about the worst idea they could have come up and if the reactionaries and the radicals are on the same page on something that means all us folks in between probably should take a clue - it's not a great idea.
And that's my PolitiDIDS. Granted, it's not phonebanking but it's what I got. :)
