More stupid gas tax politics

The gas tax issue really gets me worked up, because it's one of those things that the general public just might get fooled by. No one likes taxes, much less taxes on gas, the price of which has skyrocketed. So when politicians talk about suspending taxes on gas, it strikes me as a position that could gain some traction with ordinary people.

The only problem is that it is the very definition of a cynical pander, as I explained in this post. Steve Benen is also pretty annoyed:

I just find it hard to believe we’re still talking about this obvious nonsense.

With gas prices reaching a national average of four dollars a gallon — a record high — John McCain is planning to resurrect his call for a national gas tax holiday, which became a staple of his stump speech in late April and early May.

A McCain aide told CNN’s Dana Bash on Monday that the Arizona senator planned to plug the gas tax holiday in public statements throughout the day as a message to voters that he understands the plight of working families in a tough economy.

Before a fundraiser in Richmond, Virginia on Monday, McCain mentioned the gas tax holiday in remarks to a smaller event for about 40 high-dollar donors. “That was derided by Sen. Obama and others as a gimmick,” McCain said, but added that working people and truckers would appreciate it.

McCain apparently conceded that his proposal wouldn’t solve the problem, but according to the CNN report, McCain believes “low-income families could save some extra cash to pay for their children’s school supplies this fall, or perhaps treat themselves to a nice dinner.”

This is just too ridiculous for words. McCain wants to eliminate the 18.4-cent a gallon federal gas tax over the summer. This would cost the Highway Trust Fund between $9 billion and $11 billion. McCain hasn’t said whether he’d just increase the deficit to make up the difference, or just let the transportation money disappear, costing thousands of jobs.

And what would consumers get in return? Nothing. Putting aside the volatility in oil prices, and the fact that the cost of a glass of gas will probably go up over the summer regardless of federal taxes, Americans won’t actually be in a position to save any money if the gas tax is temporarily repealed. McCain may not be the sharpest crayon in the box, but he almost certainly realizes this.

Obama needs to hammer him on this issue. He needs to make it very clear that all McCain is proposing is more profits for the oil companies, and less funds for the maintenance of America's decrepit infrastructure.

And what is McCain's position on gas prices? (other than the brilliant gas tax "holiday")

John McCain Will Help Americans Hurting From High Gasoline And Food Costs.
Americans need relief right now from high gas prices. John McCain will act
immediately to reduce the pain of high gas prices.

How exactly this will be accomplished is not explained. Really, most of McCain's policy briefs are like this. "John McCain will act immediately to fix ______." How? Doesn't matter, just trust him.

In contrast, check out Obama's detailed policy pages on every issue.

Blogging? What does that mean, anyway?

From Ezra Klein:

Back in the early days of blogging, the medium was set apart by style as much as venue. It was shorter, punchier, almost never reported or edited. Blogs read very differently from magazines, and even more differently from newspapers. For some blogs, that remains true. But the last year has seen the rise of reported campaign blogs (and other reported blogs, but I'm going to use the campaign example here). Marc Ambinder, Ben Smith, The Caucus, the Trail -- blogs written by serious political reporters, some of them in a style approximating newspaper articles, all of them dedicated to gathering and disseminating new information (not commentary) about the race. Blogs are, increasingly, just a platform. They're set apart by speed, comments, lack of space constraints, ability to embed video, hyperlinks, etc. They're not set apart by a particular type of content. The terms "blogging" or "bloggers" are of almost no analytical use, as they don't describe anything more specific than "writers" or "writing."

Blogs have indeed come a long way, and they are increasingly a medium rather than a particular form of content. The rise of reported blogs further blurs the line between the mediums. There really isn't any meaningful difference between what Ben Smith does and what more traditional political reporters do.

In any case, even blogs that are strictly limited to commentary (like mine) are often more informative and penetrating than what passes for serious reporting. Bloggers like Glenn Greenwald and digby have done an excellent job over the past few years of exposing the corruption and laziness of the MSM, and it's a good thing that the media giants are losing their monopoly on news and analysis.

Religulous

Oh boy, lock the doors and shutter the windows. Bill Maher's making a movie about religion:



This movie is worth it just to see all the stupid red-faced outrage it will inevitably spark.

Her concession

Credit where it's due: good speech. She struck the right notes, and unambiguously threw her support behind Obama, even co-opting some of his best rhetoric.

Now we'll see how much of this bitterness will wash away. Her job isn't finished. She needs to get out there and campaign, along with her husband. There's a lot of people out there who are still too angry about the way things turned out. There's a lot of people who, thanks to Hillary's divisive strategy up to this point, really think Obama somehow stole the nomination.

But this was a good first step.

Hillary's debt

Supposedly, it amounts to $30 million.

Naturally, the politic thing to do would be for Obama to ask his supporters to chip in and help her pay off this massive debt load. It would be smart in that it would help her get on board with his campaign, and would make many of Hillary's supporters more favorably disposed to him.

However. And this is a big however. There is one person responsible for this debt, and one person alone. Hillary Clinton. It was she who chose to fight on to the bitter end. It was she who chose to loan herself $11 million. And now Obama is supposed to help pay for something that actively hurt him? Obama is supposed to help pay for what is now being used in RNC attack ads? Obama is supposed to help pay Mark fucking Penn's massive salary? Fuck that.

The Clintons are rich. As in, really rich. She should just take a loss on the $11 million, and pay off the rest from their massive personal fortune. It's even a good moral lesson (something she is sorely in need of): quit once you've lost.

But no, I fully expect Obama to help her out. He's been maneuvered into a position where he kind of has to do something for her; he doesn't want to give her VP, but this might do the trick. Just makes me mad, that's all.

Rockin' right-wingers!

This post from Ed at ginandtacos had me in stitches:

2. John Miller of the National Review Online brings us “Rockin’ the Right: the 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs.” My first thought was, how in the hell are they going to wring 50 songs out of this? I mean, we can count on one hand the number of rock musicians who are NRO types. But John got around that pretty easily - by taking songs written by liberals about things that have nothing to do with conservatism and re-interpreting the lyrics! I’m sure that when the Who wrote “Won’t Get Fooled Again” or Living Colour wrote “Cult of Personality” they did so with Jonah Goldberg’s talking points in mind. The highlights: noted conservative Bob Dylan at #12 and an extraordinarily curious interpretation of the Plant Doing Way Too Much Acid lyrics to “Battle of Evermore” at #25.

This is possibly the most embarassing thing that anyone has ever written. If Miller finished the piece by revealing that he still wears Underoos and that he blew his bunkmate at summer camp in 1971, it still would not be any more humiliating. A crack team of humiliation artists, training and working exclusively in the medium of humiliation since birth, could not devise a way for John Miller to have more thoroughly humiliated himself. Wagonhalt. Pure wagonhalt.

Too bad I can’t find a video of Arnold’s election night victory party in 2004, as he stood on stage with dozens of his fellow millionaires singing “We’re Not Gonna Take It” (……anymooooooooorrrrrre). It would fit here.

Heh. The Right does have a bit of a problem with pop culture.

Well, there's always Ted Nugent. (Fair warning: Sean Hannity's a total piece of shit in that clip)

The Cadman affair

There's been some strange developments in the bizarre case of Chuck Cadman, the late independent MP, whom opponents of Stephen Harper allege was offered a life insurance policy by the Tories in exchange for a crucial swing vote to bring down the Liberal government, all while he lay dying of cancer in hospital. Pretty morbid, and if true, it would raise significant concerns about the ethics of the Harper gang. The Tories claim that the only offer made was to help Cadman with campaign expenses should he decide to run as a Conservative.

Anyway, in the past couple days, an audio interview of Stephen Harper emerged in which he said, "I don't know the details. I know that um, there were discussions, um. But this is not for publication?", referring to the alleged offer to Cadman, and the Liberals have used this to claim that Harper was at least aware of a financial offer.

The only problem is that the Tories say the tape was doctored, and that Harper's answer was actually in reference to a different question. The interview was made by BC journalist Tom Zytaruk, who recently wrote a biography of Mr. Cadman, and he denies any attempt at manipulation.

I honestly don't know what to believe, but it doesn't seem as though the tape has proof that Harper knew about any life insurance offer to Cadman, nor does it seem that the tape was intentionally doctored to smear Harper, and the Government may be being a little over-defensive on this.

I often criticize US politics for being obsessed with media-driven narratives that have little relevance to the real issues that people care about, but in all fairness, I think Canadian politics is even less issue driven. Since the various parties are not as starkly defined by ideology, there is inevitably less emphasis on policy. Everyone knows that the Conservatives are not going to outlaw abortion or get rid of universal health care. The moderate views of most Canadians make such drastic action politically impossible. Likewise, everyone knows that the Liberals can be trusted to take a middling stance on practically every issue. As for the NDP...well, they'll never get elected.

What this amounts to, especially with minority governments, is much greater concern about conduct, rather than policy. The Cadman affair is only one example; the Harper government has also been criticized (quite rightly) for undue secrecy and a confrontational relationship with the press. Likewise, the previous Liberal government was brought down by a corruption scandal that was quite unrelated to any partisan issue.

More Iron Man and Batman!

Hee hee, I love these clips.



And yeah, just for the record, I liked Iron Man. But TDK will kick ass. Only 43 more days!

The fruits of torture

A few weeks ago, all charges were dropped against Mohammed al-Qahtani, a man described by the US as the 20th hijacker on 9/11. How could this be?

The US military gave no reason for its decision.

But lawyers for the defendant say they believe the charges were dropped because he "was tortured" under interrogation.

*****

In 2006, he recanted accusations he had made against fellow detainees of having links to al-Qaeda.

His lawyer told Time magazine the statements had been extracted under torture. The Saudi was reportedly submitted to stress positions, sleep deprivation and humiliation at Guantanamo.

Officials said he had been subjected to a harsh interrogation authorised by former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Oh, shit! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is yet another reason why you don't torture people. Suddenly, any "evidence" that you gain through it is no good! Isn't that crazy? Whoops....

But wait, there's more!

The decision could have implications for the other five suspects, whose lawyers claim that similar treatment was meted out to them, the BBC's Adam Brookes reports from Washington.

The five suspects still facing trial at Guantanamo include the alleged mastermind of the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a bona-fide Super Terrorist. Just look at him:




Isn't he nasty looking? Just look at all the things he admitted to under "questioning":

1. The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City that killed six people and injured more than 1,000.
2. The 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington using four hijacked commercial airliners. Nearly 3,000 people were killed.
3. A failed "shoe bomber" operation to bring down two US commercial airliners.
4. The October 2002 attack in Kuwait that killed two US soldiers.
5. The nightclub bombing in Bali, Indonesia that killed 202 people.
6. A plan for a "second wave" of attacks on major US landmarks after 9/11 attacks. Alleged targets included the Library Tower in Los Angeles, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Plaza Bank building in Seattle and the Empire State Building in New York.
7. Plots to attack oil tankers and US naval ships in the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Gibraltar and in Singapore.
8. A plan to blow up the Panama Canal.
9. Plans to assassinate former US presidents including Jimmy Carter.
10. A plot to blow up suspension bridges in New York.
11. A plan to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago by burning fuel trucks beneath or around it.
12. Plans to "destroy" Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben in London.
13. A planned attack on "many" nightclubs in Thailand targeting US and British
citizens.
14. A plot targeting the New York Stock Exchange and other US financial targets after 9/11.
15. A plan to destroy buildings in Elat, Israel, by using planes flying from Saudi Arabia.
16. Plans to destroy US embassies in Indonesia, Australia and Japan.
17. Plots to destroy Israeli embassies in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and Australia.
18. Surveying and financing an attack on an Israeli El-Al flight from Bangkok.
19. Sending several "mujahideen" into Israel to survey "strategic targets" with the
intention of attacking them.
20. The November 2002 suicide bombing of a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, frequented by Israelis. At least 14 people were killed.
21. The failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet leaving Mombasa airport with a surface-to-air missile on the same day as the hotel bombing.
22. Plans to attack US targets in South Korea, such as US military bases and nightclubs frequented by US soldiers.
23. Providing financial support for a plan to attack US, British and Jewish targets in Turkey.
24. Surveillance of US nuclear power plants in order to attack them.
25. A plot to attack Nato's headquarters in Europe.
26. Planning and surveillance in a 1995 plan (the "Bojinka Operation") to bomb 12 American passenger jets, most on trans-Pacific Ocean routes.
27. The planned assassination attempt against then-US President Bill Clinton during a mid-1990s trip to the Philippines.
28. "Shared responsibility" for a plot to kill Pope John Paul II while he visited the Philippines.
29. Plans to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
30. An attempt to attack a US oil company in Sumatra, Indonesia, "owned by the Jewish former [US] Secretary of State Henry Kissinger".
31. The beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped in Pakistan in January 2002 while researching Islamist militancy.

Wow, it's a good thing they caught him and stopped his reign of terror! Except....the "questioning" may have included a little torturing, possibly nullifying his confession. Ruh-roh!

Isn't the Bush administration brilliant?

UPDATE: Well, it seems KSM is hell-bent on getting the death penalty, so maybe this won't be as much of an issue.

Why is food so damn expensive?

Unless you live under a rock and subsist on phosphorous or something, you probably know that prices for basic foodstuffs have skyrocketed over the last year and a half. Staple foods, like wheat, rice and corn have doubled in price or even worse. There have been shortages and riots in many places across the world, as people struggle to get what they need. This Economist article from December has a pretty good run-down of the facts.

So, back to Econ 101. What causes a good to rise in price? There are three main possibilities, and in fact, all are at work here:

1. Increased demand. The world's population is increasing, and in much of the Third World, especially in growing economies like China, people are turning more and more toward a Western style diet, high in meat (which is highly inefficient compared to a more tradional Third World diet).

2. Speculation. Speculators believe the price of food will continue to rise, and therefore they bid up prices on the futures markets in the pursuit of short-term profit. They will never take delivery of the food produce they are bidding on, and thus their only goal is to make a little money in the short-term. This has led to calls from various NGOs for increased regulation in these markets.

3. Restricted supply. Much has been made of the bio-fuels industry and how it affects food production. What ethanol subsidies have done is take vast amounts of farmland that used to be used in food production and diverted it to bio-fuel production. Not only is otherwise-edible corn being wasted in this way, but it is also diverting land resources.

It takes nearly as much gasoline to produce this fuel as it purports to save. And the carbon output of ethanol is even higher than regular gasoline by the end of the production process (graph retrieved from Wikipedia):



(click the graph to see it more clearly)

There are other studies that say US ethanol does, in fact, reduce carbon emissions slightly, but the main point is that this is no silver bullet, and many of the bio-fuels listed here do nothing at all to help the environment or reduce the effects of global warming. And at the same time, this industry is starving poor people all across the world.

The US is the world's largest producer of corn, and thus, Bush's ill-advised ethanol initiatives have done the worst harm. But as the graph shows they are not the only country investing in this red herring. Canada has also put billions of dollars into ethanol subsidies.

So food prices are rising because of increased demand, future market speculators, and reduced production resulting largely from the bio-fuels industry. There's nothing we can do about the first reason, other than to change our diets, but the latter two are fixable.