Recently in politics Category

I've been talking with Timber about this lately and I saw this op-ed piece by Thomas Friedman in today's paper talking about need for a gas tax.  The gas tax (in my mind) would directly do a few things:

1.  Keep the price of gas at the pump high enough so that people are willing and able to take public transportation and/or user alternatives to the one person per car commute.
2.  Take that money from the tax and put it towards public transportation and alternative energy research and development.

Indirectly I think the gas tax would do a few additional things:

1.  Get people to think about gas mileage when it comes to buying cars (which they don't do when gas is cheap).
2.  Send less money to the countries that we buy oil from.
3.  Keep people thinking about energy policy and national security every time they fill up at the pump.

I can think of a few arguments against the gas tax, and I have responses for them.

1.  The government should not be trying to modify our behavior through taxes.  My Response:  This one is easy, the government already does this through crv taxes, federal income taxes, state income taxes, sales taxes, cigarette taxes, etc...  The precedent for the gas tax has already been set.
2.  There are struggling families out there that can't survive if we have a gas tax.  My Response:  This argument can be used against any existing tax, and the various government entities don't seem too concerned about it, so my lazy argument is that with all taxes, some people will come up just short.

The core problem, which is why we need a gas tax, is this:  We, Americans, are very price driven people.  When the prices of gas was high, we did change our driving habits, opting for less trips, more gas efficient vehicles, public transit, working from home, etc...  But with gas prices going WAY down from their highs we are starting to forget about all that stuff.  And I'm worried that we are going to go back to our big, bad, SUV driving ways.  If you don't think that will happen, look at the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis.  If we forget these lessons yet again we have no one to blame but ourselves. 

This morning John McCain surprised a lot of people by picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. In the coming weeks and months you will no doubt find out a lot more about her. My small contribution is this link. It is a link to a video podcast that I subscribe to called Alaska HDTV. The host goes on different hikes around Alaska and talks about them and shows them. In this specific episode he goes to Juneau (Alaska's Capital) to do a hike to the Mendenhal Glacier, but when the weather turns bad he decides to walk around downtown instead. He goes over to the Governor's mansion and meets up with Sarah Palin and walks to work with her. So enjoy the episode, learn more about Sarah Palin, and send Scott any comments and feedback you might have about his video podcast.

I stumbled upon this article today about how the Senate has voted to halt putting oil into the US Strategic Oil Reserve.  One good quote about the reasoning for this was:

"Why on earth should we be putting oil underground at a time of record high prices?"  - Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.)

I can understand that quote if you are also going to do other things like reduce consumption, scale down military operations, etc...  But they are not going to do anything else.

On the surface of it, you might think this is a good idea.  After all, the basic law of economics (supply and demand) dictates that if demand falls and supply remains constant then the price should go down.  But the facts of this case lead me to believe that there will be no significant price drop in gas (what we Americans complain about every day) because:

1.  Overall, we Americans consume 21 M barrels of oil a day.
2.  We had been putting 70 k barrels into the strategic oil reserve dialy.
3.  We currently have 702 M barrels of oil in our reserve.

So we are putting away 0.33 % of what we consume every day.  Pretty small I'd say.  Also, if our oil supply ran out today, and we kept current levels of consumption, we could last for 33 days.  I seem to remember an old adage about how you are supposed to save up 3 months of living expense in case your cash flow ever stops.  We are only 1/3 of the way there for our oil. 

I think this stoppage by the Senate is short sighted (gotta love election years) and is a mistake for the following reasons:
1.  It is not going to make gas prices go down in any measurable way, which is probably the goal.
2.  It leaves us with only a month's supply in our strategic oil reserve, and that should really continue to grow since it is highly likely that our supplies will be interrupted as the price of oil gets higher and higher because we will see more and more conflicts around access to oil.. 

I am a man of my word, and I finally accepted my punishment for not losing 5 pounds in the month of April. My self-imposed punishment was to donate $50 to the Hillary Clinton campaign. In my opinion this is worse than setting the $50 on fire. It is an utter waste and it is going toward a cause that I oppose. Grrrr.... I have been amazed at the feedback I've gotten from people about this. Some think I should just double down for the month of May, others think I shouldn't keep my word. In the end I have to keep my word and accept my public humiliation. So here it is. I don't like it, but I am taking my medicine and working toward losing 5 lbs for the month of May.

Well the pandering has begun.  Not too long ago John McCain suggested a holiday from the Federal gas taxes for the summer.  The summer is when most Americans take the majority of their vacations, and a lot of those vacations are road trips.  Here are a few reasons why I think it is a bad idea:
1.  Getting rid of the gas tax while not making up for it anywhere else will cause the budget deficit to get even worse.
2.  Once you get rid of the gas tax you will probably find it very hard to bring it back.
3.  It may not cause the gas prices to go down.  It would be a great way for the oil and gas companies to raise their prices even more without consumers complaining too much.
4.  You would be better off slapping the oil and gas companies with the profits tax that you threatened them with multiple times when you had congressional hearings about their record profits.
5.  None of this fixes the underlying problem that we Americans consume too much oil and need to work on alternatives to get to work, school, vacation or whatever.  If we keep the prices low there is virtually no chance that people will change their habits away from cars.
6.  No one seems to be talking about how the price of everything is going up fairly quickly.  By everything I mean airfares, gas, oil, food (rice, wheat, etc...), ice cream, clothes, cars, etc...  When the price of everything goes up fairly quickly that is generally referred to as a high rate of inflation.  I'm guessing we are going to see our inflation rate take a hike for 2008.  We are generally used to seeing high inflation in unstable countries or countries that manage their finances poorly.  Oh wait, we qualify for that second part.  Doh!  If we don't see a significantly higher inflation rate for 2008 then that means the accountants have buried it somewhere.

So overall I think it would be a bad idea to get rid of the gasoline tax for the summer.  If you want to get consumption down, raise the tax.  People will change their habits.  I started changing my driving habits back when gas first hit $3 a gallon.  But even at $4 a gallon we are still paying less than a lot of other places in the world.

For the month of March I set a goal to lose 5 pounds. I knew I could do it, but the key was to find the right motivation. I was inspired by stikk to put some money on my belief that I was going to lose 5 pounds over the month of March. So the next question was how much and where would it go? I decided, unimaginatively, that if I did not lose 5 pounds I would have to give $100 to Timber. And wouldn't you know it, not only did I lose 5 pounds, I lost 6.5 pounds. Now I am setting a goal to lose another 5 pounds for the month of April, but this time I need a bigger incentive. And I found it! My punishment, if I don't lose 5 pounds over the month of April will be to do something with $50 that is worse than flushing it down the toilet or setting it on fire. If I don't lose 5 pounds in the month of April I'll contribute $50 toward Hillary Clinton's campaign. :-) And I really don't like Hillary...