Pander bear

I got an email from Lisa yesterday, nudging me because I hadn't posted on Saturday morning (my usual schedule). It's true, I was a laggard, but I was working. Really.

This was the week of the gas pump pander, with Hillary Clinton staging her ridiculous idea of a gas-tax holiday from the back of a pickup at a North Carolina truck stop. Hillary's playing the slimiest of political ploys, and it appears to be working. She's proposing to suspend the paltry 18 cent a gallon federal gas tax from May Day to Labor Day, to "ease our pain at the pump". She wants us to believe she's doing us a favor, but she's really just helping us fall further and further behind the rest of the developed world. She's betting on Americans being myopic, and it appears from her recent gains in the polls in North Carolina and Indiana that she's making the right bet.

We Americans have gotten ourselves horribly addicted to gasoline, and the last thing we need is a politician to enable us. Over the past 25 years European and the Asian governments have deliberately raised oil & gas taxes about 20 times the measly 18 cents we pay, exacting this price to become nearly three times as energy efficient as we are. We did nothing but guzzle. Our faith-based energy policy rested on the belief that the world oil supply would grow forever. America played the grasshopper to Europe's ant. Three of the four best-selling vehicles in the United States last year were the Ford F-150, the Chevy Silverado and the Dodge Ram - all pickup trucks which get 15-17 MPG. Europe's economy is humming today, as is their currency. When Bush took office in 2001, the dollar was worth 1.15 Euros. Since then the dollar has steadily shriveled, it's now worth 0.65 Euros. What we have to show for 25 years of "head in the sand" energy policies are decrepit mass transit systems, suburban garages full of SUVs and pickup trucks, and trade deficits ballooning because of oil imports. Whose fault is this?

What Americans should be doing is accepting responsibility for our profligate ways, but we'd much rather look for scape goats. The oil companies are easy targets, after all they're making tanker loads of money from the worldwide demand for oil. Hillary's plan combines the suspension of the federal gas tax with a windfall profits tax on those big oil company meanies who forced us to buy all those SUVs and build all those suburbs (Exxon and Shell are probably behind the explosive economic growth in China, too). She knows her tax proposal is a gimmick that's unlikely to ever pass Congress, but what the hey, demagoguery sells. She accuses anyone who disagrees with her gas tax holiday plan of being on the side of the oil companies. Such b*llshit. She's the one proposing to pass our tax dollars over to the oil companies, using us as the middle men. Because the biggest benefactor of her gas tax holiday will be the oil companies.

If we're worried about the oil companies taking too much of our money, what do you think we should do - try to tax their profits or buy less gas? I did a quick calculation this week. A Ford Explorer (one of the most popular SUVs of the past 10 years) gets about 17 MPG, and has a 22.5 gallon gas tank. My 2002 Honda Civic gets 39 MPG and has an 11 gallon gas tank. It takes me $35 today to fill up my tank. It takes the Explorer driver about $80 to fill up her tank. We can both go about 400 miles on that tank of gas. Which one of us is inflating oil company profits?

This spring we're seeing headlines that show that high gas prices are starting to have a beneficial effect. Americans are buying smaller cars and driving less. As Americans buy less gas, oil companies take less of our money. If we cut our driving and gas consumption enough, gas prices might actually drop, but no matter, the important thing is that we'll cut our consumption of and expenditures for gasoline. On the other hand, if Hillary's tax holiday was to pass, this good behavior likely goes on holiday as well. The short-term, symbolic drop in gas prices would motivate Americans to hold off trading in the guzzler for a sipper, at least until the fall. Many of us would change our minds and decide to drive the family to Disneyland after all. Gas consumption would go up! Oil companies would smile, broadly. Even if they had dropped prices at the pump the full 18 cents when the tax was suspended (doubtful) they'd start to raise them again as demand soared over the summer. The oil companies (and their profit margins) will just LOVE Hillary's gas tax holiday. And where will we find ourselves (and gas prices) come Labor Day, when the gas tax will be reimposed? How happy will we be at that point?

The primary reasons that oil companies are making big profits in the US is because we've done nothing to cut our demand, and demand from the rest of the world is growing rapidly. America consumes half of all the world's gasoline supply. We're 1/20th of the world's population and we use 1/2 its gas! What did we think was going to happen, when the rest of the world started to catch up? Worldwide demand for automobiles and gasoline is growing exponentially as newly minted middle class consumers in China and India adopt a western lifestyle. Do any of us honestly believe that this is the oil companies' fault? We all know that we need to become more efficient, and conserve more. The thing is, we didn't mean we wanted to do it right now. Maybe next year, or next decade. We'll change our ways sometime in the not-too-distant future, as soon as we've paid off the Chevy Tahoe and taken that Las Vegas vacation. Hillary's doing us no favors, but you can't really blame her, she's just giving us what we want.