Bridge for Sale

The Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge was crowded yesterday afternoon.  I guess most tourists only go to the first tower then turn back. 

Some guy tried to sell me the bridge for a hundred dollars.  It's a nice bridge so I offered him two hundred.  He didn't have a credit card reader though.

In over four years I've kept politics almost entirely out of this blog.  Senator Clinton's stupid gas tax idea has so disgusted me that I need to vent. 

Working class people of Indiana and North Carolina, Senator Clinton's gas tax holiday proposal is a joke and you are the punchline.  She hints that Senator Obama is an elitist, but of the two who is taking you for a sucker and who is trusting you to make an intelligent choice? 

The gas tax holiday has no chance of passing the Senate and House in the next three weeks.  If a miracle occurred and it did pass, President Bush would never agree to a tax increase on oil companies.  If a second miracle occurred and Bush signed the legislation, prices would not come down at the pump.  There are no miracles in the law of supply and demand.  A lower price for gas will increase demand.  Oil companies can't meet an increased demand because their refineries run at full capacity during the summer.  When demand exceeds supply prices go up.  Poof, the gas tax holiday vanishes.  If you are lucky and put ten gallons of gas in your car on Memorial Day, you'll save $1.84!

Here's the thing:  Clinton knows the tax holiday has no chance of becoming law and knows that it wouldn't work even if it did become law.  She is so cynical, though, that she assumes the working class is not savvy enough to figure this out.  A Wellesley and Yale graduate, former WalMart corporate board member, a person who has not done her own shopping or cooking or housekeeping since moving into the Arkansas Governor's mansion thirty years ago, a millionaire many times over since leaving the White House, is not a member of the working class.  The working class is a demographic she is cynically befriending only as long as she needs their votes.  Once that vote is over the working class will be left at the side of the road (until she needs their vote again).

To me the choice is clear, a vote for Hillary is a vote for a third Bush term.  She may have different positions on the issues but she will bring four more years of lies, cynicism, polarization and a complete disregard for the American people.

Sort of related, John McCain also supports a gas tax holiday.  Unlike Hillary his support seems to be clueless rather than cynical.  But, that's just my awkward transition to thank Frank Rich for finally asking why Barack Obama has gotten heat even though he has renounced Jeremiah Wright while John McCain gets almost no criticism for seeking out the support of the absolutely despicable John Hagee.

Okay, that's enough politics for a while.  Tomorrow:  a very special, non-political abandoned bike.

Comments

[jeff]

amen!

[Melissa]

Well all righty then. :)

I'm worried about these elections. But as long as we're getting political, at least Giuliani is out of the running. He was my absolute #1 biggest fear for this world. Worse than any Bush.

[jeremy]

Funny--I think we need to tax gas MORE and put the money raised into a new national green grid. And for those who complain about higher gas prices and think I have no right suggesting such an idea...I have a car, so I'd be paying more too.