Politics As Usual

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Gattigap
"Saudi Arabia's going to be incinerated in a huge fireball, and we're all going to hell, and it's because of you, you wasteful SUV-driving pigfuckers!!"

Exactly.

Originally posted by Gattigap
In any event, David Ignatius covers the obvious ground of political cowardice in dealing with the problem, but also shines the light (solar powered, naturally) on a plan I hadn't seen before, and kinda like:

Too much too fast.

[Atticus Grinch]

It has fallen to me to call bullshit when the Administration fails to seize the moral high ground from Clinton.

So, President Bush is using Air Force One for re-election travel more heavily than any predecessor, including Clinton.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Oh my. In the headlines this weekend, I read about 3 American G contractors being held hostage in Columbia.

In the headlines every weekend, I read about large numbers of inner city homicides. A simple majority of urban homicides are tied to the narcotics trade, or at least in some cities a simple majority of urban homicides are tied to the narcotics trade.

I'll take your prospective oil-terrorism, and raise you by perhaps 10K actual murders per year in America. Or are those murders okay because the dead people are usually criminals?

That's outrageous. Are there any legislative efforts to change that?

[sgtclub]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...320EDT0636.DTL

[Not Me]

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news...top_world_news

Today's summary is based in part on admissions by Padilla since his arrest on a material witness warrant. Padilla admitted that, during a meeting in Kandahar in July or August of 2001, he was assigned an operation ``to blow up apartment buildings in the United States with natural gas,'' the statement says.

As part of his training, Padilla and another al-Qaeda operative, Adnan El Shukrijumah, also known as ``Jafar,'' worked with an explosives expert at the Kandahar airport on switches, circuits and timers, the government report says.

They ``also spent time learning how to prepare and seal an apartment in order to obtain the highest explosive yield,'' it says. That mission was apparently abandoned, according to the report, when Padilla and El Shukrijumah couldn't get along.

Padilla then turned his attention to a plot in which he would detonate a ``dirty bomb,'' or explosives wrapped in uranium or other radiological material.

Abu Zubaydah, a lieutenant to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, sent Padilla and an accomplice to present their plan to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of Sept. 11, the report says. Mohammed was skeptical and urged them to pursue the original plan by entering the U.S., locating up to three high-rise apartment buildings that had natural gas, rent two apartments in each building, seal the openings, turn on the gas and set timers to detonate explosives.

Mohammed ``wanted Padilla to hit targets in New York City, although Florida and Washington, D.C., were discussed as well,'' the report says. ``Padilla now admits that he accepted the mission.''

Had Padilla been treated as a typical defendant, he probably would have followed a lawyer's advice ``and said nothing,'' Comey said. ``He would likely have ended up a free man, with our only hope being to try to follow him, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and hope, pray really, that we didn't lose him.''

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
It has fallen to me to call bullshit when the Administration fails to seize the moral high ground from Clinton.

So, President Bush is using Air Force One for re-election travel more heavily than any predecessor, including Clinton.

I see nothing in there regarding hairdressers of any sort, so the high ground is safe. It falls to me to call bullshit to your bullshit.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Actually, I liked this quote best , from Pat Roberts (R-Kan):

After all of the millions of dollars to build big radio dishes in the New Mexico desert to look for signs of intelligence in Pat Roberts, it's nice to see some hint, however slight, that he is not simply a robot doing the bidding of the administration.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Oh my. In the headlines this weekend, I read about 3 American G contractors being held hostage in Columbia.

By cocaine dealers, or by right-wing/left-wing political groups? There's an awful lot of killing and hostage taking in Colombia.

In the headlines every weekend, I read about large numbers of inner city homicides. A simple majority of urban homicides are tied to the narcotics trade, or at least in some cities a simple majority of urban homicides are tied to the narcotics trade.

Cite, please. For your assertion about the cause of these homicides, and for the apparent assertion that these are tied to terrorism against the US.

I, for one, was unaware of the Crip-Al Qaeda link (of course, I'm still struggling to understand the Abu Ghraib-Al Qaeda link, so maybe it's just me).

I'll take your prospective oil-terrorism, and raise you by perhaps 10K actual murders per year in America. Or are those murders okay because the dead people are usually criminals?

No, they aren't. But, like you, I don't shed too many tears over dead drug dealers (or do you feel that way only when the state kills them?)

Of course, drugs are illegal in the US. The US spends billions each year on drug prevention and enforcement of drug laws. So, one can hardly say that, as a matter of policy, the US has been lax in trying to prevent the drug trade that, in your view, supports terrorism.

Policy-level efforts to cut the dependency on Saudi oil, however, are somewhat.... well, non-existent.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
No, because it's a fixed cost of ownership. The only good way to attack consumption is to increase its marginal cost.

Increasing the net cost of cars that are not fuel-efficient does not increase their marginal cost? Explain.

Relying on gas taxes only is inherently regressive and punishes the people who can afford it least.

And I believe that Hummers are exempt from the guzzler tax now, because of their size.

You are right, but if we are speaking about potential policy changes, that one is high on the list.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Increasing the net cost of cars that are not fuel-efficient does not increase their marginal cost? Explain.

Relying on gas taxes only is inherently regressive and punishes the people who can afford it least.

Once you've bought the car and paid the tax, it has done nothing to create marginal incentives for your use of fuel. It may discourage purchases of such large cars, but once people have them, they face no incentive not to drive them. Moreover, it does nothing for all the cars on the road.

We've been down this road before. It's not an inherently regressive tax. It's a tax that's inherently more expensive for people who use more gas. If the objective it to get people to use less gas, then higher taxes will help do that.

Cigarette taxes are "inherently regressive" by your standard. Do you take the same view there that they are problematic, and that we should instead require all smokers to purchase a $5000 smoking license in order to buy cigarettes, which will revert to lower taxes?

[ETA:] If you really want to fix the regression problem, make it revenue neutral and increase the standard deduction or something. But, really, people bellyache, but if you have a decently fuel efficient car, say 20mpg, and drive 12k miles per year, a $1 gas tax is only $600. Not chump change, but not earth shattering. And, for comparison, current federal gas taxes are 18.4c, IIRC.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Once you've bought the car and paid the tax, it has done nothing to create marginal incentives for your use of fuel. It may discourage purchases of such large cars, but once people have them, they face no incentive not to drive them. Moreover, it does nothing for all the cars on the road.

We've been down this road before. It's not an inherently regressive tax. It's a tax that's inherently more expensive for people who use more gas. If the objective it to get people to use less gas, then higher taxes will help do that.

Why is it an improper objective merely to hope for the interim measure of incentivizing the purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles, rather than the larger (and dubiously achievable) goal of having everybody drive less?* You seem to be jumping toward Utopia, when there is an option for a marginally better Distopia. Decisionmaking at the point of buying a replacement car isn't able to fully appreciate the TCO based on politically volatile gas taxes, but it can comprehend the idea of higher cost at the front-end.

*I think that this is a hopeless goal. Not everyone has the option to take public transportation, but if the marketplace is properly incentivized, nearly everyone has the option of picking a car that gets 25 mpg over one that gets, say, 20 mpg.

And I believe that Hummers are exempt from the guzzler tax now, because of their size.

You are right, but if we are speaking about potential policy changes, that one is high on the list.

Actually, this is an elegant and simple model for the administration's ideal tax policy, under which the wealthiest individuals and corporations would pay no tax whatsoever, because of the amount of money they make. It also provides guidance for the EPA, which will shortly be promulgating rules that exempt the facilities producing the largest amount of pollutants from environmental regulation.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Burger's point is that if you want to discourage the consumption of gas, tax gas. AG's is that you can also tax vehicles that consume gas. Both seem right, except that the latter is less comprehensive (because things other than new cars consume gas). Neither is particularly utopian, but neither is likely to happen as long as politicians care about being re-elected. The fact that some conservatives are now talking about taxing gas, however, would seem to be a fairly strong indicator that this Iraq thing isn't working out, and so people are looking for ways to disengage.

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by Gattigap
In any event, David Ignatius covers the obvious ground of political cowardice in dealing with the problem, but also shines the light (solar powered, naturally) on a plan I hadn't seen before, and kinda like:

I find this idea pretty fascinating. I think it's going to take some strong intervention to get this country off its current gas guzzler course, and maybe a plan like this would be the ticket.

I certainly disagree with the admin that the hydrogen fuel cell car is the basket to jam our eggs into, since the technology is unproven at best and uncertain at worst, and because it gives the drivers of the gas guzzlers a false sense of security that "something" is being done to free us from the bonds of foreign oil dependence, and that "something" is over a decade away. (In other words, "In the meantime, fill 'er up. I'm going to do some donuts in the junior high school parking lot.") At the same time the admin has shifted tax incentives in favor of SUVs (liberalizing small business owner writeoffs) and away from more efficient models (phaseout of tax deduction for buying a hybrid). Just like the budget deficits, it's a way of punting our oil consumption problems to the future.

Let me be clear: I support the rights of people like Hello to drive his SUV around every city in the country to catalog the laziness of welfare recipients if he wants to. I just believe that if we all concede that there is an added geopolitical/security cost to ensuring access to a large portion of the world's oil resources in the age of terrorism, we should find a way to price that collective cost into gasoline usage. But with all the handwringing about the recent gas price spike to "record levels," I am (as usual) not optimistic that this will come to pass under the way things stand now. I have not seen any numbers on this Ignatius plan, but it at least provides several counterarguments to the inevitable cry that a gas tax increase will hurt too much.

* AON, I (finally) watched the South Park movie the other night. Watch this space for an endless stream of horribly dated references until the fever passes.

It's funny to think how times have changed for Saddam since he "starred" in the SP movie back when he was still running his country into the ground. Kind of like seeing OJ in the Naked Gun movies and realizing that he was once a respected rental car spokesman.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Burger's point is that if you want to discourage the consumption of gas, tax gas. AG's is that you can also tax vehicles that consume gas. Both seem right, except that the latter is less comprehensive (because things other than new cars consume gas). Neither is particularly utopian, but neither is likely to happen as long as politicians care about being re-elected. The fact that some conservatives are now talking about taxing gas, however, would seem to be a fairly strong indicator that this Iraq thing isn't working out, and so people are looking for ways to disengage.

Lest I be accused of calling taxation Utopian, my point was merely that, unlike cigarette taxes in which the policy behind the tax is to discourage smoking in toto, the taxes used to effectuate the ultimate goal of minimizing petroleum dependence needs to accomodate the overall desirability of cheap and easy transportation. In other words, it has to account for the possibility that we might inadvertently raise the overall cost of getting Person A from point B to point C. Which is something like enacting a tax on breathing because some breathers smoke, and smokers tend to take more (and shallower) breaths.

My idea is that, because not all people can be forced into petroleum-independent forms of transportation, we live in a world in which encouraging the production of cars that are more fuel efficient makes sense for the drivers who are so dependent on petroleum-consuming transportation that they are price-insensitive to gasoline. They need to drive 40 miles a day, no matter what it costs. It's easy for those of us who live in cities (hi, Burger!) to assume there must be some alternative transportation, such that increasing the marginal cost will incent them to take it, but it isn't always so, and won't be anytime soon. To say that incenting the selection of fuel efficient replacement vehicles is bad policy tends to show that you don't live in the real world --- a brutal reality check that conservatives usually aren't usually accused of failing to take.