No Gas Tax Holiday, PLEASE

I was so busy complaining about Thomas Friedman's endless sabbatical that I didn't even notice it ended! And his first column, last week, says exactly what I've been mulling about for weeks. In fact, it's the one thing that actually is beginning to change my mind in the election, despite every attempt to stay uninformed and neutral until the general election.

Here's what he has to say. The rest of the article is great too -- he goes on to talk about how upside down our energy policy is -- that we encourage negative behavior and discourage change and alternatives. It's called Dumb As We Want To Be. Link

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.