The Column

Pander This

Clinton, McCain and the gas tax

"Markley," you ask, "do you ever get tired of being right all the time? Wouldn't you like to just take a day off and say something completely outlandish and irrefutably stupid? After all, if not one but two presidential candidates from two different parties can do it, why shouldn't you kick off your shoes, take a soak in the tub, and offer to join the blithering, idiotic fun?"

Alas, I only like to be stupid in glaringly self-destructive ways.

If you look over on the sidebar to the left, you'll see a column I posted months ago about how the most important issue facing the United States (and the world) is not the war in Iraq or the economy or health care but oil and energy.

Now with the summer of '08 upon us, gas prices smashing records day after day, and a food crisis shocking developing countries, our president—now past the point of standing around with his head up his ass—has actually managed to insert his entire physical form into that orifice and thus violate the laws of physics by vanishing completely into himself.

Then you have Hillary Clinton and John McCain advocating a three month repeal of the federal gas tax, an idea so toxically retarded, that economists, environmentalists, and anyone else with even a passing knowledge of how anything works at all have come out in firm opposition. Maybe I could expect this from McCain, who since becoming the Republican nominee has demonstrated that he knows less about economics than me: an English major with a degree from a state school who can barely calculate a tip at a restaurant. Clinton, however, has no excuse. She has routinely demonstrated that she is a smart, capable policy wonk, and there's no way she doesn't understand how dumb her proposal is. It is a clear-cut case of her pandering effort to continue to reinvent herself as a Tough, Working-Class, Beer-Drinking, Gun-Loving Woman of the Disaffected White Voter. Only white people would be stupid enough to fall for it.

You can read in dozens and dozens of places about why this is a bad idea, but here is my quick synopsis done in the form of prose poetry:

"eliminating the federal gas tax of 18 cents per gallon for the summer months will save the average American driver $30 during that time period and behold the fallen leaves of prosperity it will create a budget shortfall in the highway system that is already chronically underfunded and cost roughly 300,000 highway jobs of the darkening spirits of vapor and grass plus the amount of gas during summer months is always constant so lowering the price will increase demand and drivers using more gas will only drive the prices back up and the only people who stand to profit are oil companies Moloch! Moloch! The apple-beast McCain has no plan to pay for it and only vaguely describes eliminating other expenses in the budget but Clinton wants to get the money from a wind-fall profits tax on oil companies when the senate has continuously rejected such a tax and besides that money should be invested in renewable energy Quotidian paradigms of Camelot... And furthermore artificially lowering the price of fuel during a time when the government should be discouraging consumption and encouraging conservation in order to combat oil dependency and climate change is the exact wrong market force to throw at the problem Lepers of the cemetery crawling, crawling, weeping—rest!"

I'm going to submit that to a major literary journal tomorrow.

Aaaaanyway, I won't credit Barack for having the balls to reject this simple-minded pandering because if he hadn't, I would have been sorely disappointed. What we're seeing this summer, however, is instructive because we're going to see a lot more of it in the future. The greatest challenge for our next president (and effectively for all of us), is how we handle the coming crises (that's plural; as in, "more than one crisis"; as in, a "shit-ton of crisises").

This summer we are seeing the conflagration of so many different problems that it's impossible to list them all here. Why are food prices skyrocketing? For one, transportation costs. It takes fuel to move food. Two, we are increasingly turning to ethanol. Corn ethanol is a fantastically bad idea. Taking part of the world's food supply and using it as fuel is a disaster waiting to happen, especially because of the land needed to grow it. Did you know the amount of corn it takes to fill the tank of an SUV with ethanol could feed one person for a year? Ridiculous, right? But we've got a corn lobby in the U.S. with hands in so many pockets, I'd be surprised if someone reading this right now isn't getting a handjob. Cellulosic ethanol shows more promise, but that's another issue for another time.

Severe droughts in wheat-growing regions are hurting too, especially Australia. Why such bad droughts? Climate change is weirding the world's weather, sucking up water in Australia and the Sudan (which is one of the factors behind the civil conflict and genocide there), causing strange tree-terminating species of beetles to thrive in Canada, and a host of other bizarre-o issues. What's with this global warming? Because for the last thirty years, we've all been fleeing to the suburbs and buying those SUVs, because we eat energy-inefficient factory farm meat, because we've refused to regulate our industrial emissions, because the populations of China and India are exploding (not to mention those explosions mean they need more food, which in turn, has contributed to the food crisis).

Basically, what I'm saying is we're all fucked.

No, I'm just kidding. We'll be fine. Our milk will be expensive, but it's the poor bastards in Haiti who are going to be eating their children.

So thank a benevolent God that Clinton and McCain are advocating gas tax relief! Man, those hard-working blue-collar workers would sure be up shit's creek if they didn't save that $30 over the next three months. Just don't tell them about the slowly encroaching global forces that are about to reach into every facet of their lives and twist their existence in such economically tortuous ways that they would do anything to go back in time and lose that $30 even if it meant voting for a black (with a scary black pastor, no less!).

To be fair, Obama isn't really talking about any of this stuff either. He's drank the ethanol Kool-Aid as well, being from one of them corn-producing states (after living in Ohio and Illinois, I sometimes forget that there are other kinds of states). During his Meet the Press interview, he did backtrack a bit, vaguely acknowledging corn ethanol's disastrous impact, but if he's going to be the leader he claims he can be, he's going to have to get on the ball and reject it outright.

My hope is that all three of the current contenders secretly understand what most voters don't, which is this: We should all be scared. The end of oil is coming, and it's going to be painful unless we start doing something about it yesterday.

This does not mean drilling for more oil. For instance, after disappearing into the tear in the fabric of the universe that is his own ass, President Bush advocated opening the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge—a reserve of oil that would give this country maybe six—count 'em six!—additional months of oil meted out over twenty years. Fantastic idea, Boss!).

It means a crash course in technological innovation. It means the government grabbing industry by the testicles and squeezing until everyone's on board with the program. It means massive investment in renewable energy. It means economic detriment in some sectors but economic benefits in others. It means actual leadership in teaching Americans how to live less energy-guzzling lives. It means hard choices. It does not mean "hey-I-bought-a-Prius-let's-sit-around-slapping-each-other-on-the-back." It means "hey-we-better-sell-the-house-in-the-suburbs-before-we-wake-up-one-day-and-find-ourselves-salvaging-scrap-copper-from-the-walls-so-we-don't-have-to-eat-our-children."

But sure. Gas tax relief. Right. Thanks, guys. That's so helpful. Speaking of which, does anyone have a buck for some Aquafina? I really want to tone down that genocide in Darfur. Or maybe you could lend me a Snickers so I could stop the food riots in Haiti? Oh! And I've been meaning to cure cancer, so if you had a band-aid on you too, that would be great.