Gas Tax Holiday

Reuters says "economists" slammed the idea of a summer gas tax holiday, and they go on to quote Greg Mankiw, Gilbert Metcalf of Tufts, the Brookings Institute, and Paul Krugman... all whom are global warming hysterics. Lower taxes will lower the price and increase usage, adding to "global warming" they fear.

However, the increased usaged is not just wasted gasoline, but will add to trade and improve the economy. It will be people going on vacation or going to the outlet malls who might not otherwise do so.

Obama: Bitter people cling to guns and religoin

More from the sage, Thomas Sowell:

 

Speaking privately to supporters in heavily left-liberal San Francisco, Obama let down his hair and described working class people in Pennsylvania as so "bitter" that they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."

Like so much that Obama has said and done over the years, this is standard stuff on the far left, where guns and religion are regarded as signs of psychological dysfunction -- and where opinions different from those of the left are ascribed to emotions ("bitter" in this case), rather than to arguments that need to be answered.

Like so many others on the left, Obama rejects "stereotypes" when they are stereotypes he doesn't like but blithely throws around his own stereotypes about "a typical white person" or "bitter" gun-toting, religious and racist working class people.

In politics, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a "clarification," when people react adversely to what was plainly said.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/04/15/a_living_lie

Thomas Sowell On Cultures

Manuscript scrolls once preserved the precious records, knowledge, and thought of European or Middle Eastern cultures.  But once paper and printing from China became known in these cultures, books were clearly far faster and cheaper to produce and drove scrolls virtually into extinction.  Books were not simply different from scrolls; they were better than scrolls.  The point that some cultural features are better than others must be insisted on today because so many among the intelligentsia either evade or deny this plain reality.  The intelligentsia often use words like "perceptions" and "values" as they argue in effect that it is all a matter of how you choose to look at it.

 

When Europeans first ventured into the arid interior of Australia, they often died of thirst or hunger in a land where the Australian aborigines had no trouble finding food or water.  Within that particular setting, at least, the aboriginal culture enabled people to do what both aborigines and Europeans wanted to do-- survive.  A given culture may not be superior for all things in all settings, much less remain superior over time, but particular cultural features may nevertheless be clearly better for some purposes-- not just different.

 

http://www.tsowell.com/spcultur.html

Congressional Energy Policy Confusion

Watching Democrats (and some Republicans) talk about energy can make one’s head spin. A couple of days ago, they hauled oil executives before Congress to explain why gas prices are so high. Shouldn’t they be applauding high gas prices?

When not chastising oil companies for the high price of gasoline, Congress talks incessantly about reducing CO2 output (usually by 80% of 1990 levels). CO2 output can only be reduced by reducing combustion of fossil fuels. The only way to reduce demand for fossil fuels is to raise the price. This would be done artificially with a carbon tax. So Democrats want “Big Oil,” (who control <10% of world’s oil reserves), to somehow reduce the price of gasoline, only to have Congress raise the price back up with taxation?