Stepping Into The Spin Zone
The presidential aspirations of John Edwards must be spinning in their grave right now, as both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have given interviews to the bane of the left, Fox News.
Clinton has done a two-part interview with "Bill Orally" with part 2 airing as I type this. A couple interesting notes from part one of the interview. In particular, Senator Clinton has a plan to implement a "gas tax holiday," which will be paid for by a windfall-profits tax. Essentially, she's telling the oil companies that they can make only so much money, and anything over her baseline gets the crap taxed out of it. While that sort of populist rhetoric might appeal to "the folks" that O'Reilly faux-champions, what a horrible idea. When she says "the oil companies" will pay, what she means is we'll pay, as that tax will get passed on to us in the form of higher gas prices. Then once the "tax holiday" is over, now we're back to paying the high gas prices, along with the gas tax, and paying a just a little more too thanks to the newly-installed windfall-profits tax. Way to stand up for the middle class, Senator. A very good analysis of the economics of gas prices is here. However, sound analysis doesn't translate into votes, so expect more bashing of price-gouging oil companies. Also of note from this interview, O'Reilly attacks the socialist component of her plans to raise income taxes on the wealthy. Clinton doesn't like that comparison. Nevermind that she's setting a baseline for what an acceptable amount of profit for a particular industry is (and what's to stop her from targeting other industries to her disliking), nevermind that her health care plans will MANDATE you have health insurance and mandate what type of coverage your provider offers (regardless of your preference), NAH, no socialist components to her agenda whatsoever.
Apparently Obama's interview with Chris Wallace has the left-wing blogosphere in an uproar. I can see why, particularly when he says that Republicans ideas about regulating business were better than the "top-down command and control" model of his party. One could interpret that as a quasi-endorsement of Reaganomics, in light of Obama's quasi-praise for the Gipper. But with his 5% rating from the National Taxpayers Union, I don't think Democrats need to worry about Obama abandoning the tax-and-spend creed of the Democratic Party anytime soon.
Clinton has done a two-part interview with "Bill Orally" with part 2 airing as I type this. A couple interesting notes from part one of the interview. In particular, Senator Clinton has a plan to implement a "gas tax holiday," which will be paid for by a windfall-profits tax. Essentially, she's telling the oil companies that they can make only so much money, and anything over her baseline gets the crap taxed out of it. While that sort of populist rhetoric might appeal to "the folks" that O'Reilly faux-champions, what a horrible idea. When she says "the oil companies" will pay, what she means is we'll pay, as that tax will get passed on to us in the form of higher gas prices. Then once the "tax holiday" is over, now we're back to paying the high gas prices, along with the gas tax, and paying a just a little more too thanks to the newly-installed windfall-profits tax. Way to stand up for the middle class, Senator. A very good analysis of the economics of gas prices is here. However, sound analysis doesn't translate into votes, so expect more bashing of price-gouging oil companies. Also of note from this interview, O'Reilly attacks the socialist component of her plans to raise income taxes on the wealthy. Clinton doesn't like that comparison. Nevermind that she's setting a baseline for what an acceptable amount of profit for a particular industry is (and what's to stop her from targeting other industries to her disliking), nevermind that her health care plans will MANDATE you have health insurance and mandate what type of coverage your provider offers (regardless of your preference), NAH, no socialist components to her agenda whatsoever.
Apparently Obama's interview with Chris Wallace has the left-wing blogosphere in an uproar. I can see why, particularly when he says that Republicans ideas about regulating business were better than the "top-down command and control" model of his party. One could interpret that as a quasi-endorsement of Reaganomics, in light of Obama's quasi-praise for the Gipper. But with his 5% rating from the National Taxpayers Union, I don't think Democrats need to worry about Obama abandoning the tax-and-spend creed of the Democratic Party anytime soon.
Comments