Bent and the Obama Bashers
August 04, 2008
– Comments (13)
After I returned from vacation last week, I visited my favorite website (this one) and was treated to this post by one of CAPS favorite players and someone I genuinely respect, TMFBent.
"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Barack Obama called for a $1,000 "emergency" rebate to consumers to offset soaring energy costs amid fresh signs of a struggling economy with the nation's unemployment rate climbing to a four-year high.
Sen. Obama told a town-hall meeting the rebate would be financed with a windfall profits tax on the oil industry.
Sure, Barack. Fight inflation caused by massive demand by giving people more money so their demand keeps up. And make sure you do it by taking away money from the oil companies so they can't reinvest it in obtaining more fuel.
Oh, and do it right after slowing demand has begun to cause price drops.
This guy is a pandering disaster."
What Obama said was:
"There are genuine ways in which we can provide some short-term relief from high gas prices – relief to the mother who’s cutting down on groceries because of gas prices, or the man I met in Pennsylvania who lost his job and can’t even afford to drive around and look for a new one. I believe we should immediately give every working family in America a $1,000 energy rebate, and we should pay for it with part of the record profits that the oil companies are making right now."
So lets see.
First, St. Petersburg, Fla. gets the quote wrong by turning the word "families" into "consumers" and increases the number of checks written to 300mil US consumers from 77mil families. This causes rd80 to become mathematical and somehow figure out 50 bil in in quarterly profits could not pay for 100bil in annual rebates. And then complain about Harvard math teachers. Since the article also left out the phrase "working" in front of "families" and some families aren't working the math says less than 77bil dollars will be paid out of almost 200bil in annual profits. The math is good even if the policy is not.
Second,
The first round of rebates delivered by GWB arrived as checks to be spent in any fashion on any product and were spent on gasoline prices that increased from $3.00 to $4.00 and pretty much nothing was left for anything else. St Petersburg, Fla calls the rebates an "emergency" rebate even though Obama does not. Obama referred to them as an "energy" rebate. It is possible that the rebates will be linked to energy efficiency purchases such as flourescents or insulation, which would put the popular "econ 101" principle of supply and demand to work in favor of lower fuel prices by reducing demand and leverage those dollars to the benefit of those families with fuel savings far in excess of the rebate. Of course the assumption I just made is as invalid as Seth's assumption that this rebate would be a cash handout like you get from Republican Presidents. You would not get the idea I suggested unless you read the whole speech with its emphasis on energy conservation and energy sources other than oil. In either case I would like more detail about the rebate.
Would anyone like to read the other 51 paragraphs from the speech for yourself? There might be a balanced energy policy in there somewhere, but to hear lordz tell it you would not think so. Some of it is pretty good, although I don't like the drilling or nuclear. Curiously it takes into consideration that drilling more oil out of the ground eventually leads to more greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. And believe me, turning Americas breadbasket into a desert is probably a bad thing for Cheerios. And why are we complaining that Barack wants to send us back $1000 of our hard earned money anyway? What are we, nuts?
Please don't respond if you don't read the speech. And don't misquote him. We have news services to do that for us.
See you tomorrow.
RSS Headlines
Fool UK