Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Holiday Season

My nephew sent me an email about Hillary Clinton going to a gas station with a blue-collar worker to buy some gasoline. The trip was, of course, staged since Clinton has not driven a car or bought gasoline for many years due to Secret Service restrictions, and my nephew accompanied the story with amusing and appropriately caustic remarks. Clinton, it seems, was just appalled that it would cost about $63 for half a tank of gasoline.

She has proposed a “gas tax holiday” which, here in San Diego, would reduce that to about $60.25 in most parts of town, or $60.60 in others. Now doesn’t that just make your day?

As a result of that “gas tax holiday” the potholes that we have in out streets, which are maintained by the city, would now be just as bad on the highways, the maintenance of which is funded by – the gas tax. Quite a few people would be added to the unemployment rolls because the construction jobs for highways would be cut because they had been funded by – the gas tax. With any luck not too many bridges will collapse because maintenance funding… Well, you get the point.

Meanwhile, one’s mortgage payment would still be, oh, $6,985 or so per month, unrelieved by any sort of “mortgage interest holiday.” Milk would still cost $3+ per gallon, unrelieved by any sort of “inflation holiday.” Layoffs would continue, unreduced by any “jobs exporting holiday.” Drought would continue to wreak havoc, undeterred by any “global warming holiday.”

And so on.

And my sanity will diminish due to the lack of a “politics holiday.”

Update: Wednesday, 3:30pm
MSNBC Hardball this afternoon did a segment on Clinton's gas tank-filling expedition, referring to it as "Theater of the Absurd."

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