Academic

Gaseous Pandering

By Terry Smith

First they pander to working-class white voters by making them believe that their electoral judgments are beyond apprehension, particularly when a black candidate calls them into question. Now Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Senator Barack Obama?s rivals for the presidency, are proposing a gas tax holiday for the so-called summer driving season, which would temporarily relinquish the 18.4 cents a gallon federal tax on gasoline. Obama has come out against the suspension of the gas tax?a bold position, but not bold enough.

Of course Obama?s rivals will use his position on the gas tax suspension as further evidence that he?s an “elitist.” What?s risible about the charge of elitism is that it comes from two wealthy white candidates and is made on behalf of a group of voters?white working-class voters?who themselves historically have practiced the ultimate elitism, racism. One need only look at polling data from the 1980s which showed that a majority of white Americans believed that Ronald Reagan?s policies were hurting blacks but nevertheless supported President Reagan, to understand white voter elitism. What is also incomprehensible about the charges of elitism is that these same white voters have begun to question their own electoral judgments, as evidenced by their abandonment of their support of President George Bush. Bush has historically low approval ratings. If white voters can have buyer?s remorse, surely a candidate?even a black candidate?can suggest to these voters that in the future they vote based upon more relevant criteria than guns, religion and cultural prejudices.

The anti-abortion conservative is seldom the economic populist. The hunters? rights candidate is seldom a big enough lover of nature to lead the fight on global-warming. The Christian fundamentalist candidate is far more likely to condemn gay marriage than he is to talk about the laissez faire regulatory environment that has created a mortgage crisis that threatens to upend the American economy. And so on. Some may argue that values and guns are legitimate issues to base voting on. Indeed they are, but if one votes based on these issue sets, he should take the bitter with the sweet. Celebrate having your gun, but don?t complain about the factory job that was just off-shored. White Americans, of course, are accustomed to the privilege of voting one way and then seeking to escape the consequences of their poor decisions. Like the learning disabled, they are threatening to repeat their mistakes, goaded by Clinton and McCain and a fantastically ignorant news media. Obama?s opposition to the gas tax suspension is one more enticement for white voters to abandon rational thought.

For his part, Obama?s time is better spent proposing bold solutions to the price hikes in gasoline rather than allowing the media to goad him into responding to everything the Reverend Jeremiah Wright says, as if all black people must give an accounting for the words and actions of all other black people. (But this is the problem with having too many smart-ass-white-boy type advisers.) Brace yourself voters?especially those voters who harbor a sense of entitlement?here?s a surefire solution to the gas price problem: Ban the use of credit cards to purchase gas. Since 2005, nearly 70% of daily gas purchases have been paid with credit cards. Indeed, oil companies themselves have begun to market ?gas cards.? Allowing Americans to finance daily necessities like gas both keeps gas prices high and feeds a excess consumption mentality that has created a consumer credit bubble. On the latter score, personal consumption?s share of gross domestic product had traditionally been 66% to 67% . In 2007, however, it swung to 72%, not because Americans were making more money?wages are flat?but rather because of our ever-expanding appetite for credit. Credit-card purchases of gasoline is just one symptom of consumer credit freebasing, but when this practice is applied to gasoline purchases, it has a self-perpetuating effect: The more available gasoline becomes because of credit, the higher the price of gas goes?simple supply and demand?and then the more credit will used to purchase gas.

Banning credit cards in the purchase of gas is a far less punitive solution than taxing poor and middle-income drivers, which tax-and-spend-and-tax-again billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed to do with so-called congestion pricing, in which New Yorkers would pay hefty surcharges for driving their cars into Manhattan. The credit card ban simply requires that people pay as they go, without adding to the cost of going.

Which candidate will be courageous enough to propose the credit card ban? Probably none. But so far, Obama has been the better profile in courage, even under the threat of white flight.

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Full post as published by BlackProf on May 02, 2008 (boomark / email).