Pothole ideas

Hillary Clinton has jumped on the bandwagon with McCain calling for a gas tax moratorium. Obama has the best take realizing the potholes in this idea.

At least Hillary's proposal calls for a tax to make up lost "gas tax highway construction fund" revenue.

Make the oil companies pay that tax, rather than the consumer.

This idea does have a populist ring and may help Hillary in the polls, but who can define what's a windfall profit? It would be hard to administer. Also company costs are usually passed on to the consumer anyway.

Better to just raise the tax on upper income taxpayers. Then if we think oil company executives and top stockholders make too much, tax their personal incomes. When profits remain with-in the company, they might be justified to provide capital expense building new refinery capacity, for instance.

Really, the problem is too much consumption of oil. Americans drive too much and now China, India and other places are getting behind the wheel. Getting into the giant worldwide traffic jam. Cutting the gas tax McCain's way could add to the "pothole infrastructure deficit" if it doesn't add to the federal deficit.

Obama has the better ideas here. We really need to reduce consumption. Make our living arrangements more compact so errands can be more handy. Use bicycles and public transit more.

I live in basically a one room apartment, close to community life and the bicycle is my main transportation.

Some say this gas tax debate is a non issue as it's for summer of 2008 (almost here) and those candidates are not even in office yet. Well, It will probably come up again in summers of 2009, 2010, 2011 only gas may be lapping in the vicinity of $5 per gallon, $6?, $7? rather than $4.

It's only around $3.85 now, but what do I know, I ride my bicycle.