So first John McCain thinks giving a "gas tax holiday" to Americans will be a winner in the presidential campaign. Apparently, he thinks the American people are so stupid that they believe his inauguration will be on July 1st, in time to get a gas tax holiday bill passed so they can drive to the beach, or the Cape, or the Grand Canyon, this summer. He also thinks they don't understand that a gas tax holiday would: a) rob the government of funds needed to repair roads and bridges and thus b) cause hundreds of Americans who work on the nation's highways to lose their jobs and c) probably not save them any money as the oil companies would keep the price high so they can get a bigger profit.
When he realized this idea didn't help Clinton beat Obama, he came up with another brilliant idea, one his buddy Bush also suggested: opening up the coasts of American to even more drilling. (Currently there is a moratorium on new drilling.) Apparently, his estimation of the intelligence of the American people has not changed. He still thinks they will fall for this even though a) the oil companies are not extracting oil in places where they are already allowed to drill; b) it will take ten years or more to extract oil from new locations; and c) the price of a gallon of gas is controlled by far more complicated things than how many oil platforms we can erect in the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf. (Among other things, the oil companies and the oil cartels are gaming the system - anybody remember Enron? - to keep the price of gasoline high.)
McCain is supposed to be the Maverick, the one who bucks the big lobbyists (even though lobbyists are running his campaign), the one who once (but no longer) favored progressive taxation, the one who opposed coastal drilling but has now changed his mind, the one who isn't like Bush, except he is.
McCain is also supposed to be the one Republican who cares about the environment, but this ridiculous proposal, which oilmen Bush and Cheney love, would hurt the environment and the economy in many ways.
It will put America's coasts at risk of oil spills and hazardous waste destroying pristine beaches. This in turn will kill wildlife and destroy tourism, the basis of many coastal economies. And for what? For something that will do nothing to lower the cost of gasoline this year, or next year, or ten years from now?
Even more importantly, though, it will do nothing to get us away from our dependence on oil, and very little to end our dependence on "foreign" oil, which apparently is now all McCain and Bush care about. As long as what McCain is proposing is something that won't have any effect in the short term, as long as it will take a decade or more to get to any of that oil, why doesn't he propose a long term solution that will not only end our dependence on foreign oil, but end our dependence on oil, period? Answer – it would piss off big oil.
Right now, all of our investment should be in renewable and environmentally safe energy, but neither McCain nor Bush are going there with any vigor. Why? Because Bush is an oil man, and McCain is dependent on oil money for his campaign. Once again, all Republicans care about is the giant corporation, because that's the source of the money that gets them into office. They can't depend on millions of people making small donations to their campaign, the way Barack Obama can, because the people will not benefit from a McCain presidency. The giant corporations, especially the big energy companies, will.
McCain is willing to make this pitch to the people because he thinks the people are stupid enough to fall for it. He knows we won't actually do more drilling along the coasts, because his proposal allows the states to make the final decision, and coastal states will not go for it. But by making the proposal, he panders to the oil companies, who will give him more campaign funds, and he thinks he is fooling the people into believing come November, gasoline prices will go down.
I really don't think the people will fall for it this time.
