Too many times, this campaign season, I've watched as half-assed Liberals like Sirota act like theirs was the only agenda worth advancing, or offer the President-Elect second rate advice on what the President-Elect should do next.
This would fall into the second-rate category.
From this afternoon's Huffington Post.
Mandate Watch: Obama Backs Off Promise to Pass Windfall Profits Tax on Big Oil
If oil prices are down and oil industry profits are truly down, what's the harm in passing a windfall profits tax?
Then from the article itself:
Good news and bad news in the last day. The good news: Barack Obama has appointed a NAFTA critic, Rep. Xavier Becerra, as the next U.S. Trade Representative (more on that here). The bad news is this just off the Reuters wire:
And...
Between this move and the move to wait to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, it seems like the Obama team is buying into the right-wing frame that raising any taxes - even those on the richest citizens and wealthiest corporations - is bad for the economy.
First off, Mr. Sirota, though Xavier Becerra is widely thought to have the inside track at Trade Rep, he has not been announced as such. (Do you remember seeing him on stage with the President-Elect today, or do all Latinos look alike to you, David?) Rep. Becerra is in Chicago talking about the job. Odds are that he gets it. I hope that he does.
But he doesn't have it yet.
Second, I'm not a big fan of sparing the Oil Companies any pain whatsoever, but let's be clear about something: the idea that we don't raise taxes in a time of Depression isn't a Right wing one, it's from Roosevelt.
This is just a little summary from Krugman. (Again, I'm going with an actual economist).
Franklin Roosevelt mistakenly heeded the advice of his own era’s deficit worriers. He sharply reduced government spending, among other things cutting the Works Progress Administration in half, and also raised taxes. The result was a severe recession, and a steep fall in private investment.
The second episode took place 60 years later, in Japan. In 1996-97 the Japanese government tried to balance its budget, cutting spending and raising taxes. And again the recession that followed led to a steep fall in private investment.
We are hardly in a Depression, but we are in a time of Depression Economics, to use Dr. Krugman's term.
I'm hardly going to call David Sirota a deficit worrier, but he's seems certainly hell-bent in trying to repeat their mistakes in the name of punishing the oil companies. The idea of Windfall Profits Tax was a wonderful threat...before Sept. 15th, when everything, and I mean everything went to crap.
But we are now in a time of Depression Economics, and in a time of Depression Economics, you do not, repeat, do not raise taxes...period.
The idea of the Economy to me, is that of a circulatory system, you want the blood flowing as freely as possible. I think Government regulation and the occasional tax helps the blood flow that way. Problem is, we're in the middle of a massive coronary, blood is collecting in all the wrong places, and we need to get it flowing again.
Sirota it seems would rather ignore the circumstances we're in, prolong the heart-attack, just to settle a score with the Oil Companies.
Now, the specific harm of a Windfall Profits Tax is a tax that will be passed on to us, the consumer, further harming the economy.
To me the idea of a Windfall Profits Tax was always more of a threat. Hey Exxon-Mobil-Shell-BP, stop impeding green technologies, allow for more regulation of the speculative oil markets, allow for better American Made MPG cars to stay at home instead of going to Europe, or else we're gonna...
The threat of a Windfall Profits Tax still exists, but the circumstances since that promise was made, have significantly changed.
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