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Obama to Americans: Don't Count Your Blessings Before I Snatch Them Away!
Townhall.com ^ | February 12, 2016 | Calvin Beisner

Posted on 02/12/2016 3:02:46 PM PST by Kaslin

So you thought plummeting gas prices were going to free you up to get better health care, more education, a little home improvement, or maybe some nicer clothes for your kids?

Not if Barack Obama has his way. Watching oil prices fall as American ingenuity floods the market, the president figures he can't let you get too much of a good thing.

So he wants to slap a $10 per barrel "fee" on oil, which, with West Texas crude (the benchmark) trading at $21 per barrel on the world market, would make the fee roughly a third of the total price consumers will pay for oil.

They won't pay it directly, of course. That wouldn't be politically popular. The best tax is always a hidden one. So Obama wants the fee to be paid by the oil companies, who of course will simply take a bullet for the rest of us by letting their profits slump.

Or not.

No, of course they'll pass the price on to consumers. It'll be about 25 cents per gallon of gas at the pump, $32 billion nationally, or $290 per household, per year.

The president means well, of course. He assures us that about $20 billion of that will go into infrastructure improvements--for high-speed rail and other collectivist dreams. It would make far too much sense to let infrastructure be paid for by its users when and where they use it. That would deprive members of Congress of the opportunity to use the fund for pork-barrel projects that get them reelected.

What about the other $12 billion? Obama wants to spend it on projects to mitigate global warming.

The benefit of that? Well, let's just say that when eliminating the entire United States population and all its greenhouse gas emissions would reduce global average temperature at the end of this century by less than seven-hundredths of a degree Celsius (which is within the margin of measurement error), implementing those programs would have only a tiny fraction of even that already undetectable and inconsequential amount.

And that's calculated on the falsified alarmist assumptions of high warming from added carbon dioxide. On average, computer climate models predict two to three times the warming actually observed. Over 95 percent predict more warming than observed, implying that the errors aren't random (in which case they'd be as frequently low as high) but driven by bias--honest or otherwise. And, depending on which datasets one prefers, there's been no statistically significant global warming for about the last 18 to 20 years. Those facts entail that the warming effect of added CO2 is much smaller than the alarmists thought, so the cooling effect of Obama's policies would likewise be much smaller.

And even that non-benefit of no detectable reduction in global average temperature assumes the politicians will do what President Obama (says he) wants to do with the revenues. Not likely. If you think a promise to use a new tax for a specific purpose has any credibility, you need to remind yourself of our $19 trillion national debt. It didn't get that way by politicians' fiscal or budgetary prudence and honesty.


TOPICS: Editorial
KEYWORDS: bho44; gasprices; globalwarming; jobsandeconomy; resident0bama
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To: Kaslin
One of my completely clueless Liberal friends on Facebook was touting yesterday the low price of gas and giving credit to Obama...

Andy is a fine engineer, but he is a total f&*#ing idiot when it comes to politics. I understand giving credit to a President when gas prices drop--except when the President's stated policies are intended to drive them up.

Liberalism is a mental disorder.

21 posted on 02/12/2016 5:21:44 PM PST by Lysandru
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To: Kaslin

He could get more by taxing abortions and lies by Progressives!


22 posted on 02/12/2016 5:22:22 PM PST by RetiredTexasVet (Racism will disappear when AfroAmericans, HispanicAmericans, AsianAmericans, etc. become Americans)
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To: Kaslin

The Stockholm Congress will go along, of course.


23 posted on 02/12/2016 5:41:13 PM PST by Crucial (At the heart all leftidsts is the fear that the truth is bigger than themselves.)
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To: Kaslin

When will we be rid of this troublesome pest?


24 posted on 02/12/2016 11:30:26 PM PST by Slyfox (Ted Cruz does not need the presidency - the presidency needs Ted Cruz)
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To: Kaslin
I want to see him try to impose this tax by executive order. Now that would be a real Constitutional act of violence. Unless he can get John Roberts to twist it back into a fee and not a tax, thereby obviating House approval.
25 posted on 02/13/2016 9:17:56 AM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: DoughtyOne

I am pretty sure that Obama is NOT substituting 25 cents per gallon for the current 18 plus cents per gallon Fed gasoline price. It would be added, which makes the Fed tax on gasoline around 44 cents a gallon.


26 posted on 02/14/2016 10:57:40 AM PST by ridesthemiles
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To: ridesthemiles

Just what we need, more government greed.

The U. S. Citizen gets one momentary good break, and in jumps Obama with both feet to steal it from us.

Craven doesn’t begin to describe the Leftist mind.


27 posted on 02/14/2016 11:04:34 AM PST by DoughtyOne (the Free Republic Caucus: what FReepers are thinking, 100s or 1000s of them. It's up to you.)
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To: Kaslin

What all the IDJITS don’t (or won’t) realize that even though the price of goods delivered did NOT take a significant drop on the shelf because of the 20 dollar oil, you can bet your bippy that when BO initiates the 10 TAX, the delivery prices will soar - because of the rise in price at the pump.

Used to remember when crude would go up, there would be an IMMEDIATE rise at the pump, with the explanation being they were getting ready for the increase.

When that rare occasion would happen when crude went down, the price would remain the same with the explanation that the oil on hand was purchased at the older, higher price.

So, this thinking ALL consumers are STOOOOOPID is not a ‘new’ thing......


28 posted on 02/14/2016 11:14:23 AM PST by xrmusn ((6/98)"Peace is that brief glorious moment in history, when everybody stands around reloading".)
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