100 ways to skin a cat, and fuckup the Senate.
Posted by Zappatero at April 30, 2006 11:27 PMthe voters in Oregon have been getting Repub-engineered tax rebates for several years.
They appears to love the little trickleback of dough, while continuing to see education, health, and other services languish.
Posted by degustibus at April 30, 2006 11:31 PMI wonder how much it will cost to administer this nightmare idea? It doesn't seem to piggyback on any existing program and is poorly defined.
Are they going to send the checks out to every holder of a Social Security number, without regard to age? Are they going to send them out per household, per taxpayer? If they decide to send them to taxpayers, does that include corporations or people who qualify for an EITC rebate? What agency's bureaucracy will have to set this up? Do you have to prove that you drive or heat your home with gas, or is everyone eligible by virtue of purchasing goods whose price depends at least indirectly on the price of fuel?
This is just the height of idiocy. These corporations are stealing from the public, and the state as well, but the sensible option of a windfall profits tax that would put some of this grotesque surplus at the aid of our civil infrastructure is just beyond the pale to someone like Frist.
Posted by natasha at May 1, 2006 01:21 AM$100? They will have to buy me with a lot more cash than that. Just shows how out-of-touch these condescending assholes are. Yeah, throw a $100.00 bill at the masses and they will thank us on bended knee. Pricks, all of them.
Posted by Judith at May 1, 2006 04:00 AMGee, let's see, with gas at $3.50 per gallon, $100 gets me about 28 gallons. Wow! Two fill-ups! The weights have lifted and the stress has all melted away! It's nothing but rainbows and lollipops from here on out! All hail Fristy the Snowjob!
In the words of Lewis Black, "I never understood why the French people chopped off Marie Antoinette's head. Now I fucking can!"
Posted by Liveliest Crib at May 1, 2006 04:27 AMThe republicans have spent so many years holding there hands over their eyes and yammering that Democrats just want to throw money at problems that they have absolutely no idea how to create meaningful policy and all they can proprose is to literally throw money at a problem. This republican congress is like a spoof on a democratic congress. Only the republicans are too dumb to see it.
Posted by snark at May 1, 2006 05:56 AMWinston must have mistaken the Bush-Cheney-Rummy in the airplane spewing c-notes joke as a policy memo. Let our kids pay for the extra tank of gas. Don't forget to tap out ANWR for a penny or two.
Throw the lot off the plane, I say!
Posted by peconicrat at May 1, 2006 06:26 AMSo, lemme see if I get this:
You wanna give me $100 for my pain of paying for gas. Where you gonna get the money? From the oil companies? You gonna tax 'em and give me my money back?
No. You're gonna borrow the money from me (and my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren) that I will have to eventually repay (with interest) just to show me that you "feel my pain."
Posted by yam at May 1, 2006 06:32 AMWhile I generally want our Republican clowns to follow their instincts with their crazy legislative ideas, the main point of this "plan" is not the nonsense "relief" of the $100 rebate, but the "funding" of it via drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
The vile criminal Exxon has decreed that it wants this, dammit, and that it simply will not take NO for an answer. Dr. Fristenstein and his Igor(s) MUST respond to the master, after all.
That's the real motivation for the Capital & Crucifix Party in this situation; obviously there isn't a real concern about the level of gas prices, nor does the Reactionary Right think that guv'mint can actually do something about them.
Under Right Wing economic theology, these prices have been decreed by the divine, holy "free" market (ring little bells here) and hence are sacrosanct.
Posted by euzoius at May 1, 2006 07:33 AMthe voters in Oregon have been getting Repub-engineered tax rebates for several years.
The damn Oregon Tax "Kicker" drives me insane. Popular public policy (everyone loves getting that check) and absolutely the stupidest fiscal policy. Not to mention most of the corporate kicker goes to out of state companies.
The kicker is the equivalent of living paycheck to paycheck.
Sorry to derail OT, but it also needs to be mentioned that Oregon is a relatively low tax state, but with no sales tax everything is income and property tax based. This makes people "feel" like they are highly taxed and tends make the state economy more volatile than most.
Posted by Simp at May 1, 2006 09:06 AMI call this the "How Much Is A Caribou Worth To YOU" Act, since it's really as stealth way to approve ANWR drilling. I have to say, as Republican scams go, it shows they're really not even trying anymore. A government handout that is so puny as to be insulting, which will take more to administer than it will distribute? Come on. Which high-school intern thought that one up?
As a Democrat, I gotta love that Frist is stickin' with it.
Posted by biggerbox at May 1, 2006 10:00 AMBush's $300 rebate fixed the economy real god in 2001 didn't it? Housing bubble and eternal deficets. Let's just get rid of the Federal gas tax. That will solve the problem of fuel consumption for soon there won't be any roads to consume fuel on.
Makes as much sense as destroying the middle east to save it.
Posted by herbal tee at May 1, 2006 01:33 PM