Clinton dismisses "elite" economists on gas tax pl

[The Grim Squeaker]

Clinton dismisses "elite" economists on gas tax plan
Mon May 5, 2008 10:32am EDT

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Sunday dismissed the "elite opinion" of economists who criticized her gas tax proposal, using a term that has dogged rival Barack Obama in recent weeks.

Obama, meanwhile, accused the New York senator of pandering on gas taxes and saber rattling toward Iran as both candidates gave television interviews before primary contests in North Carolina and Indiana. The two are battling to be their party's nominee to face Republican John McCain in November's election.

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Clinton said it was time to move beyond the controversy surrounding Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"We should definitely move on," the New York senator said in response to a question from the audience. "We should move on because there's so many important issues facing our country that we have to attend to."

Clinton raised questions about Obama's ability to connect with working-class Americans while dismissing economists who have said her plan to suspend gas taxes over the summer would do little good.

"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists," Clinton said when asked to name an economist who backed her proposal.

"We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans," said Clinton, a former first lady who would be the first woman president.

Critics have painted Obama as elitist for a comment he made about job losses causing some small-town Americans to become bitter and to cling to guns and religion.

That perception hurt the Illinois senator in the big blue-collar state of Pennsylvania, where Clinton won a crucial victory last month in the protracted Democratic contest.

The two candidates next square off in primaries in North Carolina and Indiana on Tuesday.

In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Obama dismissed Clinton's gas-tax proposal as "a classic Washington gimmick" that has no chance of becoming law.

"What this is is a strategy to get through the next election," he said.

Obama acknowledged he should have more quickly distanced himself from his former pastor who has suggested the U.S. government created AIDS to kill blacks and the September 11 attacks were payback for U.S. foreign policy.

He did not repudiate Wright completely until last week, after the Chicago preacher reiterated his views.

"When you're in national politics, it's always good to pull the Band-aid off quick," Obama said. "But life's messy sometimes, it's not always neat, and things don't always proceed in textbook Political 101 fashion."

Obama launched a new ad slamming Clinton's gas tax plan.

"Clinton aides admit it won't do much for you, but would help her politically," the ad's announcer says.

Clinton aides said the spot was misleading because a person cited in the Obama ad was actually criticizing McCain, not Clinton.

Opinion polls show Obama losing ground to Clinton in Indiana and North Carolina during the past several weeks.

He now leads Clinton by an average of 7 points in North Carolina and trails her by an average of 6 points in Indiana.

Obama spent the afternoon campaigning door-to-door in Elkhart, Indiana, where much of the talk was about high gas prices. One woman said it cost $4 to mow her lawn.

Clinton, meanwhile, encouraged supporters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to help get people to the polls on Tuesday.

She has spent $6.7 million in the two states, according to her campaign aides, while Obama has spent $10.5 million.

On Saturday night, Obama eked out a narrow seven-vote victory in the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam.

Posted without comment.

[Mr Bean]

I fucking love how the story manages to include the Rev.Wright despite it being about Hillary's me-too of John McCain's gas tax holiday.

Holy fucking shit the story should be about the fact the only people who agree with the Hillary/McCain gas tax plan are lobbyists for the oil company's while the people against it are everyone else on the planet

Instead the story spend 95% fucking percent of it's piece talking about things OTHER than how moronic this idea is.

Yay to cut and paste journalism.

[PeZook]

I bet if those same economists said she should go for it, they'd suddendly become Saints Of The Free Market.

Because, you know, America needs more economists pandering to their chosen politician

[Guardsman Bass]

Notice how she subtly "red-herrings" the question? He asked her whether she had any economic experts who agreed with her plan, and she replied by saying that we need elite opinion to stop agreeing with things that hurt the average American.

Because, of course, the ability to do basic math in order to figure out that the average American would save only 30 cents is just so elitist.

Good lord, this issue fucking pisses me off. It's not even like the bullshit "social" issues, where they can say "it will hurt families" but then be extremely vague about it when called on. This is definitively bullshit, does little to help with gas prices when you look at historical examples (like Illinois), and she knows it. In fact, she's being worse than McCain; McCain at least said "this is just some relief, take it out of the treasury", whereas Hillary has tied this issue into her position as an advocate of the smallpeople and offered a cover for the lost tax revenue via a method she knows has no chance of passing any time this summer.

[Patrick Degan]

Heard this on NPR this morning, with a clip of that very quote of hers on ABC This Week. Setting the "elitists" against everybody else.

She just becomes more Republican every day, doesn't she?

[Kanastrous]

Wouldn't it be nice if her aversion to 'elites' were to carry over to the next time she needs medical attention...

...since 'elite' apparently now covers anyone with training in the specialty they practice.

[Darth Wong]

Heard this on NPR this morning, with a clip of that very quote of hers on ABC This Week. Setting the "elitists" against everybody else.

She just becomes more Republican every day, doesn't she?

Unfortunately, it works. This social dynamic she's taking advantage of is the exact same one that propelled George W. Bush over John Kerry in 2004. There was no conceivable reason that anyone with an intact brain stem could have possibly thought George W. Bush deserved another 4 years, and yet the majority of the population chose exactly that, because Kerry was tarred early on as an "elitist".

[Illuminatus Primus]

Some economists believing something should be done is not the same thing as a consensus across the fucking field that something is a stupid idea. She's gone fully over to Republitard land, supplanting the real economic elites which stand to benefit and Obama opposes, with the boogeyman of academic and professional elites trying to fan anti-intellectualism. How does she know it will generally help and not hurt without consulting economists? Did she ask God? She did sacrifice a chicken and divine from its entrails? The public cost of the missing revenue for road maintanence and the added deficit will more than off-set the savings, to say nothing of the fact that artificially increased consumption will probably drive the price up to near what it would've been anyway.

She knows she's lying. That's why she's so fucking odious.

Although the American public continue to disappoint: "It takes $4 to mow my lawn! [tears]" Are you fucking kidding me? Maybe the retard vanity-ego project that contributes plenty to water and energy waste that is suburban lawns is something which is not a major need of the public and not necessary for state action.

[CJvR]

Isn't Clinton about as elitist as you can get without an established aristocracy? Have she gone deerhunting in her SUV yet?

[Darth Wong]

Isn't Clinton about as elitist as you can get without an established aristocracy? Have she gone deerhunting in her SUV yet?

Americans have no problem with the elitism of wealth and power. They only have a problem with the elitism of education and knowledge.

In short, they love the fact that rich people look down their noses at the rest of us, get better access to everything, get health care while poor people don't, control the media and industry, take more and more of the country's wealth for themselves every year, and have pretty much closed the doors of political power to all but themselves. They have no problem with this at all; it is just and righteous and good, and all is as it should be in God's house.

They do, however, have a huge problem with the idea that educated people think they're better than everyone else, or that their opinions might carry any more weight. It's perverse.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Exactly. The problem is Obama's whole image might be too clean for him to roll up the sleeves and be like, "Working Americans, I grew up without a father. I grew up moving all around. I raised myself up purely on merit. Hillary Clinton is rich. She's always been upper class. She is claiming to be a feminist leader while deriving all of her political credibility from who her husband was, and claiming that being his wife in effect made her co-president. She is very wealthy now, she is one of the highest recipients of donations from very wealthy individuals and lobbyists. Contrastingly, I may be financially secure, but I am by far the poorest of the major candidates. I earned where I am today. My campaign is richer, but that is from the confidence and help of individual and average Americans everywhere like you. I will not be intimidated by sound-byte politics and Hillary Clinton and her character assassins insulting your intelligence by pretending that this gas tax and many other claims are not anything but smoke and mirrors, political band-aids, hoping to lull you in a false sense of security long enough for political gains. For power. Change is possible, but is a determined, continuous process. I want to provide Americans with alternatives to gasoline from foriegn oil - not misleadingly claim to discount that consumption for a few months and then later tax you to make up the deficit difference. Furthermore, high prices are here to stay. Your intelligence will not be insulted by my administration thinking you'll remember band-aids for merely a few months, as long as its useful to me. Change is possible. Yes, we can change America."

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

Isn't Clinton about as elitist as you can get without an established aristocracy? Have she gone deerhunting in her SUV yet?

Americans have no problem with the elitism of wealth and power. They only have a problem with the elitism of education and knowledge.

In short, they love the fact that rich people look down their noses at the rest of us, get better access to everything, get health care while poor people don't, control the media and industry, take more and more of the country's wealth for themselves every year, and have pretty much closed the doors of political power to all but themselves. They have no problem with this at all; it is just and righteous and good, and all is as it should be in God's house.

They do, however, have a huge problem with the idea that educated people think they're better than everyone else, or that their opinions might carry any more weight. It's perverse.

Sad but disturbingly true. For whatever reason when you are intelligent you are deemed more threatening than someone with money and power.

I've had situations where people thought I was too smart or too eloquent, because I was poor, and that I shouldn't be such because it was above my station. People with real skill are probably deemed as something to be afraid of because they might actually get past you instead of relying on what mommy and daddy left for them.

[ArmorPierce]

Of course the intelligent elite should be feared, it's the intelligent elite that can see through the veil of bullshit strung up by those with wealth and power. People take more offense to the idea that there are people that are smarter than them than the idea that someone has more money than them. For some reason most Americans have this idea in their head that they too will be rich one day.

[Imperial Overlord]

Americans like to believe that they can strike it lucky and become rich. It's a intoxicating fantasy. On the other hand, they know that they aren't going to become smarter and that becoming better educated than they are now is going to cost time, resources, and effort they probably won't ever spend.

So on one hand you have the dream of what you could be. On the other hand you have a group that you can't join and are your betters. Its not surprising that the pleasant fantasy trumps the people you resent even though it's the rich that are fucking up your life. That's how religion works, after all.

[ArmorPierce]

It's like Hillary Clinton being Louis XVI and calling the middle class demanding more representation in government elitist and having the peasants mob them. It really ridiculous that the peasants are siding with the ones that cares nothing about them and turned against those that would help them.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

I think Hillary's shameless, cynical pandering to blue-collar voters over the gas tax and Obama's "elitism" warrant a nickname for her. "Hillary the Cable Guy", perhaps?

[Adrian Laguna]

I like Jon Stewart's take on the subject.

[Majin Gojira]

Isn't Clinton about as elitist as you can get without an established aristocracy? Have she gone deerhunting in her SUV yet?

Americans have no problem with the elitism of wealth and power. They only have a problem with the elitism of education and knowledge.

In short, they love the fact that rich people look down their noses at the rest of us, get better access to everything, get health care while poor people don't, control the media and industry, take more and more of the country's wealth for themselves every year, and have pretty much closed the doors of political power to all but themselves. They have no problem with this at all; it is just and righteous and good, and all is as it should be in God's house.

They do, however, have a huge problem with the idea that educated people think they're better than everyone else, or that their opinions might carry any more weight. It's perverse.

Aptly, this also explains Paris Hilton.