Taking the Fallows Challenge
It wasn’t bipartisan, so I won’t win a subscription, but there’s no question in my mind that Al Gore’s call in the fall of 2000 to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to relieve consumers oppressed by high gas prices (then about $1.50/gallon, if I recall correctly) was fully well as knowingly stupid a proposal as Hillary Clinton’s proposal to temporarily cut the gas tax. And Gore’s conscious stupidity was more appalling because his signature issue was, then as now, climate change, and he had advocated taxes that would significantly raised the cost of gasoline in order to reduce consumption. Clinton shows no comparable attachment to reducing fossil-fuels use as a public-policy goal.
How about ethanol subsidies? Were those bipartisan? It’s hard for me to think of a more egregious waste of land, money, energy, and political capital.
— John · May 1, 03:12 PM · #
There was a spell in the early summer of 2000 when gas prices hit $3.00.
— Steve Sailer · May 2, 01:21 PM · #