Source:  RS

by Tabitha Hale

Source: RS

by Ben Howe

As Tabitha Hale noted yesterday, there seems to be no shortage of ways that this administration and the Democrat party can think of to tax away every bit of our nation’s prosperity.  But the “car tax” simply defies logic and begs the question, “What are they thinking?”

Aside from their apparent love of taxation, what is the underlying reason this administration would want to levy more taxes on America’s driving? Environmentalism?  Money for infrastructure investment?  Justify more hires at the IRS?

Actually, it’s because the treasury is starting to lose money.  In a glaring oversight about how taxing behavior works, the administration seems to believe that taxing driving will increase revenues as opposed to simply decreasing driving.  As Steve Maley pointed out today, it’s not as though the Democrats are in favor of doing much to bring the cost of oil down and the administration is no different.  In fact, part of their hope had originally been that higher gas prices would encourage the pursuit of more fuel efficient vehicles and of course green technology has played a huge role in every energy decision the Obama administration has made.  Whether they addressed the fact that lower gas consumption would result in lower revenues is hard to say.  They could very well have assumed a tax of this nature would address that problem.  Either way, here we are, revenues going down, and of course the government can’t get more efficient as cars do, so we are expected to pick up the tab. (more…)

Source:  Red State

Everybody is asking that question these days. The average nationwide price for all grades this week is $3.96/gallon; Californians are paying on average $4.26, the highest in the nation.

Why does it cost so much, especially considering that the price was below $2.00/gallon just within the last couple of years?

Nearly seventy percent of the price of a gallon of retail gasoline is the price of the crude oil it is refined from. Two graphs from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) make that point. The first shows the price of a gallon of gasoline (left axis) plotted against the price of a gallon of crude oil (right axis). The two move in virtual lock-step; if you know the crude oil price per gallon, add $1.00 and you’ll know the price of gasoline within a few cents. (At $105 per 42-gallon barrel, the per-gallon price of crude is $2.50; add a buck, and you get a gasoline price around $3.50.) (more…)