election day in NC !

it's election day here in North Carolina. When I first learned that NC had scheduled its primary for May 6 I thought to myself: "way to make yourselves irrelevant." I sure was wrong on that. The primary season has now lasted from prior to the beggining of the spring semester here at UNC - Chapel Hill until after its close.

Political geography is one of my favorite subjects and check out the Washington Post's surprisingly inane analysis of North Carolina's political geography. Thanks WaPo for pointing out where the colleges and military bases are in our state! I personally think the outer suburbs of Charlotte and Raleigh will be very important in today's race. Mark Johnson's analysis in the Charlotte Observer is much better - the sub-headline is: "Small cities, distant suburbs are road to victory."

If I have more time later today I will provide some relatively in-depth analysis of the "gas tax holiday" proposed by both Hillary Clinton and John McCain. I think it's an incredibly bad idea and one that would never be able to get enacted anyways. More important, in my estimation, is greater public understanding of what the federal gas tax is.

I cannot repeat it enough: the federal gas tax is 18.4 cents a gallon. The federal gas tax has been 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993 except for 1996 when it was temporarily lowered to 18.3 cents a gallon. Unlike other taxes, such as a sales tax, the federal gas tax is not a percentage tax. This means that back in 1998 when gas was say 95 cents a gallon the federal gax tax was 18.4 cents a gallon and now in 2008 with gas prices about $3.60 the federal gas tax is still 18.4 cents a gallon. The federal gas tax has absolutely nothing to do with the rise in gas prices over the past decade.

More later...