A funny thing happens when you become president, you can’t blindly advocate stupid ideas knowing you’ll never be held responsible for the outcome.  Apparently Obama realized this:

President-elect Barack Obama is not planning to implement a windfall profit tax on oil companies because prices have dropped below $80 a barrel, an aide said on Tuesday.

“President-elect Obama announced the policy during the campaign because oil prices were above $80 per barrel,” an aide on Obama’s transition team said. “They are currently below that now and expected to stay below that.”

Oil prices have fallen from a record $147 a barrel in July to under $50 this week.

That nonsense about the price of oil having anything to do with it (why the hell would you tax companies more for something they have no control over?) is just spin to placate the anti-capitalist left - who wanted to stick it to the big, eeeeeevil oil companies.  Far more likely, his economic team said, “Hey, this is a really dumb idea that will have very negative economic consequences.  Only an idiot would do this again.”

Obama is no idiot, so he probably knew this already.  But he is, apparently, a fraud who will promote idiotic policies, knowing they would be harmful if implented, to pander to his radical base.  It could be worse though: he could actually believe the nonsense he peddled for the last 2 years.

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