Latest Bad Idea From The NYT: Tax Gas Till It Costs $4-5

I'm starting to think the New York Times is rolling out a year-ending Worst Ideas of 2008 list—with a twist. Instead of knocking the nutty notions, the Gray Lady's embracing them.

Yesterday, as I noted in Union Got To Be Kidding Me, the Times came out against border fences and for the right of illegal immigrants . . . to form unions.

Today, in The Gas Tax, the paper editorializes in favor of taxing gasoline so that it would never cost less than $4-5/gallon.  Yup: the Times wants to snuff out the only silver lining on the economic downturn.

The idea is to force us to buy the highly fuel-efficient cars that Pres.-elect Obama and the Dem congress want to force Detroit to build. Ever the progressives, the paper proposes that "the fuel taxes could be offset with tax credits to protect vulnerable segments of the population."  Gas rises to $5: women, minorities hardest hit!

The Times pays lip service to the fact that "a bitter recession is not the most opportune time to ratchet up the price of energy."  But it wants the Obama administration to start planning now to ratchet up the price of gas when the recession ends.  Right.  What better way to choke off a recovery than by doubling the cost of energy?

Could the Obama administration actually take up the Times's idea?  Doesn't seem impossible. Back in June, as gas prices were hitting their peak, candidate Obama seemed to agree that high gas prices could help us.  His only beef: "I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment."  Thanks.

Go ahead, make our day.  Propose minimum $4-5/gallon gas during the first 100 days.  Mid-term elections are less than two years away.

Let's see what the Times has on its Worst Ideas We Love list tomorrow.  Any predictions?

NOTE: It gets worse.  Steven Chu, the man Pres.-elect Obama has nominated as Energy Secretary recently and explicitly came out for raising taxes to push gas prices to European levels. Forget $4-5—we're talking $8-9/gallon.   [H/t FReeper Entrepreneur.]

From the Wall Street Journal, December, 12, 2008:

In a sign of one major internal difference, Mr. Chu has called for gradually ramping up gasoline taxes over 15 years to coax consumers into buying more-efficient cars and living in neighborhoods closer to work.

"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Mr. Chu, who directs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September.