Time For Detroit To Dump NASCAR – 24/7 Wall Street

It is time for Detroit to pull its products and sponsorship dollars out of NASCAR. Toyota (TM) may be able to afford the marketing luxury, but Ford (F), Chevy, and Chrysler cannot. Chevy as 14 cars, Ford 7, Dodge 7, and Toyota 9 cars on the circuit at any given time.

Fox Sports reports that it cost $20 million to $25 million to operate a team. The driver can cost another $10 million. Chrysler said late last year the it would reduce its NASCAR budget by 30%. Chrysler, moving out of Chapter 11, should not be spending a dime of taxpayer money to race. The same holds true for GM.

Forbes recently reported that NASCAR television rating were down 21% from their 2005 peak.

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: [Roger fails to convince me that for Democrats, the situation today isn't similar to the BTU situation in 1993]

E&E Daily has a nice breakdown of where the votes are and who is on the fence on the Waxman-Markey "jobs bill" in this PDF. If it is brought to a vote, then you can assume that the votes to pass are all lined up. If there is a delay, for any reason, there remains some uncertainty. My guess is that it has the votes and will pass. There is little political risk for Democrats to vote for the bill as conventional wisdom holds that it can't get through the Senate. On the other hand, not voting for it guarantees offending Congressional leadership and the President. On this basis I'd be very surprised if the Democrats cannot line up the needed votes.

Will House Democrats get BTU’d on climate change? | KeithHennessey.com

In 1993 then-Vice President Gore led the Clinton Administration to propose increasing the taxation of energy. Called the “BTU tax,” the Administration proposed to tax the energy content of a fuel source, measured in British Thermal Units (BTU’s).

Democrats were in the majority, and 218 of them voted for the bill containing the BTU tax. 38 House Democrats and all 175 House Republicans voted no.

The three vote margin of victory suggests that House Democratic leaders had to twist the arms of reluctant Democrat Members to vote aye. In this scenario, if you are a House Democrat who does not have a strong view on the substance but is nervous about the politics of voting for higher energy taxes, you would like the bill to pass (so that your leaders get what they want and stop pressuring you) without your vote (so that you don’t give your opponent back home an effective line of attack).

The Senate Democrats, who were in the majority, promptly dropped the BTU tax without a vote. They also made it clear they would not accept a BTU tax in the final conference report on the bill.

Those nervous House Democrats who had voted for the bill with the BTU tax had the worst of all worlds. They had cast a costly political vote for no policy benefit.

A phrase soon entered the legislative vernacular. Senate Democrats had “BTU’d” House Democrats.

Media Tell Obama--Don't Be a Lefty Like Clinton

...The backlash was instant, and painful. Democrats lost 54 House seats and 10 Senate seats in 1994, just two years after Mr. Clinton took office.