Not Yet Sworn In, and Already Flip-Flopping?

Barack Obama vowed on the campaign trail to slap oil companies with a windfall tax, but, blogs Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, it might've all just been old-fashioned populist bluster that's led to Obama’s first breach of a campaign promise. The American Small Business League has noted, and decried, the proposal’s deletion from Obama’s transition website. But, says one economist, dramatically lower oil prices mean that it “makes sense” to junk the idea.

An Obama spokesman says that the price of oil is the key factor: “President-elect Obama announced the [windfall profits tax] policy during the campaign because oil prices were above $80 per barrel. They are currently below that now and expected to stay below that.”
(More Barack Obama stories.)