"Wes" wrote in message
...
"John R. Carroll" wrote:

And where would that big gasoline tax go pray tell?

That's hard to say Wes but it could be used to keep your kids from having
to
pay off every dime of the trillions of dollars being borrowed to do
something to keep you in your job today. There is five hundred trillion
dollars or more in the system that is going to have to be bled out over
time
and that's a lot of money by anyones standards.

If I had certainty that it would pay down debt, we could consider it. It
is a regressive
tax as I mentioned to Ed.


Hardly. Given todays technology, you could abate the tax at the pump
completely with a card for anyone driving preferred vehicles.
Your card could also hold a profile that would "prebate" the tax. Use more -
pay more. Car pooling works, even in small shops.



Personally, I'd roll out a graduated tax on autogas tomorrow. You could
index it to some group of economic indicators so that until those
indicators
are strong enough the tax would be zero and exempt commercial vehicles in
the long haul/LTL industries permanently.

The first part keeps us from digging a bigger hole. Pickens idea of using
windmills to
generate electricity and move heavy truck to NG was one of the few 'green'
ideas I liked.

Big Rigs are one of the few efficient uses of petroleum for transport.
NG ain't going to happen.
Taxing those guys would be foolish and there isn't any need to do so.

Electric vehicles, networks and using cars that are charging as a load
sink that can be
dropped to keep traditional baseline running w/o firing up NG generation
would be a piece
of the puzzle.

Don't forget though that many voters feel the price of gas acutely. I'd
hate to have my
name on that one if I was a member of the house or senator up for
re-election.

Yeah, bull**** Republican values will finally have to align with reality.
There isn't anything conservative about today's Republican party.
It's time you realized that we elect people to office at the national level
to make hard choices.
Don't pull the plug on them when they do so or we will continue to have what
we do and don't put them in office unless you are willing to trust them with
that responsibility.. They aren't any better than their constituents which
is why George W. Bush is such an embarassment.

You'll know things are on the right track when you write your Congressman to
say that their vote cost you something, but thanks, the good of the country
was well served, let's not have this happen again.



You can't tax oil directly but you can target a tax that will produce the
specific desired result without much trouble at all. Especially in the age
of computerized pumps. In a healthy economy you wouldn't see gas below
five
dollars per gallon if I had my way.

I have to ask you how far do you drive?

My 1985 Corvette is sporting 273,815 miles and my 1990 is going on the road
next week.
I did 20,000 miles in four months this summer on the '85, all of it at more
than four dollars per gallon.

Not everyone lives in a high density population
center. Too many solutions, including light rail seem to be city/metro
centric ideas.

The people that fear such a thing most aren't American consumers Wes. It's
the producers that are scared to death oif such a thing and rightfully so.
We'd be declaring economic war on them and it's the war Bush should have
declared instead of the mess he created instead.

Last one first. I don't see Obama making big changes so far.

Really? He isn't even our President and he's effected a huge change in
public perception.
OTOH, I've seen George W. Bush make dramatic changes in everything from his
stewardship of America to the active promotion of policies that have lead
our economy to the brink.

Iraq is winding down, surge
in Afghanistan. Game still on.

Nobody gives a **** about either of them Wes and you shouldn't either. Let
them fight their own battles. We can, and should, help out but it's their
beef. Your job, and mine, is to feed our families and grow America into the
future with a higher standard of living for us all. Their job is to explain
to us why helping them is a good idea. I haven't heard or seen anything from
them yet unless their mouthpiece is living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and
I thought the dude at that adress worked for you and I.
That means not sacrificing our wants and finding a way to deliver. Convinced
as Americans all seem to be of our superior nature, the time has come to
rise to the challenge and quit blaming others for our own failure to get it
right.
When you are told the costs are to high your response ought to be something
to the effect that Americans are at least as capable as the rest of the
world - go back to the drawing board and figure something out or you're
fired.

The way to keep Saudi Arabian citizens from crashing commercial jets into
American real estate is to bankrupt their country.
The way to keep Afghanistan in line is to pulverize them remotely with
drones from time to time. They are savages.
The real problem in that area is something that you didn't mention -
Pakistan and their nukes.
We tried to get them to buy into PASS but they wouldn't. That means they can
launch at will and undetected.



Well we do not have a coherent energy policy.

The carbon crowd wants the end of coal fired,

That isn't going to happen either. Look for yourself.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri.../gen_tabs.html


the anti nukes block new nuclear power
plants.

BS. The problem with Nukes is they take ten years to build and they are only
a bridge.
They also have another distinctive drawback. The fuel is EXPENSIVE and
nobody wants it in their back yard.
Something nobody talks about, but they actually do exist, is environmental
sacrifice zones.
Look it up.



JC