Response to article Thomas Friedman. He says it so well: Why is it OK to lower taxes to 'encourage spending' and why is it OK to subsidize oil companies? Cheney says we don't need to "inflict pain" but isn't our war in Iraq pretty painful? Isn't the billions of oil profits that go to Saudi Arabia that pays for terrorist activity "pain"? (Note: I copy and pasted most of the article below.)
Full disclosure: I bought a Toyota Tacoma pick up truck that gets 20 mpg on a good day. I can afford the gas. If it came in an ethanol variation I would jump on it. If bio-diesel was reliable at freezing temperatures, I'd jump on it. For me, it's not about the money -- I WANT TO PAY for something other than gas, but there's nothing out there that meets my needs. Something that can go down logging roads, haul kayaks, snowmobiles, etc., but that isn't a 20' land barge that gets 8 mpg... that's a Tacoma. But what incentive is there for Toyota to make an ethanol Tacoma? What incentive is there to make it a bio-diesel, or whatever? None. Because most Americans can still afford $2.50/gallon to get to work everyday and play on the weekends.
Why should the Federal government raise gas taxes by 2-3 dollars? Because you are paying that tax anyway by paying over 500 billion for our military every year. Where do you want your tax dollars going? To the military so we can make the world safe for oil? Notice how the Europeans and Japanese spend a tiny fraction of what we spend on defense. In fact, the US spends as much as THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED on defense. That's right. Our defense budget is as large as the defense budget of every other country on Earth. Of course you can look at it over time since the cold war, as a percentage of GDP, etc., but that's not the point is. The point is that the US has the largest, most powerful Military in the world. Therefore US taxpayers are paying to make the world safe for oil -- and dangerous for you and me. We spend billions of dollars to indirectly protect the very regimes whose citizens (and in some cases, governments) seek to destroy us.
So why not reduce our dependency on oil. Perform, as a SECURITY measure, a forcing function (hey, this president gets to do whatever he wants anyway, why not use his powers for good instead of evil) on oil. Raise gas taxes by 2, 3, or 4 dollars. Plow the profits into incremental improvements in our energy dependencies. The easiest thing would be biofuels, especially things like ethanol. Check out this report produced by UT-El Paso about their Chevy Silverado conversion project. I'd get my truck converted but there's nowhere to get E85 outside the cornbelt. With just a little nudge from a fat gas tax, we could get this country off of oil in no time.
And I've got to make this very important point: I don't care about suburbia, or public transit, or any of that crap. America outside of New York City has been designed for use by single-occupant cars. It sucks but it's the way it is. We've got to fight one battle at a time. If you look at it dollar for dollar and life for life, the number one thing we can do to make America better is to stop sending money to the middle east, period. We get some bonus environmental action. But my goal is to be effective. Left wing environmentalists are often members of the liberal elite like myself, and we only know how to preach to the choir. But if you can convince Red State America that by converting their Ford Mega 6000 SUX 4mpg SUV to ethanol, they are saving American lives and making life much harder for terrorists; if you can convince them that 1/5th of every dollar they spend on gas goes straight to Saudi Arabia, where it promptly goes straight to Osama bin Laden and his friends -- THEN you're getting somewhere. Even better, if you can tell him (and I mean HIM intentionally) that by buying ethanol or whatever bio-fuel that you're buying America and you're supporting American farmers and all that baseball-apple pie shit, well, you've scored another point.
begin Friedman article:
"I think — the president and I believe very deeply that, obviously, the government has got a role to play here in terms of supporting research into new technologies and encouraging the development of new methods of generating energy. ... But we also are big believers in the market, and that we need to be careful about having government come in, for example, and tell people how to live their lives. ... This notion that we have to 'impose pain,' some kind of government mandate, I think we would resist. The marketplace does work out there."
What is he talking about? The global oil market is anything but free. It's controlled by the world's largest cartel — OPEC — which sets output, and thereby prices, according to the needs of some of the worst regimes in the world. By doing nothing, we are letting their needs determine the price and their treasuries reap all the profits.
Also, why does Mr. Cheney have no problem influencing the market by lowering taxes to get consumers to spend, but he rejects raising gasoline taxes to get consumers to save energy — a fundamental national interest.
Don't take it from me. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard, who recently retired as chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Jan. 3 about his New Year's resolutions: "Everyone hates taxes, but the government needs to fund its operations, and some taxes can actually do some good in the process. I will tell the American people that a higher tax on gasoline is better at encouraging conservation than are heavy-handed [mileage standards]. It would not only encourage people to buy more fuel-efficient cars, but it would encourage them to drive less."
Mr. Cheney, we are told, is a "tough guy." Really? Well, how tough is this: We have a small gasoline tax, but Europe and Japan tax their gasoline by $2 and $3 a gallon, or more. They use those taxes to build schools, highways and national health care for their citizens. But they spend very little on defense compared with us.
So who protects their oil supplies from the Middle East? U.S. taxpayers. We spend nearly $600 billion a year on defense, a large chunk in the Persian Gulf. But how do we pay for that without a gas tax? Income taxes and Social Security. Yes, we tax our incomes and raid our children's Social Security fund so Europeans and Japanese can comfortably import their oil from the gulf, impose big gas taxes on it at their pumps and then use that income for their own domestic needs. And because they have high gas taxes, they also beat Detroit at making more fuel-efficient cars. Now how tough is that?
Finally, if Mr. Cheney believes so much in markets, why did the 2005 energy act contain about $2 billion in tax breaks for oil companies? Why does his administration permit a 54-cents-a-gallon tax on imported ethanol — fuel made from sugar or corn — so Brazilian sugar exports won't compete with American sugar? Yes, we tax imported ethanol from Brazil, but we don't tax imported oil from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela or Russia.
"Everyone says we need a new Marshall Plan," said Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy expert and the author of "The Case for Goliath." "We have a Marshall Plan. It's our energy policy. It's a Marshall plan for terrorists and dictators."
How tough is it, Mr. Cheney, to will the ends — an end to America's oil addiction — but not will the means: a gasoline tax? It's not very tough, it's not very smart, and it's going to end badly for us.
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