Posted on 05/27/2008 10:09:10 PM PDT by The_Republican
Imagine for a minute, just a minute, that someone running for president was able to actually tell the truth, the real truth, to the American people about what would be the best — I mean really the best — energy policy for the long-term economic health and security of our country. I realize this is a fantasy, but play along with me for a minute. What would this mythical, totally imaginary, truth-telling candidate say?
For starters, he or she would explain that there is no short-term fix for gasoline prices. Prices are what they are as a result of rising global oil demand from India, China and a rapidly growing Middle East on top of our own increasing consumption, a shortage of “sweet” crude that is used for the diesel fuel that Europe is highly dependent upon and our own neglect of effective energy policy for 30 years.
Cynical ideas, like the McCain-Clinton summertime gas-tax holiday, would only make the problem worse, and reckless initiatives like the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep offer to subsidize gasoline for three years for people who buy its gas guzzlers are the moral equivalent of tobacco companies offering discounted cigarettes to teenagers.
I can’t say it better than my friend Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, did in a Memorial Day essay in The Washington Post: “So Dodge wants to sell you a car you don’t really want to buy, that is not fuel-efficient, will further damage our environment, and will further subsidize oil states, some of which are on the other side of the wars we’re currently fighting. ... The planet be damned, troops be forgotten, the economy be ignored: buy a Dodge.”
No, our mythical candidate would say the long-term answer is to go exactly other way: guarantee people a high price of gasoline — forever.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Why should a candidate have to speak the truth, NO ONE at the New Yawk Times does.
Thanks for deciding in your infinite wisdom what things should cost. And by the way: stick it in your pompous ear.
Socialists are NEVER honest about their agenda for dependence on big government.
Socialism doesn’t win in an honest debate. It is unwelcome in the marketplace of ideas. So they cannot be truthful.
Once I saw “NEW YORK TIMES”...the irony about “speaking the truth” dawned on me.
And beef up our electric grid to replace all energy consumed by cars with what? Coal? Nuclear? How do you drive from NY to LA on a battery powered car? How do you drive from NY to Philadelphia? Are truckers going to plug in their 18 wheelers too?
Maybe we should stop producing electricity with natural gas and oil and save that for motor fuel.
The author is quite correct (unusually for him) about one thing. If you wish to reduce the use of a resource like oil or gasoline, by far the most efficient way to do so is to increase its price.
Of course, liberals like him are also anxious to prevent development of any of the possible realistic alternative energy resources.
You don't. You make the trip in a sleeper car on board the clean, quiet, and marvelously efficient super express bullet train — powered by nuclear-generated electricity. The twelve- hour trip affords you ample time to visit the gourmet restaurant in the dining car and enjoy cocktails in the club car before turning in for a solid eight hours of sleep in a real bed with real sheets.
Armey’s Axiom. Conservative Republicans are always worried the public won’t understand what they’re trying to get accomplished, but liberal Democrats are always worried the public will find out what they themselves are up to.
Ron Paul spoke his mind, and got denounced as a lunatic.
Obama thinks he is telling the truth... he sees a grand utopia....
That’s kinda ‘cause he is.
Not going to happen, lies are the currency of politics. And every politician, whether they do it for personal gain or “For the Greater Good” lies out of necessity.
You should never take a politicians word, it’s a coin so devalued as to be worthless.
Does the train have a petting zoo with unicorns?
Which he is, as proven empathetically by his absurd comments on 9/11 and Islam's war on us.
Friedman is not a traditional liberal. He is a real patriot. His arguments are always well reasoned and worth listening to. The amount of money we are sending to our oil-producing enemies every month has got to stop.
“...marvelously efficient super express bullet train...”
Maybe we can enlist Mussolini to get the trains running on time.
India and China and Europe will continue to fund our enemies in oil-producing nations.
The oil isn’t evil. The leaders there are.
Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.
End the evil. Not the oil.
Want to know why the French, the Germans, and the Russians would not come onboard for the war against Iraq? Saddam paid them off.
Does the train have a petting zoo with unicorns?
No. The bullet trains currently running in Japan, France, Germany, Belgium, and China don't either.
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