I agree in principle (become energy independent) with your lame brain idea, but I need to rant about a few reasons why I can’t support it. First, our government has plenty of our money to do the things you suggest, but they can’t seem to spend it on the right things. No doubt we could all come up with a list of government abuse of tax payer’s money without a lot of effort. Next, if you siphon another $0.50 per gallon tax out of my wallet, there is no guarantee the government will spend it on infrastructure or energy independence. Again, there are plenty of examples where this has happened (Social Security for example). I’ll stop being negative for a second and assume the government will spend this money on rebuilding roads. If the tax does what it is supposed to do, we will use less gasoline and the tax base will reduce to a point the government will have to seek other ways to fund their projects, i.e., more taxes. It’s like using a cigarette tax to fund health care. Finally, while $0.50 per gallon doesn’t seem like a lot to you, it’s a lot to people that can’t afford it. If we had responsible politicians that really cared about this country more than just getting re-elected and padding there own wallets, I think your idea would work like a charm. Then again if we had politicians like that, we wouldn’t be in this situation.