I too agree with Whitey. Additional taxes is NOT the problem…Drilling is NOT the solution. One of my investment portfolios is heavily invested in Exxon. So I get their quarterly reports…their profit is way way up…Yup…Let’s keep giving Exxon tax breaks while we all pay more at the pump. The little money I make from my Exxon stock doesn’t offset the price I pay at the pump…I’d have to own a lot more shares then I do for that to happen.
Joseph, I hope you didn’t take me seriously. I was being sarcastic when I said, “We need to tax diesel fuel so we can grant huge tax subsidies to Big Oil.”
Oh no! Another person that thinks our problems should be solved by raising taxes selectively and to extremes until the masses behave the way he wants them to!
Here’s an idea; how about we eliminate taxes on diesel and see who wins? It’d save transportantion costs for industry as well, and might even help the economy.
Become a tax reducer instead of a tax raiser! Join the “right”!
Here’s the choice we’re now facing: increase fuel taxes or put a GPS monitor in your vehicle which will report your miles to the government and bill you. I know which one I’d prefer…
That sounds like a false choice to me. You really think the government is going to put a GPS in your car and monitor your car use? Not in a million years.
"We need to tax diesel fuel so we can grant huge tax subsidies to Big Oil."
Good sarcasm! 
If we eliminate tax on diesel we’ll just have to find another source for road repair funds. Maybe in the form of a “per wheel” tax or something. In the long run it would still put more burden on trucking…which IS justified in the first place. In the end putting a new tax system in place is just going to spend more taxpayer dollars.
A per-mile tax is in the current Fed proposal. Will it pass? I doubt it, too, but a number of states are also pushing for it.
Here’s more on the Fed. proposal:
A gas tax is, in a sense, a “tax per-mile”. The mor emiles you drive, the more gas you use, the more tax you pay.
Truthfully, a per-gallon tax is the only cost effective way to do fuel taxes. And it’s as fair as can be done.
I just checked the links. The “bill” has as its priority funding for high speed rail development. Another scheme to spend trillions uselessly and needlessly. Another scheme to create another extreme burden on the taxpayers to fund a system that want and fewer will use. Another hole to pour tax dollars into.
High speed rail? They need to see the latest news out of the ‘wonderful’ Chinese system: almost unused, speed limits imposed because of corruption in the construction resulting in use of inferior/dangerous techniques and material, and the pending disruption to China’s ‘miracle’ economy from the waste of so much money on unproductive projects.
I guess I did not make my opinion very clear. As we have it now, taxes on fuel is based on ??? It is based on politicians and political needs.
Rather than that, I suggest that the true cost of fuel should be one of the the basis of the tax system. After the cost of the fuel, we should add the true cost of building and maintaining the highway system. Finally I believe that cost should include the “cost to society”.
When you burn fuel, you are creating pollution. That cost should be included.
Now that everyone hates me, let me offer another reason to hate me. I would suggest adding a depletion tax. We only have X amount of oil and other fuels. I would hope that my grand children and their children might have some of the fuel left for their needs.
There certainly are many calculations to be made. Making the hard decisions will not get easier as time goes on. Determining the future has always been difficult and most often wrong, but we certainly can't expect atomic power to save us, unless we like what happen in Russia and China.
There is no one answer, but sticking our heads in the sand will not solve the problem.
The best we can do is to try and apply the cost to the consumer of the product. That will then allow each of us to vote when we make a decision like walking or driving, choosing to live in house A close to work or in house B that will require additional fuel (cost to me) that represents our best guess of what the value of the fuel really is. Let the user decide what it is really worth to them.
Of course I don't expect any of this to happen in my life time, but I can hope. And maybe in little ways we all may work towards that goal.
The biggest is likely to be businesses. Entities that have no right to vote, but control (contribute) far more than any of us. Why do we let businesses to control politics?
OK this is my last comment on the subject. If the Web Lackies like, I give them my approval to remove this and my other messages.Rather than another tax, why not put tolls on roads? Not all roads, but there are some circumstances where it might make sense. MD will soon open a highway just north of the DC beltway and charge a toll to use it. It is a new road and there are other alternatives. But none will be as fast. The toll makes sense on this road. The state is also thinking of expanding the width of Rte 95 north of Baltimore (4 lanes each way aren’t enough). They want to put in HOV-like lanes with a toll. Anyone who pays can use them. Otherwise, cue up with everyone else on the older highway. I like E470 around Denver when I’m on business trips. The trip from the airport to the northern end is really fast; I’m about the only one on the road. And at $6 to go about 30 miles, it’s no surprise I’m nearly alone.
Your argument bears a striking similarity to the argument that we need to raise income taxes to cover our sinfully enormous deficit. The problem is that after we take away everyone’s money who’ll pay off the debt?
If you’re suggesting that by taxing the blithers out of everything energy related we’ll force everyone to walk and the problem will be solved, suffice to say I disagree.
But, we’ve had the debate before on more than one occasion. We’re of diametricallly opposing philosophies.
I do agree that nuclear power isn’t the answer. When they originally proposed the Seabrook plant they promised us “power so cheap that it’ll be too cheap to meter”. Instead we got increased costs and recovery fees on something that we’ll be supporting for two thousand years, long after it ceases producing. And we still ended up buying power from the Canadia hydroelectric plant. And that was before Tree Mile Island, Chernoble, and now Japan. Nuclear power is a mistake. But there’s way too much money invested in its future to turn it back now…unfortunately.
“we certainly can’t expect atomic power to save us, unless we like what happen in Russia and China.”
The fact that you think Ukraine is Russia and Japan is China makes me disinclined to read the rest of your stuff.
Raising gas tax to pay off the national debt is NOT the problem. In fact it not only WON’T pay off the national debt, it will probably put us further in debt.
SEABROOK - That is by far the WORSE example of what a Nuclear Plant should be like. The initial cost was $4 billion for TWO plants. They ended building ONE plant for $8 billion. When it finally went on line PSNH rates more then doubled. They are among the highest in the country…Then let’s look at where the plant is…On a busy Saturday during the summer there are almost 100,000 people at nearby Hampton Beach. There is only ONE road out of that area. I wouldn’t want to be at Hampton beach that day if there’s a problem at Seabrook…The BEST case estimate of getting everyone out of there is 3-4 hours (and that’s only if everything runs smoothly).
Old gasoline cars typically do not stink and billow smoke out. Aged diesels can do this and its quite annoying.
I have no issue with diesel vehicles but strict emissions should be placed not only on new vehicles(currently the case) but older ones.
“Nuclear power is a mistake.”
Unfortunately, the only immediately available, clean power source is conservation. Wind and solar aren’t ready for prime time because adequate storage doesn’t exist. And a cross-country power grid doesn’t exist to get wind or solar from the source to the cities. For some reason people don’t seem to get excited about coal pollution, even though it has contributed far more to the general ill health of the USA than nuclear, which hasn’t hurt anyone yet. Natural gas could replace coal, but retrofitting existing coal plants to burn natural gas is expensive. Our best bet over the short haul is to use compact fluorescent and LED lighting, along with sitching to more fuel efficient vehicles. But that won’t have a huge impact.
There’s a lot on the horizon that may be hitting the markets soon.
One of the flaws is a NATIONAL grid for solar and wind. It content that solar doesn’t/shouldn’t have to on the grid…but individual homes. Newer cheaper solar panels that produce a lot more power then they did just 10 years is available now…And newer ones are coming in the next few years. Fuel cells are making big strides…I believe that people can be off the grid within 20 years.
I don;t have the figuress, but I’d bet that retrofitting coal plants to burn natural gas is far, far cheaper than building nuclear power plants. Especially when one considers long term costs.
There is another source of power that’s never mentioned. Hydroelectric. I read a report once on how many hydroelectric sites exist that are off-line, most with obsolete equipment and/or equipment in need of repair. The quantity is in the thousands. Were these brough up to date we could probably double our capacity at less cost than building a new nuclear plant. I. for one, would like to see this studied. Unfortunately, there’s no big bucks to be made here so it’s not politically beneficial to bother studying such an alternative.
In theory, when politicians talk about raising taxes for a noble cause (fixing the highway system with fuel taxes, etc) it sounds good but seldom works that way. I have no idea how the Feds handle this but I’d wager good money (and I’m not a gambling man at all) that much of that “highway money” is being diverted elsewhere.
Just a few years back there was a statewide vote in OK to raise fuel taxes by a nickle a gallon. This would, as per the usual TV ads, save lives, create job, blah, blah, blah.
A few weeks before the vote the pro-tax people got a boon when a hunk of concrete fell from an interstate overpass, crashed through the windshield of a car, and killed the lady from TX who was driving it.
They had the lady’s family prostituing themselves by begging the voters to not allow more lives to be taken, etc, etc.
A fact emerged about this time that of all the “highway money” here in OK less than 40% was actually being spent on the roads. The remaining 60+% was being diverted to the General Fund and blown on countless other pet projects.
The tax proposal went down to a smoking ruins defeat with an 87% no vote.
The politicians who promoted this idea immediately started running for the tall grass and denying they were ever for it, it was insinuated that the lady who was killed in the bridge accident was murdered by the voters, and to this day nothing has changed.
The bridge accident? Come to find out that an inspector had written this bridge up months before as being unsafe and it was never repaired because of lack of funds; keeping in mind the 60% money diversion I mentioned.