Stop! No more lectures about poverty by people wearing Dick Cheney masks. It's not just wrong on the gas tax. It's getting scary.
Seriously, the Dark Lord Cheney himself couldn't have come up with a more fiendish line of bullshit. Re-frame an energy tax proposal as an attack on poor people? Divide and conquer? Ex-cellent.
Solutions to this red herring are many, but here's one proposal: to balance the energy tax, we can in turn take on poverty directly. Reduce payroll taxes for anyone earning less than 45K/year, on a progressive scale--for every increase in their energy taxes. Poverty red herring, solved. Dick Cheney thwarted.
More ranting if you care to continue...
The fact is the energy industry and the auto industry are the ones hurting poor people. They first tricked people into buying energy inefficient homes far from where they work. Then they fooled them into cars with bad mileage--with fear-mongering ads, and heavily subsidized roads and subsidized energy prices at all levels including power plants. Now everyone is feeling the pain as gas prices increase--and this pain is going to get worse regardless, as cheap energy goes away.
On poverty, we live in a society where 33 million face hunger despite our tremendous weatlh. We have crap protection for workers, very few of whom are unionized. We don't have nationallized health care. And poor people in the US (and around the world) are about to be hammered by more Hurricane Katrinas; more diseases; sea level rise that will put many literally underwater; and other problems caused by global warming.
Here again industry is attacking poor people--with junk science that claims climate change isn't happening, or linked to fossil fuels. And the Dick Cheney clones want to pick on the energy tax that will actually reduce climate change and help the poor survive? That's your poverty program?
An energy tax is the most efficient and direct way to deal with the global warming crisis. Don't talk to a mealy-mouthed politician if you want the truth. Ask any economist.
Meanwhile, Americans are now becoming open to the idea of energy increases:
A New York Times/CBS News poll suggests Americans might OK a gasoline tax hike if it reduced global warming or lessened U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
The nationwide poll conducted last Wednesday through Sunday showed Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to a higher federal gasoline tax, but a tax hike that brought measurable results would be acceptable to most Americans.
The Times said 85 percent of the 1,018 adults polled opposed a federal gas tax hike, but 55 percent said they'd support such an increase if it reduced the U.S. dependence on foreign oil. And 59 percent said they'd approve a gasoline tax hike if it resulted in less consumption or eased the threat of global warming.
The federal gasoline tax has been 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993.
http://pda.physorg.com/...
Notice in that poll that climate change worries trump 'energy security;- meaning we can talk about the real problem rathen than dancing around it.
The real problem with the gas tax proposal is that it doesn't go nearly far enough. We don't just need a gas tax. We need a comprehensive energy tax that reduces our CO2 emissions--or we're all screwed.
Coal emissions are actually a low worse when it comes to CO2 emissions per unit of energy--than oil. We also need taxes on all vehicles graded based on their MPG; we need road use taxes with high-tech tolling; and we also need CO2 taxes on all fossil fuel burning power plants; we need it all yesterday.