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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (245873)	4/7/2002 5:04:40 PM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Big oil and big auto have been using the safety excuse for too long. They can make safer cars which consume less gas and they know it but for some reason they always fight it. Like I said, their big Detroit cars always fare poorly in safety crash tests. Smaller Japanese and Euro cars do much better and get higher gas mileage. Why can't American auto-makers learn? That said, true independence from OPEC will probably take higher gas taxes. No one likes taxes but those revenues can be used to fund alternative fuels, environmental works and so forth. Reward those who consume less and penalize those who consume (and pollute) the most. That is a system which works. The guzzlers and pollutors don't like it but if 9/11 proves anything it's that we need to change our ways of looking at the Middle East, and the #1 issue/interest in the Middle East is and always has been oil. We also have some nasty environmental problems due to our burning of fossil fuels. Over time they make a big difference. Dick Cheney's speeches last year were exactly the wrong direction to go in. Thank God he has been discredited on energy. If and when his energy papers are released you will see that. It's time for political conservatives to get on the clean fuels band-wagon too, not just democrats and liberals. It's an issue which should cross party lines. The only ones fighting it are the oil and auto lobbies which unfortunately have way too much influence with the GOP. Perhaps the limitation of soft money will help minimize this sort of political corruption.