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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (178125)	11/17/2003 11:30:35 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1575467

Ted, In the meantime, implement strong conservation measures. All the increased taxes on gas should be going to alternative energy sources. ... We are a smart country. If we plan this well, the inconvenience will be relatively minor. Strong conservation measures do not amount to a "minor inconvenience." Significant taxes on gas is going to be a major drag on the economy. This, plus Washington's bipartisan desire to increase social spending even more will turn this American economy into a socialist's dream, where everyone is equally demotivated to do anything. First, increased usage of these hybrids will help to cut back on consumption. Put a rebate on them or waive all taxes.......encourage Americans to buy them. Require them for all public fleets. Naturally, GM doesn't have one yet so pressure will have to be brought to bear on them to produce. BTW doesn't that speak volumes that once again GM is behind the 8 ball when it comes to fuel efficient cars. When will they ever learn? Secondly, most of current gas taxes are spent on highways. A change of priorities where more is spent on mass trasit can be made without increasing taxes. But having said that, there will be some pain. We have gone too far down the current road. We should have raised gas taxes when Europe did. We should have made gas more expensive over time and weaned us off of it. We should have been building better interurban and intra urban trains when Europe did. We should have put more effort into alternative fuels. We did not......so there will be a price to pay but I don't think it has to be huge. More importantly, there will have to be a national campaign to change the way people think and structure their lives. And there will have to be more efforts to make our cities more urbane and less sprawled. China is too busy becoming the next great capitalist giant. What do you think is going to fuel that effort? A bunch of Chinese citizens pedaling bikes attached to generators? You need to catch up......China is making huge investments in its infrastructure and its manu. capacity. New plants are going in every day and their cities look like a mass of cranes and skyscapers. Currently they are building the largest dam in the world and they want to build a canal from the water surplus south to the water short north. I can't imagine the environmental disasters they are creating. They will make the US disasters look like pikers. Even now, the Gobi desert is slowly but surely closing in on Beijing. This attack on Iraq and how the American public went along with it when many of them knew full well that Bush was BSing us.......its bad.......its how people are when empires are in decline. Iraq might be expensive, but it's still a small step in the right direction. With better intelligence and smarter deployment of our forces, the guerillas will be crushed, and Iraq can be transferred to its own people sooner. Military experts, not controlled by the White House, are talking 5-10 years minimum before US forces can withdraw. This is a financial disaster and lets not even get into the loss of human life. And what happens if Iraq does not vote in a democratic gov't? What's going to cause our "empire" (as you put it) to decline is the same sort of self-pity and self-loathing that liberals promote, all because we've "sophisticated" ourselves away from traditional values. There is no self pity or loathing coming from the left. The right is being criticized justly. They have put us into a quagmire based on hubris and misinformation. Worse.......those same traits are leading to total mismanagement. The fact that the right refuses to acknowledge the problems and the missteps is one of the first signs of decay. The fact that the right tries to blame everyone else for any problems is still another sign. The fact that a president was permitted to go to war against the best advise of a lot of people says volumes. The fact the American did not make real efforts to stop him is still another sign. The fact that we believe we can stick our nose wherever we like for whatever trumped up reasons says more volumes. The Italian representive to Iraq resigned today. He says Bush and Bremer don't understand the culture they are dealing with and that they are making a mess of things. Italy is a part of the coalition and yet, they too are saying the same thing as the Germans and the French and Russians and scores of others. Iraq was a big mistake. How we exit this mess is critical. ted