sturd, could our government do anything to ease gas prices?
Suddenly I'm a gas price expert. I actually know one but haven't played on his
bocci team since BP left Cleveland. I could ask him but speculating is more fun.
I suppose short term you could cut gas taxes and let the roads and other stuff
they pay for go to hell. Other than that, you'd need to reanimate that free trader
Richard Nixon and impose price controls.
Long term there's stuff you can do but it means stepping on personal property
rights. Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) will kill these ideas but if we wanted
the country to be energy independent and gas prices to be stable, we'd do
them.
1. Make a nuclear waste depository. Screw the people NIMBYs. Right
now it's in Perry, Oak Harbor, Charlevoix Michigan, freaking everywhere
there's a nuke plant. Just plain stupid to have it in residential neighborhoods.
Tell everybody in Nevada to move their casinos and whorehouses to Utah
and move the waste there. Then mandate a design, like the French did, and
let people build it with siting that is streamlined. The design would
probably come from Barberton so a double win for this area.
2. Figure out a genuine safety standard for drilling for oil/gas (it's really,
really close now) then drill. Anywhere there is oil. Stop making "public
lands" wilderness for instance. Big part of this would be stepping really
hard on private property rights though.
3. Take some of that gas tax and build transit infrastructure that is not
highway and airport. Yes, I'm talking trains. I could go on and
on about my experiences in THE WHOLE REST OF THE WORLD getting
from point A to point B. Only in the US do you have no choice
but to drive your own car. Even Australia so don't give me the big
empty country argument.
4. Tell the wanker NIMBYs up the east coast that we're sorry but
your viewshed is not important and your left wing beliefs are forcing us
to build wind farms here. Yes, wind is barely enough energy to worry
about it but would be nice to kick those green bobbleheads in the "eyeshed".
5. I'm not fond of gas mileage requirements for manufacturers but
can't argue with the long term effectiveness of that sort of rule.
The rules should be changed to encourage more efficient internal
combustion engines -diesel and Atkinson cycle. I'd have bought a
diesel truck already if there was one I could park in a normal parking
space and I didn't need a stepladder to change the oil. Why only
hybrids have Atkinson motors is beyond me. It's a simple freaking
cam change! (for what passes for an Atkinson today).
Sheesh, that enough? Your turn.