I'm surprised one of Bush's higher ups believes in global warming. Maybe he'll get fired soon like O Neal or Whitman (I know she resigned but it was because Cheney wouldn't let her do her job).

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Kerry once voiced support for a 50-cent increase in the gasoline tax. Bush calls that "wacky," but Bush's chief economist praised the idea. http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=165 A Bush ad released March 30 attacked Kerry for once supporting the "wacky" idea of raising the gasoline tax by 50 cents per gallon. That was a decade ago. More recently, the man who later became Bush's own chief economist said higher gasoline taxes would lead to "less traffic congestion, safer roads, and reduced risk of global warming" and that raising gasoline taxes 50 cents to pay for a cut in income-tax rates "may be the closest thing to a free lunch that economics has to offer." How "wacky" is that? Analysis As we've noted before , Kerry's support for a 50-cent-a-gallon increase in the gasoline tax happened a decade ago, back when regular was selling for a national average of $1.01 per gallon. Kerry's support was so fleeting that the only evidence of it to surface so far are two old newspaper clips in which Kerry complains that he deserved more credit as a deficit-cutter. He never voted for, or sponsored, legislation to impose such a tax, and he doesn't support one now, when the price is just under $1.76. Bush Cheney '04 Ad "Wacky" Bush: I'm George W. Bush and I approved this ad. Announcer: Some people have wacky ideas. Like taxing gasoline more so people drive less. That’s John Kerry. He supported a 50 cent a gallon gas tax. If Kerry’s tax increase were law, the average family wouldpay $657 more a year. Raising taxes is a habit of Kerry’s. He supported higher gasoline taxes 11 times. Maybe John Kerry just doesn’t understand what his ideas mean to the rest of us. Good Policy or "Wacky" Idea? The Bush ad ridicules Kerry for "wacky ideas" such as "taxing gasoline more so people drive less." Taxing gasoline is surely unpopular, and never more so than now when prices are hitting record levels. But "wacky?" In fact, the idea of raising gasoline taxes was praised in 1999 by Harvard economist Gregory Mankiw, who is now the chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. Mankiw wrote a Fortune magazine piece that carried the headline: "Tax Gas Now!" Mankiw: Let's cut income taxes by 10% and finance it with a 50-cent-per-gallon hike in the gasoline tax. . . . Cutting income taxes while increasing gasoline taxes would lead to more rapid economic growth, less traffic congestion, safer roads, and reduced risk of global warming--all without jeopardizing long-term fiscal solvency. This may be the closest thing to a free lunch that economics has to offer. You can read Mankiw's full article here , on his Harvard website. Overestimating the Cost The Bush ad also puts the likely cost of a 50-cent tax increase a bit too high, claiming the "average family" would pay $657 per year. But it based that on some very rough figures from a private website that based its own calculations on a wrong assumption about the total number of households in the U.S. Here are the accurate figures: The Federal Highway Administration put total gasoline consumption for highway and commercial use at just over 130.7 billion gallons in 2002, the most recent year on record. That figures to just over 358.1 million gallons per day. And the Census Bureau put the total number of US Households at just under 109.3 million in 2002, also the most recent year for which figures are published. That figures to just under 3.28 gallons per day per household, which would make a 50-cent increase come to $1.64 per day, or $598 per year . Not all would be paid at the pump. The figure includes taxes paid on truck fuel, which would be felt in the form of upward pressure on prices of delivered goods. And the actual figure would be lower to the extent that drivers switched to higher-mileage vehicles or used their vehicles less. Furthermore, advocates of a 50-cent increase call for phasing it in over several years so that the full effects would not be felt immediately. So for many reasons the figure in the Bush ad is an exaggeration, though not a huge one. Misleading Vote Count By saying that Kerry "supported higher gasoline taxes 11 times" this ad could give you the idea that Kerry voted for 11 different tax increases, which isn't true. Actually, a close look at the Bush campaign's own count shows that nine of the eleven were about a single increase. Five of those votes came in the manuevering that led to a single 4.3-cent-per-gallon increase in 1993, as part of President Clinton's economic package. Four more votes for "higher" taxes were actually cast against Republican attempts to repeal that same 4.3-cent increase in 1996, 1998 and 2000. (On one of those votes most Republicans voted against repeal, too.) The Bush campaign also counts a vote in 2000 against a proposal to suspend the federal gasoline tax entirely for six months -- which left gasoline taxes unchanged, not "higher." The 11th instance cited by the Bush campaign wasn't a vote at all -- just that Kerry quote from 1994 that he'd once supported a 50-cent increase. Sources Jill Zuckman, “Deficit-Watch Group Gives High Marks To 7 N.E. Lawmakers,” The Boston Globe, 1 March 1994. U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, "US Retail Gasoline Historical Prices (Regular)" Excel spreadsheet, 29 March 2004. N. Gregory Mankiw, " Tax Gas Now!" Fortune magazine, 24 May 1999. Bush Cheney '04, News Release: "Bush-Cheney '04 Ad Facts - 'Wacky'" 30 March 2004. US Census Bureau: " Table AVG1 . Average Number of People per Household, by Race and Hispanic Origin/1/, Marital Status, Age, and Education of Householder: March 2002." Office of Highway Policy Information - Federal Highway Administration, "Highway Statistics 2002" Table MF-21 : Motor Fuel Use 2002 13 Jan 2004.

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I'm going to post an article DaveSZ style, so we can all stop bitching about gas prices.

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Vapors at the Pump by Stephen Moore Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Last week, John Kerry released his plan to reduce gasoline prices at the pump. Of course, the Massachusetts Democrat is new to the issue of reducing driving costs, because he spent his entire Senate career voting for higher gas taxes and more automobile regulations, like fuel efficiency standards, that drive up the cost of owning a car. Moreover, Mr. Kerry has voted consistently against domestic oil production, which would lower the world price of oil and reduce American dependence on Middle East oil. But clearly Mr. Kerry has hit on a jackpot political issue, especially as we enter the spring and summer, when travel rises across the country. On the West Coast, higher gas prices have particularly annoyed motorists. In California, where the "Left Coasters" spend seemingly half their lives in traffic jams on the San Diego Freeway and cars are like exoskeletons, gasoline prices have risen to $2.29 per gallon. Nationwide, premium gas now sells at $1.89 a gallon, and this summer prices could easily shoot up well above $2 a gallon. Are we running out of oil? Is the Club of Rome's famous dire prediction of severe energy shortages finally coming true? The media seem to think so. One major publication recently complained our energy sources are "running on empty." But the doomsayers are all wrong. First, gasoline prices are still historically cheap. Gas at $2 a gallon seems expensive, but we need to adjust for inflation to determine whether today's price is out of line with past pump prices. When energy and gas prices are measured correctly, we find that, although the price has risen than 20 percent in recent weeks, gasoline remains affordable in historical terms. The current "record high" price is quite moderate by historical standards. And in real terms, we had higher retail gasoline prices as recently as 1985, and significantly higher prices from 1979 to the mid-1980s. Winston Churchill once said that to see the future, you have to understand the past. Let's look at the long-term trend on gas prices. Gasoline pump prices have been steadily declining since the 1920s, with the obvious exception of the 1970s, when we faced an OPEC embargo and gasoline lines. In 1920, the real price of gas (excluding taxes) was twice today's. If today's price of gasoline relative to wages were comparable to 1920, we would pay nearly $10 a gallon. The same is true, by the way, for the cost of oil -- slightly cheaper today, adjusted for wage growth, than 50 years ago and 5 times cheaper than 100 years ago: Human innovation always finds new oil sources and technology cuts drilling costs. Still, we're all annoyed that gas prices have spiked upward so quickly this year. Who is to blame? First, environmental extremists are responsible for blocking offshore oil drilling and drilling for new oil in Alaska. Drilling for oil in Alaska would substantially combat the monopoly of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The oil reserves in Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) are thought to be the most oil-rich untapped reserves on the planet, and we are prevented from drilling there. With a small portion of the money from the oil, we could create a wildlife refuge in every state. With gas and home heating prices high right now, Congress should vote immediately to begin drilling in Alaska for economic and national security reasons. This brings us to OPEC. The U.S. has an ideal opportunity to protect U.S. manufacturers and consumers from the monopolistic pricing schemes of OPEC member nations. Iraq soon again will be one of the five top petroleum producers. America taxpayers have just spent some $50 billion liberating Iraq and another $87 billion rebuilding its infrastructure, including oil pipelines. Iraq should not be permitted to join OPEC to gouge the very U.S. consumers and businesses who helped bring it freedom and democracy. A competitive world oil price could be less than half the current price. High oil prices severely harm the U.S. economy, since we are the world's premier oil importer. It is a tax on American consumers. Iraq can help lift this tax on Americans by staying out of OPEC and counteracting its monopolistic policies. Our government should insist upon it. The radicalized environmentalists -- and many of the Kerry Democrats in Congress -- don't agree with any of this. Their idea of an energy policy is to get Americans out of the cars they want to drive --SUVs, mini-vans, and mini-trucks -- and into less convenient and less safe smaller cars or, better yet, buses and subways. Only a few years ago, Al Gore wrote that the combustible engine was one of the worst inventions in the history of mankind. That is why many liberals long for a European-style energy policy, with gasoline costs of $4 or $5 a gallon. That's not an energy policy; it's a recession policy. More domestic oil production and a competitive world price would end the "energy crisis" overnight. The U.S. government can help achieve that with a pro-production energy bill. Mr Kerry: The best energy policy taxes less and drills more. This article was published in the Washington Times, April 2, 2004.

"environmental Kerry Democrat extremists"

Is that article referring to John McCain and other prominent Senate Republicans who also voted against drilling in ANWAR?

By advocating drilling in ANWAR instead of investing in more fuel-efficient vehicles and renewable energy, the CATO institute places itself in the distinct minority of the American consciousness.

Again we see a shortsighted approach taken to what ultimately needs a long-term solution.

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I believe the cost/benefit analysis was already posted by Occrider (I think that's who it was). As long as the cost of developing these new "long-term" resources is higher than the potential cost of tapping oil reserves they will not happen. It's not that people are evil or want to to destroy the environment, its simple real-world economics. Also, the idea that tapping into the oil located beneath Alaska would somehow destory the entire refuge, or even more than a small percentage is a falicy protrayed so wonderfully by those who find it suiting to their agenda.

http://www.anwr.org/docs/CloseupofareaIII.pdf

I honestly don't really care about gas prices, as I believe that in comparison to both Europe and to American history they are reasonable. However, if people are going to be upset about the price of gas, while advocating the near term solution is new forms of energy, they need to realize what they are asking for is even more expensive than $2 for a gallon of gas. You can either advocate cheap energy or new "environmentally friendly" forms of energy, but asking for both, in any kind of reasonble time frame is not going to happen.

Gas or no gas, I'm just disugsted by Cheney, he is indeed a DICK. Whenver I hear this man speak I cannot help but think of his agendas as fulfilling coroporate interests. I am yet to hear him argue or put forth a benefit for the everyday taxpaying citizen in any of his dopey speeches.

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