Why we need a stiff gas tax

It's not to be green, nor to feel good and virtuous. It is a vital issue of national defense. Why empower our worst enemies? Here is what is happening now that folks are no longer buying gas at their usual rate (due first to high gas prices, now to the fact we all fear poverty):

But Russia's budget for 2009 requires oil to sell at $95 a barrel to break even, Venezuela at $60, Iran between $55 and $60. Many producer states, it seems, have fallen into an old trap, expecting booms to last longer than they actually will. Let it be granted that those forecasts seem modest given the $147 high witnessed last summer.

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it's difficult to imagine these states taking more aggressive tacks then those that which they're already on. I wonder if we might, ironically, see the opposite: domestic aggression combined with a softening toward the international society.

Or as Bill Maher once put it, "When you drive alone ... you drive with Osama!" So keep conserving that gas and support a tax on gasoline.

I'm still trying to save by not going to work, but it doesn't seem to be a viable plan.

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