Saudi Officials Linked to Jihadist Group in WikiLeaks Cables

[happyslug]

11. Part of that plan has to include getting people out of their cars

And the best way to do that is to increase the price of Gasoline. I like the one economists when he looked at the various efforts to increase the Average Fleet Mileage, what was achieved under those programs could have been achieved with a 25 cents a gallon increase in gasoline tax.

I hate to say this we need to seriously consider a $1 to $5 dollar increase in the Gasoline tax. A $5 would be ideal, but terrible if implemented at once (should be done over a 5 year period, 10 Cents a month). The Money should be used to subsidize any form of transit that does NOT use oil.

The plan should also require electrification of all US Rail lines, just to provide options for power if oil is ever cut off. This will also require the US to rule that such electrical system are NOT taxable. Taxes on electrical systems as improvements of land was a reason electrification of US lines ended AND reversed in the 1950s. With Diesels you had most of the advantageous of electric drive (Diesels are generators that provide electrical power to the electrical motors on the wheels of the Diesel Locomotive) but none of the taxes that go with having electrical wires over the track. Thus the only electrical system that survives to this day is owned by AMTRAK. Conrail, that used such a system till 1980, dropped it in that year and converted to 100% diesel.

Yes, some of what the US has to do will be disliked, but it is needed. We have to get off oil and the sooner the better.