Re: SC33

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/05/MTGUENCE8P1.DTL

Poor face bigger disservice than higher taxes on autos

.............There is consumer resistance, of course. In this country, we talk a good game about sacrificing for energy conservation, as long as the contest is taking place on someone else's court.

Along with consumer resistance, there is political opportunism masquerading as leadership. The practitioners of that charade equate leadership to pandering. But the two are very different. Leadership requires taking unpopular stands for a perceived greater good, even at the risk of losing the next election. Pandering is the child of dishonesty and cowardice. It will do anything, even the wrong thing, to curry popular favor and will do nothing to risk that popularity.

At this moment in Congress, on the matter of an effective national energy policy that demands consumer responsibility, we have more panderers than leaders.

But seemingly insurmountable political opposition to the idea of making consumers pay more of the real costs for the vehicles they drive ostensibly is not the primary concern of my liberal friends. They say they are concerned about the effects on the poor.

To paraphrase, they state their worries this way: Yes, we agree that American consumers behave as if cheap gasoline is theirs forever and that they don't pay the real energy, social and environmental costs for the vehicles they drive. We agree that oil won't last forever and that growing competition for the world's remaining oil reserves is leading to dangerous international conflicts. And we agree that we in America should use less oil and that a judicious application of higher consumer taxes and fees could help decrease that usage. But, gee, doing those things would have a horrible effect on the poor. What about the poor?..........

..........The storm clouds of a looming national energy crisis are gathering in an America that still thinks a minimum wage of $5.15 an hour is good enough for the working poor. Yes, higher gasoline and related taxes will hurt them, certainly in the short term, and most definitely if Congress does nothing to increase the minimum wage.

But if there is no interventionist policy to weaken our overdependence on oil and if there are fuel shortages as a result, what do you think will happen to the poor then?

To paraphrase my late father: Use your brains. The nation that is ignoring the poor now, when there is fuel to be had, will be even less inclined to pay attention to them if there is too little fuel available for everybody's transportation and life-support needs.........