Politico Humpday

Thomas Friedman continues his argument for a gasoline tax. Although the price of unleaded is $3.17/gallon for the cheap stuff here today, I would still be for it if the tax was offset by a decrease in payroll tax.

In the end, anything that would help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil makes life easier for my kids years down the road.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/opinion/14friedman.html?hp

We simply cannot go on being as dumb as we wanna be. If you hate the war in Iraq, then you want a gasoline tax so you can argue that we can pull out of there without remaining dependent on an even more unstable region. If you want to see us negotiate with Iran, not bomb it, you want a gasoline tax that will give us some real leverage by helping to reduce the income of the ayatollahs.

If you’re a conservative and you believed that the Iraq war was necessary to drive reform in the Middle East, but the war has failed to do that and we need “Plan B” for the same objective, you want a gasoline tax that will reduce the flow of wealth to petrolist leaders who will never change if all they have to do is drill well holes rather than educate and empower their people.

If you want to see America thrive by becoming the most energy productive economy in the world — a title that now belongs to Japan, which doesn’t have a drop of oil in its soil — you want a gasoline tax, which will only spur U.S. innovation in energy efficiency.