I was just driving home from a late lunch, listening to my local news radio station when they played a clip from President Bush, who had just made some remarks at Cisco Systems in Palo Alto today. The exact quote isn't on any of the news services yet, but it echoed
these remarks that he made a few weeks ago:
I fully understand the effects of gasoline price raises on people who are working. It's like a tax. Every time it goes up at the pump, people are like paying a tax.
To give the man his due, he's "feeling our pain" here. He's trying to equate high gas prices with something that, in his Belief System (aka BS), is the worst possible thing: a TAX!!!
But no, Mr. President: high gas prices are nothing like a tax. More under the fold.
High gas prices are a little like
your tax policy, Mr. President, insofar as they fall especially hard on the poor... but there the comparison ends.
Because the extra dollars that I and my fellow American citizens pay at the pump will never be used to:
* Repair a broken down school building
* Buy armor for American soldiers overseas
* Monitor our air and water purity
* Pay a policeman's salary
* Fix a pothole
* Build a bridge
* Maintain a levee
* Ensure workplace standards
* Provide financial assistance to the disabled
* Keep our food supply safe
* Build & maintain a subway, ferry, or other public transit system
* Condemn an unsafe building
* Build a library
* Provide healthcare & retirement assistance to the poor
* Alleviate a crushing burden of debt we'll leave to the next generation... because our President hates taxes so much
So you see, Mr. President, the money we pay in taxes is an investment in our society. It a way to constructively address the problems of our nation collaboratively, and ideally each of us pays, but we all benefit.
High prices at the pump result in windfall profits for a very few corporations which pay obscenely disproportionate salaries - like the $686 million dollars paid to Lee R. Raymond, who just retired from Exxon. He made something on the order of $144,573 for every day for the past 13 years.
To be fair, it also benefits these company's investors: those with sufficient income surplus to invest. That's fewer and fewer of us every year, though. Most of us, increasingly, live from paycheck to paycheck. If we're lucky enough to have paychecks.
With the cost of gas, we not only pay at the pump, but will pay increased costs for all the goods and services which will be affected by the increases in the cost of oil.
I know you like things to be painted in black and white, Mr. President... so I'll reduce it to those terms:
Gas and taxes both cost us money. But high gas prices only benefit a few. Our tax money can be used to benefit us ALL.
It'd be swell if we had a President who realized that. And acted accordingly.