Salon: Abolish the terror tax

[Raster]

People who hate America are flush with money from oil sales -- we should stop subsidizing them by becoming more energy independent.

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By James P. Pinkerton

June 15, 2004 | When I think about Ronald Reagan's legacy, one question haunts me: Was his national energy policy also, inadvertently, a terror-subsidy policy? A quarter-century later, it appears that Reagan's presidency helped bring to America a plentiful supply of energy -- and also oil-financed terrorists.

In 1973, during America's first energy crisis, brought on by the Arab oil embargo, President Nixon declared a national goal of "energy independence" by 1980. For the rest of that decade, Republican and Democratic presidents alike emphasized such independence, to be achieved by a combination of statist means -- price controls, conservation decrees, Uncle Sam-funded ventures such as the Synthetic Fuels Corp. But they didn't work. In 1973, oil imports accounted for 26 percent of U.S. consumption; seven years later, in 1980, imports had risen to 38 percent of the national total. In the meantime, oil prices had soared 1,300 percent.

Enter Reagan, a free marketeer and avowed opponent of "utopian schemers." On July 17, 1980, as he accepted the Republican Party's presidential nomination, he declared, "Those who preside over the worst energy shortage in our history tell us to use less, so that we will run out of oil, gasoline and natural gas a little more slowly." The Gipper continued, "Well, now, conservation is desirable ... But conservation is not the sole answer to our energy needs. America must get to work producing more energy." Reagan's idea was to liberate the oil companies from controls, as part of his belief in "getting government off our backs." In my role as a low-level staffer on his campaign, I cheered those libertarian words.

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Where's all the money going? Nobody really knows. And nobody -- at least in the United States -- seems very interested in finding out. On Saturday, the New York Times reported that a task force on Saudi terror funding at the Council on Foreign Relations is about to announce that Riyadh has "not fully implemented its new laws and regulations, and because of that, opportunities for the witting or unwitting financing of terrorism persist." But, the Times notes, one sentence was deleted from the task force's final document -- "The Bush administration has done very little to push the implementation of the rules and regulations" -- possibly at the behest of the Bush White House.

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/06/15/terror_tax/index.html

You gotta love this shite, "What would Reagan Do???" He had his chance. His administration KILLED alternate energy. His administration had no problem with sending our bucks to the Saudis. Everyone remember "Morning Comes to America"???? Hmmmm....?

[Eric J in MN]

1. Good article.

Good article.

I'm skeptical that Reagan would be championing a great energy policy if he were President today, but maybe that's Pinkerton's way of trying to appeal to conservatives to CONSERVE.

[dutchdemocrat]

2. In Europe

In Holland we pay 1.20 euro per litre. (1 litre = 0.264172 gallon).

1.20 Euro = 1.448 US Dollar

1.448
x 3.786
----------

US$5.48 per Gallon in Holland.

Diesel is half that price.

That's why we drive bikes over here.