Why I Oppose Gasoline Taxes - Bill Lee

[BillLee]

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Subject: Re: Re: Saving The 2010 Healthcare Reform Legislation + The Deficit Reduction Commissions
From: John Karls
Date: Sun, January 16, 2011 4:03 am
To: Bill Lee
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Dear Bill,

Thank you very much for your e-mail.

Re your first paragraph, the President’s claim is myopic. Medicare is quickly going bankrupt. So, yes, one can claim a “savings” from a program that is quickly going bankrupt. But if the “savings” had been left in place, Medicare would not have gone bankrupt quite so quickly.

Stealing funds from Medicare is nothing more than a cynical gamble that Senior Citizens are well organized enough politically that they will force on the young an increase in the Medicare payroll tax to keep Medicare solvent, while the increased funds are creamed off to help finance the 2010 Health-Care Reform.

Re your second paragraph, the reason why you “can’t tell whether or not defending the extension of tax cuts for the top income earners” is because my position, as stated in the newsletter, is that focusing on the issue is “fiddling while Rome burns”!!! We should be focusing instead on “killing four birds with one stone” as described in the newsletter and in the next paragraph of this e-mail, rather than blindly following the two established parties into dead-end gridlock!!!

Re your third paragraph, yes, I am sorry that your business in antique art involves extensive automobile travel. However, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (“OPEC”) makes a science of maximizing crude-oil prices while being careful not to be so greedy that alternative fuels become economic. Which raises three points = (A) if we continue to play along with OPEC, then we will never, as a nation, “kill the four birds with one stone” until they are killed for us in the form of the United States going the way of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, (B) the uneconomic activities you cite (including your own) that are the result (speaking in simplistic terms) of borrowing money from the Chinese to pay for oil imports are not sustainable, and (C) it is ironic that when increased gasoline prices result from OPEC action, you (and the American consumer) meekly pay the price increases to the oil producers, but when increased gasoline prices result from increased U.S. gasoline taxes to finance social security and universal health care, to reduce carbon emissions, to reduce the international balance-of-payments deficit and to increase national security by reducing reliance of the U.S. and its allies on foreign oil, you (and the American consumer) scream bloody murder!!!

Re your third-paragraph comment about rationing, history shows that rationing works for only short periods of time before it chokes in a sea of black markets and corruption. It would be much more transparent for you to propose a program of government subsidies for whatever gas-consuming activities you think have social value and let the American voters decide during the annual appropriations process whether they agree with you.

And re your attempt to personalize the issues involved, I would be delighted to switch to a Prius if gasoline prices are tripled as a result of U.S. gasoline taxes RATHER THAN OPEC PRICE INCREASES!!!

Thank you very much for your as-always able assistance in keeping the pot stirred!!!

Your friend,

John K.


---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: Saving The 2010 Healthcare Reform Legislation + The Deficit Reduction Commissions
From: Bill Lee
Date: Sat, January 15, 2011 11:35 am
To: John Karls
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John - The President claimed that the vast majority of the money that the "Affordable Care Act" pulled from Medicare came from incentives currently paid to insurance companies. No net loss there unless you count the premium increases the insurance companies would want and be able to add, due to the gutting of the bill by Republicans.

I can't tell whether or not you are defending the extension of tax cuts for the top income earners and the resulting lost revenue, which will be hoarded rather than invested in jobs and economy stimulating expenditures.

How would you propose that we deal with the bankruptcies caused by "dramatically higher" gas taxes (including mine)? Is it for personal reasons that you continue to ignore the alternative of need based gas rationing? The income you propose could be obtained by placing even more "dramatically higher" taxes on unnecessary fuel consumption and luxury vehicles or those with poor MPH ratings.

Pot stirred, Bill


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To: ReadingLiberallyEmailList@johnkarls.com
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Bcc: Our Reading-Liberally E-Mail List of Approx. 150
Sent: Sat, January 15, 2011
Subject: Saving The 2010 Health-Care Reform Legislation + The Deficit Reduction Commissions - Feb 9th
Attach:
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Dear Friends,

Our next meeting is WEDNESday Eve Feb 9th at the Salt Lake Public Library (210 East 400 South).

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We will focus on the two issues that will dominate both the 2011-2012 Congress and the 2012 Presidential Campaign -- deficit reduction and the failure to finance 2010 Health-Care Reform (the Congressional Budget Office rated it "deficit neutral" on the assumptions (1) that half of the admitted cost could be taken from Medicare which is already facing bankruptcy and therefore won't happen, (2) that half of the admitted cost could be dumped on the states in the form of an increased Medicaid mandate when the states are already bankrupt, and (3) that most of the non-admitted cost in the form of higher premiums for health insurance now required to be purchased by healthy young people is constitutional which is under challenge in litigation by 22 state Attorneys General).

This all against the backdrop of the Tea Party movement and the bankruptcies of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, etc.

Please help us formulate a third way (vs. the obvious relish with which the two established parties want to demagogue the tax rate for the top personal-income-tax bracket which will probably lead to gridlock).

The third way would be to kill four birds with one stone by financing social security and universal health care with a European-style (that is, a dramatically higher) gasoline tax. The four birds = adequate financing for social security and universal health care, reducing carbon emissions, reducing the international balance-of-payments deficit, and increasing national security by reducing the reliance of the U.S. and its allies on foreign oil.

A potential fifth bird, as discussed briefly at our 1/12/2010 meeting, is the preservation (vs. mere financing) for Universal Health Care. Attended by 4 attorneys and 4 non-attorneys, the meeting considered Tom Chancellor's Discussion Outline and then considered how the US Supreme Court is likely to decide three cases that are likely to reach it in the near future = (1) the gay-rights litigation currently pending before the Ninth Circuit, (2) the 43 detainees at Guantanamo Bay whom the Obama Administration will not grant trials (civilian or military) and will be held as enemy combatants until the end of the War on Terror (please see the materials for our 12/15/2010 meeting), and (3) the litigation brought by 22 state Attorneys General challenging the constitutionality of 2010 Health-Care Reform (specifically arguing the requirement to purchase health insurance is not Constitutional under the Commerce Clause because, if the failure to act comprises interstate commerce, then there is nothing that is not interstate commerce and presumably America's Founders thought that there must be something that was not interstate commerce if they specified it as a requirement for federal legislation.)

At our 1/12/2010 meeting, the consensus was that with a majority of "strict constructionists" on the Supreme Court (as well as a sixth Roman Catholic member vis-à-vis the gay-rights litigation), the Supreme Court will rule AGAINST gay rights, enemy-combatant rights, AND THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF HEALTH-CARE REFORM!!!

So our looming Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign proposing a European-style (i.e., large) gas tax to finance social security and universal health care may be the only way to save them!!!


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We hope to see and hear all of you on February 9th!!!

Your friend,

John K.

PS - To un-subscribe, please press "reply" and type "deletion requested."

PPS - Our sister organization, Drinking Liberally, meets on Friday evenings for socializing with like-minded individuals from 6:30 pm > 9:30 pm at Piper Down (1492 South State Street).