Dopey Ideas

An article from a member of the Newsday editorial board proposes an energy tax that would be designed to reduce our dependence on the troubling energy sources that are currently available and be used to underwrite future sources. Last week, the same guy had a proposal to deal with the Somali pirates using water cannons and razor wire and the suggestion that the oil tankers go faster and out run the pirates.

First, this is surprising source for a tax idea that is so regressive. Further, the writer’s definition of this or any tax as something that we would “pay the money to ourselves” can only be considered as laughable.

People make the economic decision to conserve all the time. We allocate our available time and money as best we can to whatever we consider the highest priority. That’s life. It is also our decision and is based upon what is available to us. Clearly, these decisions should not be based upon the government’s desire that I ride around in a motorized death trap they think is a Smart car or their current definition of whether the heat or AC is too high. And, again, the less money people have, the more of a negative impact such a tax would have.

It was also a good try though to cavalierly eliminate all current sources of energy. Don’t drill anywhere; don’t tap natural gas; don’t build nuclear plants. The plan is the same. Make it as difficult as possible to get energy from places where it is easy to obtain; then complain when something goes wrong when drilling in 5000 feet of water. The same news sources that have equated the news from Japan with 3 Mile Island have neglected to actually recount what happened in Pennsylvania. The answer is nothing except media noise. Lots of buzz words like meltdown and radiation thrown around with no perspective. What actually is a melt down? How much milk would have to be consumed to equal an xray ? The same people that tell us every snow storm will be the worst blizzard in history seem to take over when there is a potential problem. They are mostly wrong and skip off to the next thing with no apology but never waste a crisis.

The positive is that we now have simeone to blame for the consistently dopey opinions that appear on the Newsday editorial page. If their aim is to fill the space, they have certainly achieved that goal. But not much else.