consider this: Palin is pro-life and yet she is pro-guns. Does that make logical sense? Guns can be used to kill; if one is pro-life does it make sense to be in favor of guns?

Keep taxing and fleecing us into prosperity. You guys in Sacramento already screwed over a deal with Toyota to build hybrids here because of this nonsense.

This is all a fraud. Just look at our freeways and bankrupt cities!

So, it is okay for Palin to tax oil, adding to the already high cost of fuel for the rest of us. But it is not okay for California to tax cargo through its ports adding to the costs of goods for all of us including Alaskans. This does not sound like a person that is “small town, just like us.”

Before this election is over with McCain may find Palin as an albatross around his neck. It looks like she is not as goody two shoes with high values she wants us to believe.

Let us get a bill to Congress that allows us, as consumers, to earn credit for every kilowatt hour we supply to the national grid, regardless of where it is injected. Next, have the federal government use scrub land in sunshiny states like Arizonan, New Mexico and Texas and allow American investors (by Social Security Number or business tax ID, shall we say; inheritable but not otherwise transferrable or refundable) to invest in the program.

Whatever fraction of the program an American pays for is reflected in a fraction of the energy the solar photovoltaics supply provides to the national grid. As Americans supply National Solar Photovoltaics with guilt money, spare change, bingo winnings, tax refunds/rebates or what have you, the Federal Government buys more photovoltaic panels and enhances grid tie inversion facilities. Government procurement professionals have great experience using economies of scale to bring unit prices far below what the individual consumer might pay.

The Federal Government owns a prodigious number of square miles of America’s desert southwest. Might we not build photovoltaic roofs over highways that are already carved into the countryside?

Yes, it only supplies power during sunny days. No, the individual consumer does not have to worry about, “How the Hell do I get solar on my roof, engineer an inverter that will convert DC (Direct Current - like a battery) power to AC (Alternating Current - used on the national power grid) and make a tie to the grid?”

Last century, we had a Work Projects Administration that harnessed American labor to build highways, roads, buildings and probably hydroelectric dams. Marking the new millennium (who cares if we are a bit late), America should offload the engineering, logistics and location difficulties (some Americans live in Alaska, North of the Arctic Circle, ferchrissakes) from the individual to the Department of Energy.

America did this for hydroelectric. America needs to stop waiting for scientists to eke out another tenth of a percent of efficiency from photovoltaics and get a National Solar Photovoltaics program started NOW!

Points:
1) Legislation requiring power companies to accept credit regardless of where power is injected into the grid.

2) Federal Government, perhaps the Western Area Power Authority, needs to address location and engineering of the program.

3) WE THE PEOPLE can invest as much or little as we want, but we only get power credit based upon the fraction we invest in comparison to the total investment.

4) Science needs to advance in the area of power storage in order to allow us to use at night the electricity generated during sunlight hours.

5) Alaska and Hawaii present problems, as they stand isolated from the rest of our national grid.

6) Flesh out the details of how to trade power for infrastructure support (wages and materials).

I would dearly love to be among the first generation of Americans who invested sufficient funds into the program to support my retirement solely on energy credits.

We energy consumers are the problem. We need to guide our leaders toward a ‘universally,’ or at least generally, acceptable solution.

You do not know how idiotic and simplistic you sound. Taxes don’t allow people to get air, but if well used can fund actions that can help bringing pollution under control while still allowing economic activity.

They can be used to better, for instance,

1) educate people to reduce pollution causing activities (like the benefit of CFLs over incandescent bulbs)
2) research ways and technologies to reduce pollution (catalysts, filtering technologies like in coal plants, etc)
3) enforce better pollution control on those polluting (like some industries) the environment YOU live in

if you want to live in a place where all these are not done, why don’t you go live in smog filled communist chinese industrial city. They don’t have taxes too.

You don’t want to pay taxes? Go to communist cuba, they don’t have taxes, nor roads, nor anything else for that matter. Go there, start plowing, cos’s thats the biggest industry they have, agriculture.

If you care at all, think about how you can help better use of taxes, not whining against taxes!

-One who has seen and lived in America and the third world