If everyone drove like I do, gas would still be $.50 a gallon.

Would you choose to live like that?

I would, and I'm about to put it into action. I currently live 37+ miles from work, and both of the vehicles at my disposal use approximately 5 gallons to make the round trip, per day. The monetary price of gasoline has dropped nearly $1/gal in the five weeks since I started the job, but the cost to the environment has not changed, per gallon. More than that: the psychological factors of the commute are tolerable, but that's the best they get. So I'm planning to move within walking distance. Fortunately, the neighborhood near the office is conducive.

How would you like to be *taxed* into living like that?

I'm taxed for a lot of things I wouldn't authorize if the decision were mine, including the current atmosphere of xenophobia and the military action it engenders. I'm taxed to pay the salaries of paedophilic congressmen, and chickenhawks, and deniers of human responsibility for the condition of the planet we live on. I'm taxed to finance the presidency of a semi-literate who cannot speak his way out a paper bag, let alone a substantive issue. I'm taxed to support the effort to reduce the liberties of American citizens, purchased so dearly by hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens for 2 1/2 centuries, yet so easily thrown away after three thousand people were killed by a handful of madmen.

I endure it, because to rebel against taxes is criminal, carrying penalties I cannot afford. I would gladly pay the same amount of taxes to support that which with I agree, and deem beneficial... which is, after all, the difference between someone who votes Democratic and someone who votes Republican, because the taxes themselves will not go away. It's not as if I'd see the money anyway, so it may as well be for good shit, rather than bad.

I apologize for calling you out. The point I'm trying to make is the issue is at least as personal as it is political.

I don't mind being called out... after all, posting invites response. And I see your point about the issue being "as personal as it is political," to some poeple. That is, however, an extremely narrow interpretation of a planetary situation. In the long run, such an attitude only serves to make the potential situation tend toward its worst outcome.