So you want to lecture me more about 'true costs'?

You totally fail to understand that the 'true cost' of gasoline is likely HIGHER than the pump price that you pay (possibly sans local or state taxes).

You are dead wrong and have no serious understanding of cost.

You say: "you want to manipulate supply and demand by making fossil fuels artificially more expensive,"

Wrong, I want the price to reflect their true cost, which includes huge environmental and 'hidden' economic costs. The environmental costs are obvious, so you can review them for yourself. The economic costs are a shrinking dollar, a balance of trade deficit, and lost-multipler effects that would occur if the spending were for domestically sourced power.

It is you, not I, who stupidly fails to understand 'true costs'.

Almost nothing.

Also, just because something is an 'earmark' in a bill doesn't mean it is a boondoggle (although I fully agree it is a sign that it should be carefully checked).

Finally, as all posting here should well know, earmarks are how you get votes to pass something. That is a rather old tradition involving both parties (and yes, even folks like Sarah Palin and J. McCain, despite there current self-advertising/branding).

Anway, all this nitpicking is just that: nitpicking.

And we could well ask: Got a better idea?

Well?

Alternative fuels and electric cars and all that jazz will flourish when they become economically viable without artificial economics created by meddling governments. Until then, it is all just social engineering by the left. Of course that is the favorite pastime of the left, telling everyone else how to live their lives....

Why don't you run for local office and see how far you get by supporting $4/gal gasoline, $0.20/kwh electricity, and $20/mcf natural gas prices???

%4/gallon gas isn't much of a problem if you have a good public transportation infrastructure, if electric and hybrid vehicles are common, and so on.

If someone expects to be doing the same thing in two years that they did in 1965, and get paid the same relative amount, then perhaps by the Darwinian 'free market' (supposedly loved by the Republicans) they don't really deserve a job.

What do you think?

Others might make note that the higher paying jobs that have been lost in Washington County are precisely the ones that will be impacted most by the upcoming cap&trade scheme, brought to you courtesy of the messiah and his cronies in congress. If you think the layoffs are bad now, just give it a couple years and layer on $4.00/gallon gasoline on top of it!! You will really be saved then!

Here's comes the change you all voted for. Hang on!!

"the people in power did it".

Why do they say this? Because they don't read, don't think, and don't know any better. But they do listen to clowns like Fatso Rush Limbaugh who feeds their vile bile, so they can re-spew it here like mindless parrots.

And so you have the ever-shrinking Republican party. Because there are - fortunately - many folks (Independents and Democrates) who can read and who aren't so dumb as to believe the same lies repeated again and again.

But then you have the free-market bankers and other operatives themselves, who more than anyone should have known better and better managed the risks they took.

The people who caused the problems have left town.

Get real.

Right-wing fruitcakes like to point to the fact that Tim Geithner was the head of the NYFed and that many of the banks and companies in trouble are in NYC.

Did anyone bother to read just what powers the NYFed chief has? Well, he doesn't regulate banking. He doesn't control banking laws. He doesn't determine who does and does not issue mortgages. How about real estate? No.

And he doesn't create esoteric securities or approve them. Rather he was a voting member who helped determine how the Federal money supply was managed.

You had Republican Chris Cox at SEC enforcing (or mostly not) securities laws. You had Bush appointees all over the entire regulatory system. And the Fed was completely dominated by the opinions of Alan Greenspan, libertarian Republican who strongly advocated the idea that the Fed could do nearly nothing about 'bubbles'.

Another example of media bias :(

And for all the complaints about taxes, it is rather comical given that you are going to be getting a little tax relief rather soon. Moreover, nothing in the Obama plan likely has much to do with anyone here, because I doubt participants makes more than 250K. And even then, your taxes only return to 2001 levels.

In fact the same dittohead morons who are screaming socialism like parrots are about to get some tax relief.

Never mind the facts however. That seems to have little impact on folks with meatballs for brains.

In case some folks notice, there is a lot less of the economy to take over because we have had a housing market collapse and a banking credit-collapse at the same time. Of course they are tied together, but in fact it is not just the case that falling home prices 'caused the crisis'. The house of cards also depended on the construction of non-viable securities based on those debts, that were completely inappropriately valued AND inappropriately used by holders of these toxic assets.

To understand this takes a little more depth of awareness than is required to understand George Bailey's problems in It's a Wonderful Life. You have to have some understanding of how securities markets have worked and developed for the past 20 years, and you need some vague understanding of banking.

That said, it is absolutely necessary to get banks to lend. No banks, and you are guaranteed a depression.

The folks who are really arguing for 'bankrupting their children' it seems to me, are the same folks who mindlessly yammering about socialism.

Socialism, by the way, is not the same thing as redistribution anyway. Socialism is where the government owns and controls means of production. In fact, we have moved in that direction with capital injections into banks because of failures of unregulated systems encouraged and even exaggerated by Bush administration programs.

The fairy-tale crap about 'socialism' being spewed by dittohead morons is the problem; not the solution.

"...all americans, from those working at McD's, to those with PHD's to be making the same amount of money and have the same quality of life"

In fact, I don't think there are any sane liberals who do. So I might suggest that this is a rather ridiculous characterization of what liberals want, and it is a completely ridiculous characterization of what is the nature of 'liberal' (or Obama's) programs or tax plans.

We might better ask why so many folks are screaming this nonsense. One place to look of course, is that it is just a parrot-like repetition of McCain's campaign theme, or a Rush Limbaugh line.

But it has nothing to do with the truth.

The last time this country approached a balanced budget was when tax rates were more graduated than now, and where work was not taxed more than simply holding capital (as it is now).

In fact, the Obama plan simply attempts to restore tax graduation rates to something similar to the case in the