The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Keep On Truckin'

4.4.07 @ 12:01AM

WHEN PUSH COMES TO SUV
Re: Eric Peters's Fuel Economy at All Costs:

I love it when I see a big truck or SUV filling up at my local Valero gas station. I try to imagine how much "road tax" is being collected by our state and federal government when the "big guy" is filled to the top of its tank. The owners of these biggies are contributing huge sums of money to our economy and tax collections. This is one time that I am a pro-choice advocate. I'll bet you a plug nickel that Markey and Platts ride in the comfort of a SUV. Oh, but they need their mode of transportation because they are biggies in DC. And while I'm at it, how about the legislation banning incandescent light bulbs in favor of those "mini fluorescents"? These new fangled light sources will pollute the land fills with mercury. Thomas Edison will be condemned; likened to Christopher Columbus. The Belgians are going to tax barbecuing. You know, barbecuing contributes to global warming. Do you suppose Texans would roll over and pay a tax for barbecuing? What will they think of next?

Messrs. Markey and Platts, get out of our faces. Get out of our wallets. Leave free enterprise alone. Ninny nanny state.
-- Clasina J. Segura
New Iberia, Louisiana

Peters claims that people will drive their cars more if mileage efficiency is increased. But this is largely a straw man; yes there is some increase in the number of miles driven as mileage efficiency is increased but it is fairly small. Just because I could drive twice as many miles if my mileage efficiency is doubled doesn't mean I'm going to. People don't willy-nilly decide to dramatically increase the number of miles driven just because their car mileage efficiency increases.
-- unsigned

Mr. Peters points out the efforts of Congress to get rid of SUVs. I would suggest that the number 1 move that Congress needs to make is to ban private jets, which are exceedingly wasteful of energy resources and extreme emitters of CO2 per capita. This would start the conservation with those most wasteful of energy resources and most emitting of excess CO2. Why does Congress always start with the little guy, rather than the real culprits? Ground Al Gore and the Hollywood glitterati first, along with corporate bigwigs, rather than letting these characters get away with saying to us peasants, "Let them ride bicycles," while they luxuriate in their Versailles-type fuel consumption. (Does John Travolta really need 3 personal jets?)
-- Kent J. Lyon
College Station, Texas

N.B., apropos your teaser line, "Ed Markey wants you to trade in your farm truck for a pair of oxen": A pair of oxen emit too much CO2 to please the Mass. Delegation.
--- John Williamson

HAPPY DAYS
Re: Jay D. Homnick's Happy Passover, Family:

Mr. Homnick, you're right. All happy families are happy in their own way -- and when we in our turn begin to wax nostalgic about our families, we'll realize in retrospect that we were happier than we thought we were at the time.

Despite the continuing Mommy Wars in which the stayathomes carp that working mothers are evil and the working mothers carp that the stayathomes are brain dead slaves, the fact is that the kids will remember the happy times and discard the rest -- if you're happy in your own choice of family. Our family spent a lot of time traveling "on the cheap" -- although we kids didn't know it was cheap at the time, we only knew that none of our friends came home from school on Friday night and heard "Pack the car, Mama, we're going to Chicago!" or Vermont, or Iowa, or Pennsylvania, or wherever we were headed for the weekend. Our friends didn't spend every Easter vacation with Granny in Alabama, or driving blue highways looking for the Big Apple (Virginia), the Statue of Vulcan (Birmingham), the See Rock City and Pedroville signs, or the unmistakable odor of Sweetwater Junction, Tennessee (home of a paper mill). They didn't listen to Daddy's stories about Baron Von Geiger's Castle (which was in fact a hotel high on a mountainside) or Chief Falling Rocks who wandered the hills (hence the sign "Watch for Falling Rocks") or the great NOSMO KING (No Smoking) who ruled the Kingdom of Allentown...and they didn't get to stay in a tourist court run by Hopalong Cassidy's mother. (Mrs. Cassidy who owned the tourist court fell right in with this story although of course she was no relation.)

Yes, we had a community closet of clothes that were owned jointly by all five of us girls; yes we ate what we were told to eat and said Thank You, enjoyed the Christmas Wish Books as any other book without any hope of getting anything in them, and got jobs as soon as we were old enough to have Working Papers (when the money we earned began to pay for our glasses, our clothes and shoes and our piano lessons -- which were OURS) -- but that was Life. And as the last of us turns 50 this year, we remember what a wonderful time we had growing up, and not the sound and fury, the lack of Goodies, and the hard work.

And we feel sorry for the kicking, screaming GrabbyBabies who will never know what it was like to have bedtime stories read by Daddy and not by a battery-operated teddy bear or a Video ... and the day we saw Daddy in both Archie Bunker and in Peter Falk who read his grandson "The Princess Bride."

Happy families are all different, but they're all happy. If the snarky women sniping at each others' choices of family structure would sit down and remember their own happy childhoods, they'd probably be happy too.

Thanks for that, sir. And Happy Passover.
-- Kate Shaw
In Kanukistan
(Toronto, Ontario)

TAX TO THE MAX
Re: W. James Antle III's The Coming Democratic Tax Increase:

How can there be a tax cut when the Democrats are just letting the Law expire This was the law enacted by a Republican Congress. Don't blame the Democrats for this, blame the Congressional Republicans. They were in control of Congress when it was enacted. It's their law and their expiration date. Please be honest in your rhetoric. Americans are sick and tired of this party spin whether it comes from Republicans or Democrats.
-- Mary O'Connell

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, Transportation, Foreign Policy, Trade, John McCain, Bill Clinton, Business, Religion, Islam, Global Warming, Books, Hollywood, Movies, Constitution, Law, Founding Fathers, Iraq, Iran, Africa, Immigration, Energy, Oil, Medicare