News-Record.com

"This year, we spent 43 cents of every income tax dollar on the military,"

JDR is good at fact checking. That number seems high, I was thinking it was around 25% of personal income tax and about 4-5% of to total Gross revenue from all taxes. Can we get other opinions?

Anne,

43 cents a gallon tax is about what we are paying for fuel. No, that's not 43 cents per dollar but I use it for comparison. To have a sustainable energy source here at home we must drill for oil in Alaska and off-shore. We must build new refineries and build nuclear power plants. One part of our government realizes and pushes for this. The other side blocks every effort to do these things and has NO recommendation for stopping our dependancy on foreign oil,etc. The only soultion they have is to repeal (temp.) the tax on fuel. They want Big Oil to pay the tax instead because they can't do w/o the money. (How will this make us independant?) Reducing the price will only increase usage. Think about this. Which party is which? And, to which party do you belong?

Hugh,

You are basically correct. In 2008, the federal budget for the DOD was $481 Billion, the Global War on Terror was $145, and Appropriations for Iraq and Afgan were about $200 Billion, as best as I can determine. That would be a total of about $826 Billion. The total U.S. 2008 budget spending of about $3 Trillion would result in about 27-28%.

The source cited by the lte is misleading as it allocates "federal income tax dollars" spent by the government. This does not consider federal tax revenue from other sources. Here is the 2008 budgeted revenues and sources:

* $1.25 trillion - Individual income tax
* $927.2 billion - Social Security and other payroll taxes
* $314.9 billion - Corporate income tax
* $68.1 billion - Excise taxes
* $29.2 billion - Customs duties
* $25.7 billion - Estate and gift taxes
* $50.7 billion - Other

So, everyone can make their case using numbers to prove their case. It just depends on what you want to believe. Is purchasing energy a province of the federal government? I do not know, but I do know that a constitutional right and responsibility of the federal government is to provide for the common defense and to raise and support armies.

Yes, Anne the Government needs to find new sources of energy just like government gave us oil, gas, coal, and nuclear energy, the cleanest known form, which I notice you didn't mention!

You also missed the news item concerning the San Diego governemtn school district decided to use solar panels for the indoctrination camps. Their energy bill went up 80 percent! Oh, they canned the idea.

More bio-fuels, of course, we haven't starved enough people around the world because we're using our food for fuel. Gee, we already have fuel, but how do we replace food!

"With tax day just over and 2009 budget discussions under way in Congress, it’s time to think about where our taxes go."

Again...I'd first like to know where our borrowed moneys go, eliminate the bad expenditures, and raise the revenue to balance the budget, have a surplus, and start paying down the 9 trillion dollar debt.

We do need to invest n green energy. As far as I know, all three candidates for President think so (although I'm less sure about McCain since I'm still caught up in the primary).

And somebody want to gimme a link to the story about the solar panel debacle out west?

Remember, solar energy only works when the sun shines, and wind energy only works when the wind blows. Do you want to schedule your energy needs around the sun shining and wind blowing?

Yes, we do need to continue to look for viable and affordable alternative energy sources, but that will take some time, but what are we to do in the interim? We have enough untapped oil and gas sources within our territories that Congress will not allow us to tap and utilize that would make us energy sustainable, if not independent. When Schumer says that production of the ANWR fields would only affect the cost of gas by $.01, how does he arrive at that? He also says that it would take 10 years for production to come online in ANWR. If we had started in 1994, when President Clinton vetoed it, we would have already had four years of production. Of course, we weren't looking at $5+ per gallon for gas.

Too bad we don't live on an island atop the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that's essentially a big ole volcano. It'd be so much easier to power our houses then.

Personally, I think we need to work on high-temp superconductors...power lines with virtually zero resistance. Think about how much energy we lose just getting it to our houses.

Sometimes I wish I was a Physics major.

Remember, solar energy only works when the sun shines, and wind energy only works when the wind blows. Do you want to schedule your energy needs around the sun shining and wind blowing.

That's why they make Batteries and Capacitors, ORR.

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"We have enough untapped oil and gas sources within our territories [to] make us energy sustainable, if not independent.

... aaah ORR .. sustainable means you make as you consume - the Space lab has a sustainable water source, for example because they recycle their pee for fresh drinking water .. so unless you are gonna start squeezing some fresh batch of dinosaurs, oil ain't never gonna be sustainable.

Have you seen that movie Jurasic Park? Maybe we could ... then we could .. if only rahrah were a Physics major!

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As for independent ... how about sharing a link contrasting the untapped oil and gas sources with current consumption. We'll be independent for a few months. whoo hooo.