Your View: Know who's paying for attack ads

May 01, 2008 04:45 pm

— We are about to be pummeled with ads pointing out that some legislators voted to increase the gas tax and are therefore responsible for $3.45 per gallon gas prices.
Without the gas tax we would be at $3.43.
I can see how they think that when the price can jump by six cents overnight, because of some damage to a pipeline in Nigeria, we can blame our legislators for trying to keep our cars out of the rivers and the potholes smaller than moon craters.
How about pointing out that we went though this in the ’70s, when they had to sell gas by the half gallon because the pumps wouldn’t go over $1? We had long lines at the stations and a huge round of inflation. Our answer was to come up with the SUV and to make sure that everyone had a four-wheel drive pickup.
If we want to blame the legislators for the whole problem, let’s blame them for giving the subsidies to the oil companies and not putting our money into making sure we have some alternatives. We have had Republican and Democrat administrations during the last 30 years, and neither one of them would deny the oil companies their monopoly.
So when they start spending all of the money on the Swift Boat/Willie Horton and Gas Tax attack ads, just ask yourself — who is paying for this? In a large part it is probably the people responsible for the problems we face.