BIN LADEN USED YOUR GAS MONEY!

We Americans, for the most part, pride ourselves in being a fiercely
independent lot. We pride ourselves in striking out in our own individual
direction and accomplishing our goals and achieving success. This is
ingrained in the American persona and hearkens back to images of Conestoga
Wagons, Frontier Life and even the once ubiquitous Willy's Jeep.

This fact was not lost on the Marketing types in places like Detroit and
Dearborn when sometime in the 1980s it was decided to create a new category
of vehicle known as the "SUV." A meld of stark utilitarian vehicles,
combined with brawny motors and four-wheel drive, previously undesirable to
consumers, were soon being transformed into chic and trendy "must-have"
items with increasingly plush and luxurious interiors. SUVs were slowly fed
to the public as the means to "express their unique individuality and mobile
independence." Indeed, if there is one thing we Americans are great at, it
is sales and marketing, and soon Madison Avenue had convinced a great swath
of this nation's Car buyers to become Truck drivers, and that they were all
great and unique individualists who now had achieved sublime levels of
mobile ability, capable of driving through jagged mountain passes and ankle
deep mud, with more horsepower than a cavalry unit.

The problem is that complacency and a general societal immaturity have their
inevitable cost. The wildly optimistic societal framework of this era
followed a dose of reality trip from the 1970s, a rather unhappy period when
an oil shock and a general economic malaise had awakened our nation to
issues of conservation, alternative energy and our individual responsibility
as citizens of the planet, as opposed to being self-centered. We
collectively had made great strides in rejecting the "Me Only and Me First"
attitude problem. Unhappily, the early 1980s brought us a leader in the form
of a fiscally reckless charismatic actor, and what followed was the "Greed
is Good" era of the 1980s, which brought with it the mantra of massive
government deficit spending. Wall Street, in tandem, decided to revoke
Newton's Law of Gravity, and the credo of the two decades that followed was
an orgy of indiscriminate consumerism. Buy and charge was the native call in
this fair land, and America did buy, with a lust and hunger for things
material that was unprecedented. Family debt, however, skyrocketed in this
Pollyanna economy, and with it so did considerations of economy, saving,
conservation and social consciousness.

The first decade of the new millennium is here, and our economy faces
massive indigestion from the recklessness of the past 20 years. Middle class
Americans individually, in the most part, have destroyed their balance
sheets, and are in debt to a degree unprecedented: close to Two Million of
us have filed for personal bankruptcy in the past year. Families stagger and
stretch to make credit card and mortgage payments. Many wonder how they will
deal with increasing interest rates on their variable mortgages. About 20
percent of all new mortgages are sub-prime. Our society, its government and
its people, mesmerized and indoctrinated by corporate America to consume
like locusts, are now literally margined to such a dangerous extent, that
even the international Banking community warns of the danger that WE pose to
the rest of the world economic community.

Being a responsible citizen and making responsible purchasing decisions are
issues not to be taken lightly. Your seemingly isolated decision impacts
everyone else as well as yourself. You are not an individual who lives in a
vacuum. The Reagan era philosophy of Zero Sum Gain and the corollary mantras
of "Greed is Good," and "He who dies with the most toys wins" are WRONG.
These are selfish, materialistic credos sponsored by bizarre and evil pseudo
laissez faire philosophers whose real agendas lay in quick profit and power.
The demand and glamour of this type of mindset is carefully cultivated by
industries seeking to exploit and manipulate their audience - industries
like cigar manufacturers, plastic surgeons and luxury automobile marketers,
to name just a few.

The fact that you cannot see or feel first hand the consequences of your
purchase decision does not mean that there aren't any. Nature has a sublime
law and that is: every Act has its eventual Consequence. Our vacuous Plastic
Surgery culture feels it can escape the consequences of its acts, just like
it believes it escapes the ravages of time or the misunderstood blessings of
nature. This is pure delusion - eventually nature reclaims all.

The massive waste our society has incurred in the past 20 years will
eventually express itself in a diminished standard of living for its
citizens, a diminished role in world affairs, a probable massive and
prolonged debt reduction episode, a significant depreciation of its currency
and relegation to a "has-been power." A broke and penniless society cannot
lead the world - it will eventually have to be led by those to whom it owes.

Reflect on this the next time you are done pumping $60 of gas into your
Vehicle of Individuality - Ask yourself this: Had you and all the other
chumps been pumping only 10 gallons of gas into your vehicle instead of 25,
would any Americans be dying in the Middle East today? Had we attained
energy independence and kept it in the 1980s, would the Middle East be
anything more than a second-page concern? Had we not entered into this
massively expensive war, would the value of our money have continued to be
unchallenged and something of reliance? And had we energy independence,
would our culture and those of the Middle East have had such long and
frictional contact, giving rise to a reactionary Muslim movement that
resents us so fiercely as to deliver the attacks of 9/11?

You make decisions every time you vote with your money. By expressing your
individuality in a responsible manner, by electing to drive a rationally
sized vehicle with optimal consumption characteristics, you are preserving
America's independence. By unthinkingly and mechanistically responding to
consumer panel programming designed to persuade you to buy a leviathan
vehicle, aren't you actually enslaved to needless expense and debt? Are you
indirectly responsible for the deaths of others? Aren't you contributing to
the decline of the nation as a whole? Is your ego so frail, and your self
concept so tender, that you need to comply with the latest edicts from
Corporate America?

By immediately boycotting the further purchase of light trucks and SUVs and
demanding that manufacturers begin selling more responsible designs with
more efficient drivetrains (that are being sold elsewhere in the world), we
can begin to reverse this unfortunate trend. By demanding reasonably sized
and powered sedans with all-wheel drive, the practical foul weather mobility
concerns of our people can be resolved.

Government on the state level should discourage the purchase of wasteful
vehicles by imposing a panoply of inhibitions, including additional
statewide property and sales tax on engine displacements exceeding a certain
threshold for non-commercial usage; restrictions on use of the Merritt
Parkway to only vehicles with passenger car registration; reclassifying SUVs
with motors in excess of a certain size as combination vehicles, thus
alleviating large SUVs and pickups from the Parkway, and by imposing
additional sales tax on premium grade fuels, marine fuels and aviation
fuels. Conversely, buyers of hybrid or other fuel-efficient vehicles should
benefit from lower sales and property taxes, advantageous registration fees
and other incentives designed to encourage the sale of socially responsible
vehicles.

Our addiction to wasteful energy consumption is much akin to the addiction
habits of a heroin user. It is government's responsibility to help cure the
heroin addict, as it is to cure the gluttonous fuel consumer. Both may
blindly and self-centeredly resist vehemently, demanding their "rights" to
destroy themselves and those around them. Both the heroin and petroleum
trades support nefarious regimes and shadowy warlords in other parts of the
world who overturn the rule of law and terrorize innocents. It is time to
stop shirking our collective responsibilities and for the state legislature
to impose sanctions and disincentives on this waste. Cowering to the profit
demands of the auto and oil interests is not responsible government. Our
societal legacy cannot be mortgaged on the shortsighted and wasteful desires
of programmed consumers, reaped by the millions of advertising dollars spent
by irresponsible manufacturers whose sole concern is quarterly profit
figures.