The First Thing You'd Do if You Were President

[€uroMeinke]

Originally Posted by Matterhorn Fan

What would you do first? What would your White House priorities be?

You mean after the blow job?

[Prudence]

You do mean when, right? Not if?

Now I have to think -- not sure I want to commit to my platform this early.

Okay, FIRST thing, email all my friends from back when to say "see! told you so!"

[sleepyjeff]

I would split the government into Three sectors for Tax purposes. Two of the sectors would be controlled by the 2 largest political parties and the third sector by a coalition of all remaining political parties. Every citizen would be required to belong to one of the 3 sectors.

Because National Defense is Paramount all citizens would pay into a Defense fund(this fund will only be for the military defense of the US not its allies or overseas interests)

Beyond that each sector would tax only the members of the sector and only for those things which they are interested in. This would promote competition between the sectors to keep taxes relatively low in order to retain members so pork spending would go bye bye. People who think a foriegn war is important would most likely join a tax sector that supports such action. People who think a ton of money thrown at education will fix its problems may join a sector that supports that. People who don't want the government spending money on anything may wish to join yet different sector.

Right now we have Rs and Ds trying to outspend each other and that can't be good for the country; With tax sectors implemented they would be competing to see who could spend the least instead of the most....and that can only be a good thing

[Name]

or we could just build more diesel cars and convert them to run off vegetable oil....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7646412/
and
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7603085/

sure, it uses diesel fuel to warm the engine, but once its up to operating temp, just flip a switch, now your running with a renewable, cleaner burning fuel that doesn't rely on foreign oil.....what a concept.
of course the price of oil would probably drop drastically if these were mass produced and many people started buying them, and that just wouldn't be good for the investors in those oil companies

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by Name

or we could just build more diesel cars and convert them to run off vegetable oil....

There's more to it than that. It's an issue of existing infrastructure as well. Where would someone go to purchase enough vegetable oil to run their car? Can there be enough mass produced to power all the vehicles now using petroleum based products? There are no pumping stations. No vegetable oil pipelines. Who will make the investment to provide such things? Cars can run quite efficiently on propane as well, and in Phoenix there was a big push for this (even with virtually free cars provided at tax payer expense), but there are about 4 propane filling stations in the entire Phoenix metro area. Who wants to drive 20 miles to a filling station?

I am all for cleaner burning fuels. But nothing will come without some sort of side effect. The buzz about hydrogen sounds great. The exhaust is water vapor. However, I've read that there is a concern that in major metro areas there would be so much water vapor produced it would actually change weather patterns.

[wendybeth]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

I am all for cleaner burning fuels. But nothing will come without some sort of side effect. The buzz about hydrogen sounds great. The exhaust is water vapor. However, I've read that there is a concern that in major metro areas there would be so much water vapor produced it would actually change weather patterns.

Not to mention what the high humidity levels would do to my hair!

(It could be argued that pollution has done it's fair share of changing weather patterns...)

[sleepyjeff]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

There's more to it than that. It's an issue of existing infrastructure as well. Where would someone go to purchase enough vegetable oil to run their car? Can there be enough mass produced to power all the vehicles now using petroleum based products? There are no pumping stations. No vegetable oil pipelines.

Not to mention the poor rain forests that will be clear cut to grow said veggie oils

[Name]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Where would someone go to purchase enough vegetable oil to run their car?

KFC, Jack in the Box, McDonalds, Burger King, the many mom and pop restaurants around town, Carls Jr., All the taco stands that are in my neighborhood, Hooters, Uno's, Baja Fresh, Pick Up Stix, California Pizza Kitchen, TGI Friday's,Kripy Kreme, Other Donut shops, any other restaurant/bar that serves anything fried, as well as several industries that use vegetable oils for their products.

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by Name

KFC, Jack in the Box, McDonalds, Burger King, the many mom and pop restaurants around town, Carls Jr., All the taco stands that are in my neighborhood, Hooters, Uno's, Baja Fresh, Pick Up Stix, California Pizza Kitchen, TGI Friday's,Kripy Kreme, Other Donut shops, any other restaurant/bar that serves anything fried, as well as several industries that use vegetable oils for their products.

There are still the logistical issues of finding practical ways to use it. Anything previously used would obviously have to be finely filtered, and there would still be the same distribution problems of how to get it to places to filter it and get it into vehicles.

[Name]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

There are still the logistical issues of finding practical ways to use it. Anything previously used would obviously have to be finely filtered, and there would still be the same distribution problems of how to get it to places to filter it and get it into vehicles.

Brief outline of what solutions people have with filtering used vegetable oil....... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5136966/

I am sure some enterprising entrepenuer would jump at the chance to secure contracts with the hundreds of restauranteurs to make a few bucks for doing nothing more then a little filtering and redistribution. This type of thing has the same feel as linux to me, there were many people that I knew several years ago that said linux would never last, but it is still a thriving OS, in fact Red Hat was a very good stock at one point(I haven't watched their stock in several years, so don't know what they are doing now). So, I don't know what the reluctance is to ween ourselves off the fossil fuel tit is, but I would be more then willing to convert a car to run off diesel(I think the next four wheeled vehicle I buy will be diesel so I can use a different fuel). But back to the point, as more and more people take steps to use vegetable oil as an alternative fuel, the distribution needs would arise. It seems a far better solution to me then drilling for a pittance of oil in a pristine wildlife refuge, and who knows, maybe the market for agricultural products would improve decreasing the need for agricultural subsidies. Seems more a win-win to me then lining the already bulging pockets of the oil millionaires. I am a realist and understand that there will always be a demand for fossil fuels, but introducing a viable alternative that could help to decrease our dependance on fossil fuels as the only form of energy seems very promising.