America Must Collar the Oil Companies, Free Electric Car Batteries, and Tax Oil

The auto companies are widely viewed as appealing to the Democrats ("Dems") for aid both in clearing their pension liability and in erecting trade barriers to foreign cars. At the same time, Dems, it's predicted, will rescind the special tax benefits Bush handed out to the oil companies.

Now is the time to demand that Dems actually do more than just pay back the unions for their contributions ...  Any aid to the auto companies, and all policy toward the oil companies, must be accompanied by:

1. Freeing the Nickel-Metal-Hydride ("NiMH") batery patents from Chevron, and forcing Toyota to resume production of their NiMH EV-95 battery as a condition of doing business. Eminent domain is one possibility, criminal prosecution is another. This battery, still in use and working fine more than five years after the last one rolled off the production line (it was withdrawn after Chevron sued Toyota), lasts longer than the life of a car, even a Toyota car.  The EV-95 NiMH battery is proven reliable in actual use over hundreds of Toyota RAV4-EV since it went into production in 1997.

2. Raising Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency ("CAFE") standards. Just a 10% rise in CAFE standards would yield as much new oil as drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ("ANWR"). And the rise in CAFE standards would go on, "producing" hidden oil, long after the fifteen-year life of ANWR was exhausted, and all its oil gone. Making us even more dependent after it was spent.

3. A graduated tax on oil, so that the more you use, the more you pay. One way to do this is via ration cards; another is by raising the price but giving "gas credit cards" to everyone for the first $100/month of cheap gas. After that, they would have to pay the going price, perhaps $8/gallon. Other ways to do this are by regional taxes on gas deliveries, and a gas-guzzler tax.