McCain has a 15-year record of voting against energy efficiency, environmental protection, and any attempt to develop or produce alternative energy. Now in the face of a climate crisis and an energy quagmire, he has the gall to distort and demonize the candidate for attempting to fix the mess McCain helped create?

As to whether or not higher taxes guarantee the invention of alternative new energy sources, the Europeans have exacted very high taxes on fuel for decades and they are still heavily dependent on fossil fuels. They do have much more energy efficient cars and they do make much more use of nuclear power (a controversial topic by itself), but they still haven’t invented any *new* sources of energy.

But, you may be right overall. Most of the fundamental advances in technology over the past 500 years have occurred as the result of a synthesis of efforts from all major international players. If the US sits this out, we could slow possible achievement in this area to the detriment of everyone else.

Basically, neither of us really knows for sure. We don’t have any kind of comparative evidence that states research and development becomes more successful because gasoline is $5/gallon and our monthly electric bills go up a certain percentage. It’s also unfair to characterize a tax-increase as debilitating. Again, using available comparative data from Europe, they have high taxes on energy and still manage to do well economically (present-day banking disasters notwithstanding).

All in all, I just can’t really say with any kind of certainty whether raising or lowering taxes either causes or eliminates more problems in the long run.

Our government must influence the energy business in the language of money. Even at the consumer level if we had instituted a $.25 - 1$/gallon at-the-pump tax 8 years ago like many people we’re advocating, we could be billions of dollars into research and development of cleaner, cheaper, and OPEC-free sources of energy. Instead we’ve had the oil companies making obscene amounts of money hiring well-connected lobbyists to whisper in the ears of the men and women supposed to representing OUR interests.

McCain has shown his true colors by stumping for offshore drilling with lax oversight, which will do nothing for the consumer or the price at the pump and everything for the oil companies to act in their own interest by maintaining the environment that has given them the billions upon billions.

Again, I agree with your sticking to a formal definition of a lie; this allows for objective classification and should help determine inaccuracies in speeches given by candidates. However, the current definition does not leave a lot of room for “rehetorical expedience” which may not be “technically” accurate, but is more “true” than the technical definition. It’s hard to throw the multi-step logic that I just outlined into a speech or a “town hall” question-and-answer session. Sometimes, it really is more expedient and “true” to say “tax” when it comes to paying for something you need, even though it may be technically false.

It is a fair critique to suggest that lie designates intention, and there is always the possibility that their intentions are good and it’s an honest mistake. If it is, and they correct it, we gladly remove the lie designation. It’s notable that corrections are surprisingly very few to date, even when generally agreed upon as not true.

More about what is considered a lie here:
http://liecount.com/what-is-a-lie/