It sounds crazy, but we need to raise gas

I also would add that most people in Utah don't understand this. I've fielded phone calls and read letters to the editor that complain about greedy oil companies and the impact high prices are having on the poor. This newspaper commissioned an opinion poll last week that showed only 13 percent of Utahns would support an increase in the state gas tax. Meanwhile, a similar feeling nationwide has kept Congress from increasing the federal tax for 14 years now.

People are missing the point. Yes, poor people are suffering from gas prices that now approach the level Americans were paying (adjusting for inflation) in 1981. But a continued dependence on oil without increasing domestic supplies or fuel efficiency isn't going to make anything better for the poor. Price controls and windfall taxes only would make things worse.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is clamping down on dissent in his own country while using his oil-fueled clout to amass a group of Latin American allies united in their hatred for the United States. It's a growing storm cloud we all need to begin seeing. Much of the concern in this country over illegal immigration is completely misplaced. The people coming here are economic refugees. That's a lot better than political refugees who may one day storm our borders because of repressive policies in homelands where dictators are financed by our own insatiable appetite for oil.

It pains me to say it, but making a tank of gas even more expensive than NBA playoff tickets is the only way to get the nation to move along that path.

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Jay Evensen is editor of the Deseret Morning News editorial board. E-mail: even@desnews.com