"the subsidization of their fuel"

JK: Can you explain how that works? I thought that we paid the world commodity price for oil.

RC: First of all, if you are seriously trying to imply that oil is traded on some sort of free global market, then I have little hope of walking you through it all. Have you ever heard of OPEC or oil oligarchies?

The reality is this: Geopolitics, monopilization, and non-market forces have driven the oil markets since their inception. Think OPEC. Think nationalized oil. Think about how colonialism really started it all - BP British Petroleum was NOT drilling for oil in Britain, of course.

Secondly, take a look at the most recent energy bill in Congress and all of the "incentives" they give for drilling. Like allowing private companies to drill and sell oil from PUBLIC lands for basically nothing - in more places than just ANWR, I might at.

Really, though, perhaps the biggest subsidy to oil production (and therefore to lower prices, via simple supply and demand) comes from the tax code in the form of the oil depletion (or depreciation) allowance. The oil depletion allowance was first introduced in 1913 and allowed producers to basically drill without any risk. It wouldn't matter whether or not they actually hit oil because any losses from their speculation were covered by a tax break - not a real free market system. If that isn't non-market enough for you, the depletion allowance also allowed people to basically write off the profits they earned every tax season.

Here is how it works, as Robert Bryce describes it in his book with an admittedly slanted title- "Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate" - (regardless, though, the explanation is pretty good).

Bryce gives an example in his book how the oil depreciation allowance works. "An oilman drills a well that costs $100,000. He finds a reservoir containing $10,000,000 worth of oil. The well produces $1 million worth of oil per year for ten years. In the very first year, thanks to the depletion allowance, the oilman could deduct 27.5 per cent, or $275,000, of that $1 million in income from his taxable income. Thus, in just one year, he's deducted nearly three times his initial investment. But the depletion allowance continues to pay off. For each of the next nine years, he gets to continue taking the $275,000 depletion deduction. By the end of the tenth year, the oilman has deducted $2.75 million from his taxable income, even though his initial investment was only $100,000."

And the costs of buying oil-dry land can get written off, too.

These are just a handful of the most notable subsidies to oil.

And while I know you don't believe in global warming, all actual climate scientists with any respectability DO, so I am going to take their word for it over yours. Global warming and the consequences of CO2 pollution are basically a subsidy being paid by future generations for our fossil fuel use today.

Enough on that, though.

Yes, the oil used by transit is subsidized, too. That doesn't change anything or prove any point, however.

JK: What does Terry Schiavo or boys kissing have to do with transportation? Why should either even be mentioned on a government policy blog?

RC: Hey- it is people on YOUR side of the aisle that brought these items up in Congress, not us. So don't tell ME that they shouldn't be brought up in a political debate.

And how does it relate to transportation? It relates in as much as transportation is a policy issue and because you guys are all too willing to use policy to intervein into the "sovereign choices" of other people while trumpeting your "right to (insert something harmful society at large here)." It is hypocritical and I am tired of it.