Saturday, August 12, 2006
Beer or gasoline?
I heard a new country song today by Chris Young (I've never heard of him either. The song was about the choice between buying a six pack of cold beer of buying gas for his truck. Thankfully this is not a choice I have to make, but it did get me to thinking about the price of gas.
I paid $2.98/gal for the "cheap" grade. I can recall it being $0.69 when I moved from South Carolina to Mississippi in 1998. Admittedly a lot has changed since then both in my life and the world. I got married and divorced, had a child and earned a law degree, but the increase in gas is outrageous.
And it is going to get worse, much worse before the end of the summer. I got word last night from a person who would know that the BP gas pipeline in Alaska will be shut down at least 6 months, not the two months announced earlier this week.
Back to the beer or gas choice - funny song, but lets change it a little. The real choice is coming - food or gas. My office is about to lose some staff due to the cost of gas - costs them more to drive to work than the benefit of a paycheck. Now is is an attorney, who makes good money not a lower income laborer. So if she is feeling the pinch, others have got to be.
I expect that you will see the political hacks impose a price cap on gas soon - but keep in mind these are them hacks who have known for decades that gas is limited and we are using it at an ever increasing rate, but have failed to meaningfully explore other options. Our government (USA) has subsidized the oil industry at a rate about 10 to 250 times the amount given to researchers looking for alternative fuel sources. (depending on your source).
We KNOW that Brazil has been able to make an alternative fuel source, similar to Ethanol, but based on sugar rather than corn, AND that Ford makes cars for Brazil that can run on both - so you can buy gas or the other fuel depending. WHY NOT HERE?
It seems the village idiot we elected has only one solution in mind - drill in ANWAR. Oh wait, the invasion of Iraq was supposed to ease the gas burden by allowing that oil back onto the market which would take care of the funding the reconstruction of Iraq. I guess all of that oil got lost with the WMD.
Just my thoughts.
I paid $2.98/gal for the "cheap" grade. I can recall it being $0.69 when I moved from South Carolina to Mississippi in 1998. Admittedly a lot has changed since then both in my life and the world. I got married and divorced, had a child and earned a law degree, but the increase in gas is outrageous.
And it is going to get worse, much worse before the end of the summer. I got word last night from a person who would know that the BP gas pipeline in Alaska will be shut down at least 6 months, not the two months announced earlier this week.
Back to the beer or gas choice - funny song, but lets change it a little. The real choice is coming - food or gas. My office is about to lose some staff due to the cost of gas - costs them more to drive to work than the benefit of a paycheck. Now is is an attorney, who makes good money not a lower income laborer. So if she is feeling the pinch, others have got to be.
I expect that you will see the political hacks impose a price cap on gas soon - but keep in mind these are them hacks who have known for decades that gas is limited and we are using it at an ever increasing rate, but have failed to meaningfully explore other options. Our government (USA) has subsidized the oil industry at a rate about 10 to 250 times the amount given to researchers looking for alternative fuel sources. (depending on your source).
We KNOW that Brazil has been able to make an alternative fuel source, similar to Ethanol, but based on sugar rather than corn, AND that Ford makes cars for Brazil that can run on both - so you can buy gas or the other fuel depending. WHY NOT HERE?
It seems the village idiot we elected has only one solution in mind - drill in ANWAR. Oh wait, the invasion of Iraq was supposed to ease the gas burden by allowing that oil back onto the market which would take care of the funding the reconstruction of Iraq. I guess all of that oil got lost with the WMD.
Just my thoughts.
// posted by Cigar smoking, beer drinking lawyer @ 11:34 AM 
