Tonight I filled up my gas tank. My little car need 12 gallons of gasoline and the total bill came to $44 and some change. Eight years ago when Bill Clinton was president it cost $20 for the same amount of fuel. Most of the members of Congress and our executive branch don’t give a damn about what we’re paying for fuel. Truckers who haul most of our food and other items to market are paying between four and five dollars a gallon for diesel fuel. I finally saw some Democrat from Oregon do a little tongue lashing on the floor of the Congress today. I wish our anemic representative would do the same, but I doubt he will as he’s a Republican water carrier for the current nincompoops in the White House.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKP8HhkCzMw]
I feel so incredibly lucky to have my small, efficient car, and so angry that they aren’t more commonly available at a wider range of price points. My 12 gallon gas tank lasts about twice as long as the old 15 gallon one did.
I would like to see our leaders working on making it easier to conserve our energy resources for all our citizens, no matter what the income level. Here in the city, I want to see more public transit, and to see it kept both inexpensive and comfortable, as the Metro trains used to be. Currently, our transit system is working its way into being a multi-level caste system (busses at bottom, cars and particularly SUVs at top, the train somewhere closer to busses than cars) And so we have bus stops that require people to wait literally on the asphalt beside busy traffic lanes, while Escalades speed by.
I would happily stop driving to work most days *if* taking public transit didn’t mean spending nearly 4 hours every day commuting. (Or, heck, give *serious* tax breaks to companies for every worker who telecommutes at least 2 days per week.)