The REAL way to get gas prices down

[GypsySorcerer]

It's hovering just under $3.00 here, around 2.95-2.99. I remember five years ago, $1.50 was considered high for my area.

[estranged4life]

Originally Posted by chiliD

I'd like to know how he won...nobody I know voted for him either. OH, yeah...the Republi-Nazis stole the election.

if the oil companies had something to do with it, since they are the only folkz who are benefitting from his regime, oops, I meant "Presidency".

As for my yard, My grass is not growing since this part of Oklahoma is in the middle of the worse drought since the ol' "Dust Bowl Days"...Thank God/Allah/Whoever for "divine intervention" that my yard is grassless.

Brian "An Independent who voted for Kerry/Edwards" j.

[amber]

Originally Posted by GypsySorcerer

It's hovering just under $3.00 here, around 2.95-2.99. I remember five years ago, $1.50 was considered high for my area.

A guy in this area was so sick of it he put a motor on his bike. He can go like...180 miles on one gallon of gas.

[bretonbanquet]

Originally Posted by madformac

I don't actually disagree with the 75% tax issue. This country is so small and so many people want a car and you can get a car really cheaply these days, something has to be done so there is no total gridlock. Most of the USA you can drive for miles with ease (OK, so LA is a nightmare but still...) but in the UK its a totally different story. We need to make it expensive to run a car otherwise nobody would get anywhere at all ever...

But that just discriminates against people in rural areas. In Cornwall for example there is effectively no public transport - everyone needs a car or they're screwed. You will never get a job without a car because you'll be perpetually late for work. It's OK for people in cities who can catch trains and buses, but why should people who don't get the benefit of public transport have to pay extortionate rates for fuel?

Maybe people who live in areas with good public transport should pay much more road tax instead.

[skcin]

Originally Posted by AliceLover

Thats awesome!! I wonder if they do that here.

Well, to be honest, I usually avoid larger chains for gas, I try to help the little guys with one gas station. But I just couldn't pass up $.40 cents off per gallon for a place I shop at anyway.

BTW, it's http://www.topsmarkets.comif anyone lives around here.

[estranged4life]

is complain about the gas prices...Sure they have gone up, But that wasnt much a shock either. When we purchased our Nissan we wanted a smaller sized car due to the savings it could create for gasoline, So there is no complaints coming from this household with rising gasoline prices.

The thing that isnt a shock either is how the sales of SUV's has tanked. Hell, Sales are so bad that the OKC GM Plant had vehicles that sat (On average) on the lot for up to 8 months before being purchased/shipped...All were SUV's.

Sadly, the OKC GM plant has closed due to GM's restructuring, Leaving about 2,100 without jobs.

I predict that gasoline prices will be the only major sticking issue in the upcoming elections...Hell, Stevie Wonder probably could have said "I saw that coming".

[Ghost_Tracker]

Originally Posted by HomerMcvie

I'm sick about this. It cost me$48 to fill my tank last night!
I won't be going ANYWHERE this summer. This is going to kill the vacations of many people, right?

I saw the other day that a trucker had to spend over 200 dollars to fill his tank.

Don't worry, it's not going to affect the ECONOMY though!!!

[tynan88]

It's the old sad economics of supply and demand...the more gas we need, and the less there is the more expensive it is going to become. I hope to have enough money to buy a hynrid in the next 18 months but as long as everyone keeps consuming it won't get better.

[sara1998]

I have an '03 Saturn Vue. I guess I get about 25/MPG. In a 15.5 gal. tank, I spent nearly $40 last week. I think I saw gas around $2.77 this morning. When I started driving, around 1994, gas price per gallon was about $.85..... It's sickening how much the price has gone up.

[BTFLCHLD]

be sure to check the tire-pressure folks...
i hadnt for a month and was sucking back
gas on 20 psi on a back tire!

[estranged4life]

But policy options seem few and far between

By By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Steven Mufson


President Bush and congressional Republicans are under mounting public pressure to reduce gasoline prices, but they have few if any policy choices that would cut them over the next few months as family driving reaches its annual peak and as the midterm elections near.

Energy experts agree that almost everything that the president and Congress can do to increase gasoline supplies or trim demand would take years to implement. The few short-term options they have would do little to prevent the price of gasoline from reaching a national average of about $3.25 a gallon this summer.

"This is a long-lead-time business; the investment horizon is five, 10 or 20 years," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of the consulting firm Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "There's no switch to pull."

This year, Republicans, who are traditionally more sympathetic to the pleas of Big Oil, are lambasting the oil companies, with some calling for the consideration of a windfall-profits tax on the firms. Aides expect President Bush to say in a speech today that last year he pushed through an energy bill that was designed to increase domestic oil and gasoline production, and that this year he recommended a slew of incentives for alternative-energy production.

But even the White House is reluctant to promise a quick fix. "The problem has built up over many decades, and it isn't going to change overnight," said Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino. The president's speech in Washington about energy costs "will have some new ideas for short-term solutions," Perino said. But she added: "Nothing is going to be a magic wand that will lower gas prices overnight."

Oil analysts concur that the primary causes of the escalating prices cannot be mitigated by federal intervention. They include the rapidly rising demand for oil in China and India, instability in oil-rich Nigeria, financial speculation about a possible military confrontation with Iran, and U.S. refining capacity's failure to keep up with demand. Refineries had to work overtime last year to make up for the oil shortage that Hurricane Katrina wrought, and only now have they been able to undertake necessary maintenance.

Democrats hammer at Bush
Still, Democrats are hammering Bush and his Republican colleagues for failing to come up with a strategy that would cut prices soon. They hope to harness voter anger over the trend and, by Election Day, turn it against the Republicans who control Congress.

In an April 20 memo to candidates, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recommended that Democrats running for Congress "hold an event at a gas station . . . and pledge that, as a member of Congress, you will fight for families in your district, not the oil and gas executives for which this Republican Congress has fought so hard."

Republicans fired back, accusing Democrats of stonewalling comprehensive energy legislation for years before a bill, which focused on long-term energy incentives, finally passed last year. They also say that the economy remains strong despite the gas price woes. "Democrats have decided to play partisan politics with gas prices in a flailing attempt to distract from the growing economy," Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) wrote to her colleagues.

Still, Republicans at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are planning a series of actions aimed at boosting gasoline supplies and reducing prices. GOP lawmakers and Bush administration aides yesterday discussed suspending environmental regulations that are forcing consumers to purchase expensive new gasoline blends with low sulfur levels.

Another option under discussion, which the president has used before, aides said, is to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a way of increasing oil supplies and lowering prices. Energy consultants have also mentioned the possibility of cutting federal gasoline taxes, though that approach does not appear to be under active consideration.

Windfall-profits tax?
Despite the many obstacles to immediate price cuts, lawmakers from both parties are complaining about the high gas prices and demanding that something be done about them right away. Yesterday, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) sent a letter to the White House asking Bush to direct the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate possible price gouging by oil companies.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said this week that a windfall-profits tax on oil companies is "worth considering."

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, joined other lawmakers yesterday in condemning high oil prices by taking aim at oil companies. Barton said his committee will hold hearings into the imbalance of supply and demand. He added that "it troubles me" that Exxon Mobil Corp.'s chief executive received a large pay and retirement package "while refinery capacity continues to lag behind demand in this country."

David Winston, a GOP pollster, said the size of the retirement package of former Exxon Mobil chief executive Lee R. Raymond has added to public outrage over rising gasoline prices. Winston said the multimillion-dollar package made people doubt oil companies' assertions that market forces and not their drive for profits stood behind the run-up in gasoline prices.

Raymond received $48.5 million in salary, bonus and incentive payments last year; he got a $98.5 million lump-sum retirement package in January, when he left the company; and he had accumulated by the end of 2005 $183 million in Exxon shares and unexercised stock options with a net worth of $69 million.

Democrats have seized on the gigantic payout as a symbol of oil company greed. They are offering a variety of proposals that would rein in oil companies, including a tax on windfall profits, an idea the Bush administration has opposed in the past.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[Sorcerer386]

I remember when an FX original movie was being advertised I think as early as last year. I can't remember the name of the movie, but I remember it had to do with energy crisis, and the one scene I really remember from the previews was a sort of fast forward action sequence where the price of gas on a sign was going up like crazy. It just kept flying up really quickly. I thought how scary that would be, but we have a long time before something like that happens. Now I'm wondering if it's not happening now.

When I was a junior in high school, and this was in 1999, I remember gas was $.80 a gallon. The whole thing has just become ridiculous.

[DavidMn]

Originally Posted by BTFLCHLD

be sure to check the tire-pressure folks...
i hadnt for a month and was sucking back
gas on 20 psi on a back tire!

Careful or youre gonna blow a tire. Watch it sweetie.

[Ghost_Tracker]

Originally Posted by Sorcerer386

I
When I was a junior in high school, and this was in 1999, I remember gas was $.80 a gallon. The whole thing has just become ridiculous.

Are you sure you don't mean $1.80 a gallon?
80 cents a gallon in 1999 doesn't seem quite right to me, they've been over a dollar a gallon for some time, I believe.
I'm sorta dating myself here but I can remember when they were 57 cents a gallon - that was 1975 or so. Then it shot up VERY suddenly to 67 cents a gallon - and it's been climbing ever since.

[hayley]

Originally Posted by Ghost_Tracker

Are you sure you don't mean $1.80 a gallon?
80 cents a gallon in 1999 doesn't seem quite right to me, they've been over a dollar a gallon for some time, I believe.
I'm sorta dating myself here but I can remember when they were 57 cents a gallon - that was 1975 or so. Then it shot up VERY suddenly to 67 cents a gallon - and it's been climbing ever since.

I started driving in 1999 and filled my tank for 89 cents a gallon at the time.