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$2.97. $3.18. $3.45. $3.86. $3.99 and counting …
And let’s not forget the 9/10th of a cent, cause that adds up real quick.
I’m one of those guys that personifies the word commute, and watching the gas prices heading upward at a pace that reminds me of Bugs Bunny cartoons has gotten me more than a little concerned.
Thinking back just a little over two years ago when I was paying less that $2 a gallon, I’m wondering how things got out of control so fast. Actually, we all pretty much know the answer to that — Trump lost the election.
In a previous job I had during the Trump administration, I remember seeing gas at $1.19 a gallon at a couple of places. Not only are those days gone, but there is a certain lack of concern on the part of a whole lot of people, especially current President Joe Biden.
If you haven’t seen it yet, look up any saved video where Biden blames Russia and its aggressions toward the Ukraine as the reason for American gas prices. It’s even being referred to as the Russian price hike at many levels of federal government.
More to my point, and even more concerning, is that quite a lot of the fine people of this country are buying that swill.
The first question people need to ask is how is $4 to $8 per gallon gas in any way building back better, as is this president’s credo? He did say that he was going to hold oil companies accountable for prices, yet now the line is Russia Russia Russia, and we’re supposed to pretend that the last two years’ worth of rising gas prices didn’t exist?
The second question is why the president is so cavalier about what this government is or is not prepared to do to solve the problem. If whatever it was worked under a president so reviled was successful, it should work again.
Yet what I hear, and what I read, and what is being reported, is not only an abdication of responsibility by a sitting president and his administration, but an acquiescence from a population that has abdicated its liberty.
Seriously. One conversation said that gas prices in the Czech Republic are the U.S. equivalent of more than $8 per gallon, and that everybody has to suck it up, and so should we, and that poor Unca Joe really isn’t at fault here.
I’m not an economist. I’m a writer, and as one I read and research and compile my information. Having done that, there’s a simple explanation for how things work: more demand, less supply, costs go up. More supply, less demand, costs go down.
Granted, that’s probably a simplistic view, and I’m sure there are other factors I’m not considering. We did, though, cap our oil reserves, and one of the first things Biden did was kill the Keystone Pipeline. So we stopped relying on ourselves for oil, and started back relying on other countries, and now things got out of control.
If we were producing and consuming our own output, as well as selling any surplus, these prices wouldn’t be skyrocketing, cause we could charge whatever we saw fit.
I’m sure there’s also a connection to the prices and the government’s push of a climate agenda and the use of electric cars (which are even more harmful to the ecology, according to my research), but that would mark me as a conspiracy theorist, right?
In any case, if you take an apathetic population and match it with an equally apathetic leadership, you have a recipe for disaster.
Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
