Gas Prices - Ass Gripeses

Americans are spoiled rotten! What the hell is the problem with this country? Of course we haven't seen these prices in nearly 8 months, but it's not like we haven't seen them before, and we're not exactly paying what the rest of the world is paying, not by a long shot. Hell, we pay more for bottled WATER than we do for gas, so why aren't we screaming bloody murder over the prices of our beverages? Milk has been higher priced than gas for years, but no one is crying about that. We'll pay more to drink a bottle of beer in a pub than for a gallon of gasoline, and not think twice about leaving a tip!
Sure, we drill for oil too. But what good is it when we basically come up with new and more wasteful ways to use it. The last time we had an oil crisis, we demanded smaller, more fuel efficient cars. Now, we seem to be wondering what ever happened to the CAFE laws and the small cars we used to drive. Well, the government decided that whatever was good for Ford and GM was good for the country, so they let the car companies slide on CAFE. As long as Americans were happy buying SUV's and pick-ups that cost as much as my house did 20 years ago, and drank gas at twice the CAFE levels that are supposed to be in effect today, why should the government bother to enforce it's own laws?
Reality check, please. It's time to pay the bill. Americans have been bitchin' about how much the government has been helping the oil companies with tax breaks, and that the oil companies' record profits are indecent, and that their CEO's are retiring with kingly ransoms for pensions, but no one has stopped to think why these things are happening. One elderly gentleman from New England called in to CSPAN's Washington Today to ask how much of a windfall the government is making on the gas tax. He reasoned that if gas costs more today, then the taxes are garnering more money for the government. Since the tax is per gallon, not per dollar, if anything is happening, the tax revenues are down because sales are down at the pumps. So, what is the government going to do about it?
Let's throw money at the problem. Congress is talking about giving each taxpayer $100 to soothe our qualms over the war and gas prices. That's about 2 tankfuls to shut us up. W is asking the oil companies to use their windfall to boost exploration and build new refineries, a way to limit talk of windfall taxes. It seems the government and the news organizations are more interested in polls than reality. It's not because they're stupid. They just don't care. The government knows that it's an election year, and the news organizations know that Bubba isn't going to watch if he can't see other people suffering as much as he is. Why haven't the news organizations and government given Americans updates on what other industrialized nations pay for their gas, like they do about the terror threat? Because America Good. Europe and Japan Bad. Has anyone discussed canceling NASCAR this year? No. But they're talking about axing AMTRAK. Keep the gas guzzler and axe the gas saver. Why do Europeans use mass transit so much? Because they've been paying through the nose for gas for years. Why are bullet trains running in Japan and not here? Same reason. It's not that we don't know how to build railroads. Hell, they were invented here. If we want to throw some money around, let's do something with the means we have at our disposal right now - namely solar; wind and wave, or current action. We have this huge engine right off the east coast that controls the weather of Northern Europe with it's current. If we place turbines in its path, we'd have such a surplus of electricity we'd be selling it to Canada and Mexico. Windmills have been in use in Europe for a millenia, but we can't seem to find anyplace to put any here that will do any good. How about all those open stretches in the plain states? Solar power is so cheap and clean that we'd have a problem storing the surplus. There's another method I haven't even mentioned yet. Geo-thermal. It seems the only ones who realize how hot it gets down there are the coal minors. We should take a lesson from Iceland. That's right, that little country out in the middle of the North Atlantic. They decided to use their only usable natural resource, geo-thermal steam, and converted their country, what little they have of one, to its use for energy. So, that teensy-weensy country is energy sufficient, and this great big country that put man on the moon, isn't. We've got the natural resources to do it, so why aren't we?
We gotta wanna. That's right. Where there's a will, there's a way, and we just don't have the will right now. We'd rather stand around and scream, bitch, moan and groan about gas prices, but do we really want to change anything? It seems we're more interested in who wins American Idol, or Survivor. Don't get me started! Reality tv gives me gas!