How utterly contemptuous of the working poor who have no choice but to drive from suburb to suburb or exurb to suburb everyday to support their families. The current price of gas is killing people like this. The snobby elitist scorn of the gentrified urban post-modern yuppies at people who have to drive is precisely why the white working class will vote for McCain in November. It may feel good to watch the Hummer driving exurbanites feel the pain, but there are plenty of working people (many of whom can't afford a new car and therefore have to drive a gas guzzler) who just don't have the same freedom of choice the liberal urban elite have to choose not to drive. Ironic that the urban elite enjoy the privilege of being able to choose to walk or take mass transit because they live in former ghettos that have been gentrified for their benefit and the former ghetto residents who have had to move to the far suburbs and exurbs to find affordable housing are now getting screwed at the pump.

so what is your solution to the ever increasing price in gas?

How odd that you would automatically associate this article with democrats. Does anyone recall that almost 8 yrs ago two oil men stole their way into the white house and through their foolhardy or brilliant wars on behalf of big oil, big defense and assorted crony contractors- introduced exponentially more instability into the middle east. Some of my more gullible friends actuallys asked me : if Cheney/Bush invaded Iraq for oil, how come gas prices have only gone up? No wonder the chimperator got re-elected w/ some help from Blackwell and Diebold.

Oil companies never want to see the price of oil go down, don't ya see. The "mission" in Iraq was never for the american consumer, or for american security for that matter. War profiteering and the imprameatur of a "war powers" imperial unitary exective were the reasons, and of course, the dozens of city sized permanent bases for a military footprint in the region to threaten neighbors, ect and so on.

Now, even if you don't accept what I just laid out, it is certainly true that by dint of the Iraq invasion/occupation and the maelstrom of chaos and death that it brought, not to mention vast reduction in Iraqi oil output - along with rest of it's economy, the huge middle east instability it generated is at least partly responsible for higher oil prices.

Why doesn't this fact cause americans to vote against republicans who are the true cause of their misery?

Also, there was no mention of the obscene profits being made by big oil during this "time of war." Shouldn't we at least stop giving them taxpayer money in the form of subsidies and other cushy lobby generated tax breaks?

Finally, has no-one noticed that the republicans were in power during most of the last 7 years and passed some of the most regressive legislation imaginable? Of course not, the "news" doesn't cover boring topics like legislation.

Didja know that the republicans passed a law that allowed US corporations to open an office overseas, declare that office their headquarters and then be exempt from all taxes? Yes, known contemptuously as the corporate expatriot act, this was allowed for 2 years before dems shut it down. It was also enacted during the first phase of the war, the same time the republican congress gave huge tax cuts to the affluent. Talk about your patriotism! Put on a flag pin for me, Dick Cheney!

So elitist sounding articles make people vote republican? I would gently offer that it is ignorance and/or wealth.

Invade Iran?

Yeah. That'll help.

Democrats want people to believe that Bush, who is supposedly a "moron" is responsible for deliberately creating high gas prices to stoke his supposed industry buddies than the pit traders in Hong Kong, our greedy Congress that is addicted to our money like a whore to crack and has made the dollar virtually worthless, and the fact that the environmental left wing wackos havent allowed a new oil well or refinery to be built in this country since the 1970s............

Ask a lefty who the biggest oil companies in the world are.....here's a hint: most of them arent even American....

Bandit says: our greedy Congress that is addicted to our money like a whore to crack and has made the dollar virtually worthless,

LeRoy: Methinks you do not understand who is responsible for the serious fall in the value of the dollar. Blame that primarily on the monetary policies of the Greenspan/Bernanke Fed and on the fiscal policies of the Bush administration. Congress has meekly gone along with almost everything that Bush has wanted in that arena. Moreover, we had large tax cuts in 2001, 2002, AND in 2003. [That were mostly targeted, like a laser beam, at the very wealthy.] Following the 'theories' of the supply-siders, the economy should be simply BOOMING right about now, with all that wealth 'trickling down' to the rest of us poor saps.

Gosh. Maybe their 'theories' don't work.

Did that notion ever cross your mind?

Bush is merely a puppet, silly. He only needs to be able to read the teleprompter and smirk. Ya gotta look for the feet behind the bushes so to speak.

The so called conservative republicans once they got congress spent money "like a drunken sailor" according to McCain, apparently also a drunken sailor. So much for small government! O yeah, only for government that serves the public, not fat no-bid cost plus crony contracts for opporturnity creating crisis' like Iraq and Katrina.

US oil companies themselves claim they don't want or need new refineries. And don't go on about leftist wackos. This country does not have a left, only moderate right and far right. Effective enforcement of the EPA's clean air act is not too much to ask for such a profitable industry. Do your kids live near a refinery?

It is true that there many oil companies that are not US owned. That is why we need the corporate playground in Iraq for exclusive control of the world's third largest oil reserve. Sorry, Frenchies, your cowardly refusal to commit mass murder and other war crimes leaves you out of the bidding!

Just think of Iraq as one big permenent military base with one of the biggest oil reserves underneath them and you'll get the picture.

Links:

How utterly contemptuous of the working poor who have no choice but to drive from suburb to suburb or exurb to suburb everyday to support their families. The current price of gas is killing people like this. The snobby elitist scorn of the gentrified urban post-modern yuppies at people who have to drive is precisely why the white working class will vote for McCain in November. It may feel good to watch the Hummer driving exurbanites feel the pain, but there are plenty of working people (many of whom can't afford a new car and therefore have to drive a gas guzzler) who just don't have the same freedom of choice the liberal urban elite have to choose not to drive. Ironic that the urban elite enjoy the privilege of being able to choose to walk or take mass transit because they live in former ghettos that have been gentrified for their benefit and the former ghetto residents who have had to move to the far suburbs and exurbs to find affordable housing are now getting screwed at the pump.

What is McCain's solution for rising gas prices? Bomb Iran? Continue the war in Iraq?

What I think is that the working class sees the dilemma just as well as the "snobbish elites", and will vote in droves for Obama. Bush's policies are a monumental failure, and they don't want 4 more years of denial, pretending everything is just fine. Anger won't bring oil back down to $30 a barrel.

Housing prices in cities like San Francisco, Washington DC, Seattle and the like are such (even in "sub-prime" meltdown economy), that the more expensive housing is closer to the city. Hence, for decades now, lower-income people who want to buy homes have been willing(FORCED) to buy them ten, twenty, thirty miles away from their work. Maybe more. (I know of some who commute 70 miles each way.) During these decades the trade has been: gas for affordable housing, a car run into the ground and 200,000 in two years for a chance at a home.

Go drive the Los Angeles freeways on a Monday morning and figure on just how fun it is for all those people to be stuck in traffic for hours trying to get from home to work. It's called survival. "Mass transit" is a great answer...where you can get it, and when you can use it, and if it is safe TO use it.

And its been the same from Nixon through Ford through Carter through Reagan through Bush through Clinton through Bush. Prices changed over time, population grew over time, housing costs went up over time. That isn't going to change.

I don't know from elites, but California is one of the blueist states in the union, and housing in its most liveable cities (LA, SF, San Diego) is for the wealthy only.

Airflorida:

so what is your solution to the ever increasing price in gas?

Airflorida:

so what is your solution to the ever increasing price in gas?

Internationialise oil. Were being used as patsies by international business cartells.

manage it as a resource of the world. Its my understanding that in the heavy oils of Orinco and the Canadian oil shales alone is enough to supply the world for many hundreds of years, and that both can be profitably developed and sold for less than $50 a BBL.

The threat, in the case of oil shale and other altetnatives, is of OPEC type cartels swamping world oil markets to drive down prices and bankrupt their alternative competitors-ideally they then buy the oil shale or whatever and sell it for $ 127 a bbl too.

I agree that the free market “solution” many liberals are cheering on (let high gas prices force people to buy $25,000 cars) lies in direct contradiction for their usual calls for government intervention for other crises (schools, drugs, welfare, etc.) What you don’t address is the existential threat to the normal American way of life that permanently high gas prices pose. The same is true for global warming. It is tempting to assume that high gas prices are temporary market tweaks and that global warming is a crackpot theory dreamed up by eggheads to justify their Priuses. Nothing can be further from the truth. We need to think entirely differently. The solution is not to offer gas tax rebate panders to working class people. Neither is it to whack “elites” who say out loud the dubious benefits of high gas prices. A better and more equitable solution would be to subsidize high mileage cars for working class families without access to mass transit. It would be to retrofit suburbs so they CAN have mass transit systems to use. It would be to rapidly expand mass transit systems in general so America can move away from car dependence. It would be to mandate higher CAFE standards for Detroit to follow (35 mpg is chump change compared with Europe’s 60 mpg fleet standard.).

We need to move on all of this and more. Working class advocates attacking liberal elites don’t move us forward. Urban liberal elites cackling at the distress of “affluent” suburban communities won’t get it done either. Let’s concentrate our attention on the proper places – cowardly politicians and foot-dragging industries.

[Shouldn't we at least stop giving them taxpayer money in the form of subsidies and other cushy lobby generated tax breaks?]

Libs love to spout this line, but I have yet to hear one explain what these supposed subisidies and tax breaks actually consist of.

Could you share your knowledge with us?

Blueskies says: Its my understanding that in the heavy oils of Orinco and the Canadian oil shales alone is enough to supply the world for many hundreds of years, and that both can be profitably developed and sold for less than $50 a BBL.

LeRoy: If there were any truth to this, the price of oil would not now be almost $130/barrel. Some enterprising entrepreneur would extract the oil from the Orinoco or the Canadian tar sands, sell it for $70/barrel, and pocket VAST profits. What many do not seem to realize is that as the cost of energy rises, the cost of extracting oil from tar sands or oil shales rises along with it, to such an extent that it may never be economical to get oil from such poor-quality resources.

Sigh. I guess oil is going to have to rise to $200/barrel, as Goldman Sachs is predicting it might this year, before some people start to get the message. The message is: we are in deep trouble. We are in deep trouble because we have been in a state of denial on the seriousness of our energy crisis for roughly the past thirty years. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

What an un-American thing to say! lol

Leroy, how long ago was it that oil was selling for under 50 bucks a barrel? The run up in oil prices has been quick and steady--which is why the oil companies haven't developed alternative fuels, and why hybrid auto sales were sluggish just a year or two ago. Now they're selling out, and at a premium.

At 130 bucks a barrel, you can bet that some entrepreneur will do just that. The price of oil won't ever get down to 50 bucks a barrel, and the price rise might get that high (though Warren Buffet says $150/bbl) but it won't stay there forever.

You need to enroll at the local community college and take a course in economics. It is probably on a bus line, too.