Of Presidents and Gas Prices

The ignorant idiot that put the above Post-It™ note on this gas pump is, in fact, an ignorant idiot. My right-wing friends that have shared this photo on Facebook are more ignorant and bigger idiots.

The Blog remembers well the year 2000. He was paying $1.20 at the pump for gas. At Costco, which was a bit cheaper than anywhere else. And The Blog bitched about it, loudly. ( A digression... When The Blog got his driver's license in 1976, gas was $0.68 a gallon. And he remembers when gas was less than 30¢ a gallon.) In the months leading up to the 2008 election, he was paying in the neighborhood of $4.75 a gallon. Still, at Costco. During the next few years, (during the Obama administration) gas prices varied between $2.00 and about $3.95 a gallon. Today, The Blog filled up at Costco for $4.19 a gallon. Too damned high, it's true. But, lower that October, 2008's $4.75.

Pop quiz, hotshots....  If the president had any control at all over gas prices, wouldn't those prices go down during election years, rather than being at their highest points?

Fun Fact.... Oil prices are set by OPEC. An organization that the U.S. is not a part of.  The only way that the president could control gas prices would be to nationalize (or, you know, socialize) America's oil companies. If that is what you Republicans want, I suppose that it could be done.

Fun Fact #2... All oil pumped out of the good ole U.S of A goes on the world market, along with everyone else's. The same would be true if we went ahead with the odious Keystone XL pipeline. U.S. gas prices are, essentially, dictated by Wall Street speculators. People who would, as we know, benefit from Republican economic policies. That, my friends, is how the oil industry works.