Gasoline Prices

Unfortunately we have not been doing much to blog about as we have been getting settled in our new house. I will report that I have the 3-car garage organized enough so we can park one car in the garage. Yeah! Keep in mind that we need to park our cargo trailer in the garage as well, so it is not as bad as it seems. The bottom line is bikes take up a ton of floor space in the garage and we have plenty of those. That is not even something I can blame on the kids.

Since we have not done anything fun lately and I do not have any pictures to share at this time, I thought I would share some cartoons related to gasoline prices that I think are great. The market forces are in place that would drive down gas prices and make the development of alternatives attractive, but the Government is in the way of making that happen. For both people that read my blog, I recommend that you contact your Senators and Congressman and thank them for the high gas prices. This is what the goofy Democrats want anyway. The higher prices will drop the demand which will reduce CO2 emissions and save the plant from Global Warming.

Gas Prices

With gasoline being so expensive, I found another cartoon that I thought was great. In addition, there is a great article here that discusses gas prices that I wish everyone would read. I know that posting it on my blog will reach a total of 2, possibly 3 people, but that is possibly a few more people than otherwise would read it.

Memorial Day Weekend - Gas Prices & Moving

For Memorial Day Weekend the price of gasoline and diesel shot-up as is typical when the high driving season begins. For those not familiar with the basic economic forces of supply and demand, when demand goes up (i.e. people drive more) and the supply stays the same, the price will go up. Given these high gas prices and the typical hysteria directed at the oil companies, I thought these cartoons were good.


The good news is we did not do much driving this weekend so the high gas prices did not have a huge effect on us. Instead, we moved into our new house this weekend. Yeah! Actually, we have been working on moving over the last month. We closed on the house on April 15th and the items from our house in Illinois were delivered on April 16th. Since we have the lease on the rental house until the end of June, we started the moving process and have been slowly moving stuff from the rental house to the new house. We got to the point where showing the rental house (we have been showing it since March with the hope that it would rent and we could break the lease early and get out of June’s rent, but that did not happen) was a huge pain in the rear-end. So, we decided to take advantage of the long weekend and move even though the kids are not out of school yet. Lori will have to be the bus driver for the next two weeks but she felt that doing that is far easier than dealing with showing the rental house.

In addition to the challenges of moving and two houses in Houston, we still have our house in Illinois. We should be rid of it within the next 7 days (hopefully by the end of the week???) and that will be a huge financial and worry burden lifted. Then we will get rid of the rental house at the end of June and we will be down to one house again. Yeah! We can see the light at the end of the tunnel.


Since we have been working on moving for over a month the final weekend was not as traumatic. I have not been blogging because I have been very busy moving and setting-up the new house. In addition, we have not been doing anything interesting to blog about. Taking pictures of us moving boxes is not very interesting.

Gasoline Prices

While we were on our vacation in Utah it seemed that everyone wanted to ask me about the high price of gasoline. I spent an enormous amount of time explaining basic supply and demand to people and about how the Government investigates the Oil Companies for price gouging but they contribute to the problem rather than helping it. Below is a prime example of that.

Congress is finally home on August recess but not before voting to keep gasoline prices high. The House overwhelmingly approved a resolution by Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois to censure the state of Indiana for granting a permit to British Petroleum to invest $3 billion in an oil refinery expansion in Whiting, Indiana. Rep. Emanuel's resolution was pushed by Midwesterners who complained that the facility would pollute Lake Michigan.

One might think Congress would be cheering for the BP/Whiting project, the largest new investment in domestic refining capacity in decades. Existing refineries have been running at 90% to 95% capacity, prompting spikes in gas prices whenever these overworked facilities suffer maintenance outages or a recent rash of fires. As for the pollution argument, it's a red herring. Indiana has tougher clean-water statutes than even the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The state's own data show that the BP facility would contribute fewer pollutants to the lake than many communities that are already permitted to dump their wastewater into it.

Naturally, Mr. Emanuel, who runs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is always first in line to blame high gas prices on President Bush's "failed energy policy." The story gets even richer with hypocrisy because oil companies are under blistering assault from Congress and environmental groups for not producing enough gasoline. Says Charles Drevna, head of a refinery trade group: "Every time I testify, the first question I'm asked is: "Why isn't industry building more refineries?'" At a Senate hearing earlier this year, New York's Chuck Schumer accosted "big oil" for buying back shares of stock rather than investing in more domestic operations. "It seems that big oil is pumping cash, rather than petrol," he charged.

So keep in mind Mr. Emanuel's resolution next time you're pumping $3.50 gas. Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, one of just 28 House members who voted against the anti-refinery resolution, notes that the alternative to producing more gasoline domestically is to import more from abroad. Paradoxically, he says, the House just voted overwhelmingly in favor of "higher gas prices, out-sourcing of jobs and energy insecurity."

OpinionJournal Political Diary 8-8-07