Van Os Blasts Big Oil

Yesterday, I noticed that gas prices up here in the Panhandle have now climbed to $3.35 a gallon, and it doesn't look like they'll be going down anytime soon. In fact, with summer coming on the prices are expected to rise quite a bit more. Many people are predicting $4.00 a gallon gas prices very soon and I'm starting to believe them.

Many people, like myself, must drive as part of my job. I really can't do my job correctly without driving, and the job dictates how much driving is necessary -- not the price of gas. Every time the gas prices rise it costs me more to do my job, but my salary doesn't rise when the gas prices do. That means a rise in gas prices is the same to me as a cut in my pay.

As you can imagine, this does not make me a happy camper. But there's a ton of other people in the same situation, and many, such as truckers, in an even worse situation.

Even if your job doesn't require you to drive, the rise in gas prices affects you in several ways. Not only does it cost you more to fill up your tank, but it affects where you can afford to drive on vacation, how many times you can drive to see your family, the the amount you pay for nearly everything -- including necessities.

I'd love to throw a rant, but I just received a new statement about this from the inimitable David Van Os. As usual, he says it much better than I could. This is what he has to say:

Poor Big Oil - it is suffering such an economic squeeze that it has absolutely no choice but to pass its suffering on to the public through ever-rising prices for gasoline, diesel and other fuels.

Take poor little Exxon-Mobil for example. The squeeze is hurting it so badly that its quarterly profits have only been able to reach $11,000,000,000.00 (11 billion dollars) and change.

Let's try to visualize 11 billion dollars by letting each dollar represent one minute. Rounded off, 11 billion minutes divided by 60 (minutes per hour) would equal 183,333,333 hours; which divided by 24 (hours per day) would equal 7,638,889 days; which divided by 365 (days per year) would equal 20,928 years. Thus if one dollar represents one minute, it takes nearly 21 thousand years worth of minutes to reach Exxon-Mobil's approximately $11 billion profit for the 4th quarter of 2007.

Putting it into perspective - according to modern archeology, 21 thousand years ago among the human race there was probably no hint of cities, towns, organized farming, or the written word.

You and I are not the only ones who perceive something fraudulent about the Big Oil Robber Barons telling us that economic pressures force them to raise prices at the pump higher, higher, and higher; while at the same time they are making profits that the human mind can barely imagine, higher and higher with each passing month.

Some of the people who most directly experience the disastrous impact of rising fuel prices that cannot be justified by "market" explanations, i.e. independent truck drivers, are fighting back. As eloquently described by the writer-blogger Barbara Ehrenreich in her recent article, "Truckers Protest, the Resistance Begins" [click here for article], truckers have begun to defy and resist the robber baron oil economy in various collective actions, and more is on the way. They are certainly fighting back more than any of the politicians are.

Their resistance is no less inspiring and patriotic than that of the American patriots who resisted the British King George III in 1776 and that of the Texan patriots who resisted the Dictator Santa Anna in 1836. I salute them and I hope it spreads.

David Van Os