$5 Gasoline? One Reader's Response

We've chosen the following as a Reader Guest Op-Ed, as sent to us through the blog:

Gasoline prices are rising all over the country – now $4 going on $5 a gallon or more – and the price of diesel fuel is even higher. And who is hurting the most? Yes, rural Americans, who depend on fuel to earn a living!

Senator John McCain and President Bush say they can “solve” the problem and bring down prices by lifting the ban on drilling. Wrong!

Here are the facts: In 2007 the Bush Administration’s Department of Energy analyzed the impact on oil production and what you pay at the pump if we lifted the ban on offshore drilling. The conclusion? “No significant impact” on gas production and prices “before 2030.”

Can you wait 22 years? Is this the best McCain can offer – promising that if you vote for him maybe in 22 years you might see fuel prices stop rising?

One more fact: While you’re paying $50 or more to fill your car or truck’s gas tank, Exxon Mobil reported profits – not gross income, but profits! – reached $40 billion in 2007.

Senator Bernie Sanders Calls People who Don't Worry about our Economy "Pollyanna's"

Senator Bernie Sanders has called the people who don't worry about our economy "pollyanna's." Others might say out of touch, but one thing for certain, the letters that Sanders (one of two Independents in the U.S. Senate), has shared from his rural Vermont constituents make real the financial difficulties that high gasoline prices, escalating heating costs and the economy in general are causing. They also make the case that things very much need to change. The constituent letters also underline Sanders' point that the ...

"Conservatives' assertion that the economy was strong and getting stronger, repeated with the frequency of a mantra, hid the reality that working Americans have taken a real beating."

Bob Herbert in the New York Times brings more perspective, including criticism of the media for failing to report how really, really squeezed middle class citizens have become.

Sanders' constituents' stories include how a couple age 65 only eats two meals a day; how a family keeps it heat just above 30 degrees so that the pipes don't freeze; how one mother reports her family doesn't go to church any more because of the cost of gasoline; how someone else burned their mother's dining room furniture just to keep warm. There is more. Read it here.