Gasoline hikes met with silence

Gasoline hikes met with silence

I just saw yet another story in your newspaper about how gasoline prices are on the rise again. It seems like these stories appear every week, and every story contains the same old, tired excuses to explain away the increases. Increasing demand. Increasing investor confidence. Summertime refinery shutdowns. More expensive summer blends. It’s all just talk that no one believes.

Why are we paying so much for a gallon of gasoline? Not all that long ago there were stories about the oil companies having record amounts of reserves, with oil being stored in warehouses and on ships out in the ocean because there was no demand for it. What happened to all that oil? It is still out there? It was produced at lower costs, but is it now being sold at the higher prices? Who is keeping an eye on all this?

I am especially curious about why our Democratic office holders are so conspicuously silent on this issue. When George W. Bush was president, Democrats pointed their fingers at him and blamed high gas prices on Bush’s ties to oil companies. They vowed that if we elected Democrats to control Congress, such things would never happen on their watch. Well, they got their wish, yet now they sit on their hands and watch as the public is once again gouged at the gas pump.

Democrats are supposed to be champions of the blue-collar population, yet our congressmen and senators seem to always look the other way when the issue of rising gas prices pops up. Why can’t they acknowledge that this thievery kills our economic recovery? When gas prices go up, people drive less. They spend less money on other things because they need cash for gas, so other businesses suffer and tax revenues decline. When gas prices are kept lower and under control, the opposite happens.

Gas prices may not drive the economy, but they sure play a large role. People on the street see it and know it, but our elected officials, who are supposedly looking out for our best interests, seem only to be looking out for their own.

Robert G. Jackson, Austintown