Opinion: Gasoline prices: Round up the usual suspects!
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News flash: Gasoline prices are high! And they’re going higher!
In California, the usual suspects have been rounded:
Said The Times on Friday:
‘California’s high prices result mainly from its increasing reliance on foreign imports, refineries operating far below capacity and the seasonal change to a more expensive summer blend, analysts say.
‘In addition, less oil is being produced in California than in the past, making the state more dependent on higher-priced imports.’
Yea, sure.
Here are my culprits:
1-3 / Greedy oil companies. (To be fair, that’s usually 1-10 on most people’s lists.)
4/ That giant solar flare last week. If it can mess up cellphones, surely it can mess up the pumps.
5/ Jupiter is not aligned with Mars, making this the Age of Ethyl. (Only those over 50 understand this reasoning; the under-30 types will just have to trust us.)
6/ Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to bust the unions in Wisconsin.
My dad was a union pipeline welder, and he always told me: ‘Don’t mess with the working man.’ Now I understand.
7/ The railroading of Lindsay Lohan on trumped-up theft charges;
and
8/ Jennifer Aniston cut her hair.
Hollywood is to blame for most things.
9/ The fact that no one can figure out how to spell Moammar Kadafi’s name. (Honestly, this is just a shameful plug for my Tuesday blog post.) Oh, and that there’s some sort of revolution going on there.
10/ Crude oil prices are skyrocketing. Maybe, but I’m skeptical. Just like the deniers of global warming, I don’t believe there’s any connection between oil prices and gasoline prices. You put oil in the engine but gasoline in the tank -- how can they be the same? I didn’t learn much in public school, but I’ve done some research on the World Wide Web, and this sounds fishy to me.
But I’ll leave the last word to local resident Lusine Mkrtchyan, quoted in The Times on Tuesday:
‘She scoffed when told that analysts were blaming high pump prices on unrest in the Middle East. ‘It’s just ridiculous. Isn’t there always unrest in the Middle East?’’ she said, buying a few gallons for her Mercedes CLK350.
Nice car: Estimated MPG: 17 city, 25 highway. Want a good used one? $41,492, Mercedes-Benz of Calabasas.
--Paul Whitefield
