Kenders' Musings

Yesterday, gasoline was $2.55 per gallon in Ashtabula, Ohio at the Sheetz station at Ohio State Rte. 11 and US Rte 20. Today, $3.19! That's a 64 cent increase in 24 hours!

Wednesday night, Bill O'Reilly called for US Oil Companies to take a voluntary 20% decrease in their profit margins to help the nation alleviate the bind created by the disaster that has left over a million American citizens homeless. Thursday morning, Diane Sawyer of ABC asked of our President if he would formally ask for that very proposal (without naming Bill of course). He evaded the question.

Now I consider myself a good Republican. I back my President on just about every issue with the exception of his lack of an energy policy and lack of interest in border security. But this is border-line criminal. Oil companies have been posting record profits while Americans have been paying through the nose at the pump.

Bill O'Reilly has now called for the American people to NOT buy fuel on Sundays from now until Christmas. By completely shutting off the Oil Companies money machine one day a week to make a statement about the gouging of the American people.

I fully support this. The modern day Oil Barons need to know that America will not stand for this. The South is in a true emergency. This is the worst disaster to ever to strike America.

September 11th was the worst preventable one day loss of life to ever strike the United States. The disaster that happened this week, was un-preventable as a natural occurrence of weather. Hurricanes happen each and every year. And each and every year, the same area of the nation is affected by them. But there is nothing that we can do to prevent them.

New Orleans has a levee system that has been described as substandard to handle the scale of event that has happened. That, is preventable. New Orleans is such an important port for the Oil Industry (among others), that to think that the modern day Oil Barons would have seen to the safety of the port. But they didn't.

The Gulf is so important to the economy of the nation that you would think that the Oil Barons of today would have the stones to face off against the enviro-nazis to make their case before Congress for the building of new and more efficient refineries. But they didn't.

So now we pay. We pay and they play. The people of New Orleans, Mobile, Grand Island, Gulf Port, and Biloxi have no water, no food, no homes, and very little hope and the fat cats of the Oil Company board rooms only care about profits. And this is wrong.

Let's join Bill's crusade. Let's tell the Oil Companies that they don't set the price, we set the price. Car pool and cut your energy consumption. Boycott the purchasing of oil products on Sunday. This in market terms is reducing demand. Reduce the demand, the price will naturally fall. Play the game their way and the we pay they play scenario plays out. Reduce demand and... We win.