When I was in high school in the 60s, a buddy of mine worked pumping gas at a place called “Gas for Less.”
Unless I’m delusional and hallucinating, which I might be, I can remember the numbers on the sign along Routes 11 and 15 advertising gasoline for 36-cents-a-gallon.
Now, as Northeastern Pennsylvania moves closer to the edge with gas prices hitting $4-a-gallon, we’re in trouble.
Still, it’s all right now for rich oil company executives.
In fact it’s a gas.
Profits are rolling in for Big Oil while American drivers are no longer pumped with optimism that life will get better and oil prices will fall within the budgets of average people.
Nope, there’s no hope.
People are getting pounded by the high cost of oil.
For the most part, there’s little we can do about it because we have no true access to Congress and oil company bosses have no contact with us because they want no contact with us.
Unless we’re hired as chauffeurs for their limousines, we have no connection to the pumps and the profiteers.
Callers to “Corbett,” though, are part of the solution and comprise several factions in planning for the oil revolution. Some are self-proclaimed experts who rattle off facts and figures – some accurate, some not – about who is responsible for the crisis that threatens to implode our society from the middle down.
Some are conservationists who offer tips for saving money at the pumps.
Some are anarchists who want to ban SUVs and gas guzzlers from American roads. They have the fewest worries, though, because American automakers are already cutting back on production of once popular ever-bigger pick-ups and SUVs.
Boats remain out of water.
Travel trailers are parked and sit idle – not idling.
Rather than becoming one with our vehicles, we struggle to define ourselves in other ways. That can be good, unless you’re an auto worker or sell pick-ups, SUVs, boats or Winnebagos for a living.
I do my best to conserve and rail against Big Oil.
I’m not on their side and believe that Congress should nationalize the oil industry as a public utility, regulating supply and demand. If nothing else, the United States should open a national oil company that offers cut-rate gas for less to Americans who otherwise cannot afford to get to work.
What? You believe that idea makes me some kind of communist? Hardly.
It makes me a staunch nationalist who cares about my community and my country.
President George Bush recently traveled to Saudi Arabia, groveled before the king, and asked for a favor. The leader of the free world asked if the king would order his minions to kick up oil production so his good friend and ally could catch a break.
The king blew off Bush.
Toady Bush returned stateside without so much as a whimper.
I don’t want to lick anybody’s boots or sandals. I want oil independence. And that means taking a stand as a powerful nation that runs on ingenuity and discipline, not on borrowed time.
Oil company tyrants are selling out the country.
So are their defenders, some of whom – hard as it is to believe – actually call “Corbett” to defend Big Oil robber barons, who are worse than the King Coal robber barons who caused so many of our ancestors’ deaths in the local mines.
Coast 2 Coast with George Noory
