Let them eat cake is perhaps what the elites are thinking.
But the regular people aren’t so worried about eating cake. It’s about eating anything, or instead using the money to fill their gas tank to get to work.
The choices are coming down to that for many of us in the Democrats’ America.
National gas prices averaged $4.065 Monday, according to AAA, approaching the July 17, 2008, record of $4.114. That’s for a gallon of the basic grade of unleaded gas.
A year ago, the national average was $2.786.
As usual, California prices topped the nation at $5.343. Missouri was the lowest at $3.693.
In Massachusetts, Russ Mitchell of Wilbraham was asked how he felt about gas prices right now.
“Sick to my stomach,” Mitchell told WWLP-TV in Springfield.
“When you think back probably two, three years ago, we were energy self-sufficient,” he said. “We didn’t have to buy oil or gas. Now things have gone just in the opposite direction.”
“And they’re killing us. They’re killing the working man,” Mitchell said.
Massachusetts resident on high gas prices:
“Sick to my stomach—you think back probably two to three years ago, we were energy self-efficient. We didn’t have to buy oil or gas, now things have gone just in the opposite direction…They’re killing the working man.” pic.twitter.com/yqbdeWwEAM
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 7, 2022
The hardworking men and women of this country continue to lose.
While the laptop class surfed through the pandemic working at home with their cats on their laps and with commutes calculated in steps rather than miles, it has not been that way for everyone.
Blue collar workers — the ones who build, fix, prepare, clean and haul things — suffered economically from lockdowns. They lost their paychecks — in some cases, their businesses — because of the ill-directed economic freezes.
Some then lost their jobs for refusing to be injected with experimental mRNA shots.
And now, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the looming midterm elections in the U.S. miraculously eliminate the COVID problem, working people are faced with high gas prices keeping them from trying to dig out of the catastrophes of the last two years.
For many of them, it really is coming down to a choice of what gets fueled: the stomach or the car.
And remember what Job One was for Joe Biden: killing the Keystone XL Pipeline project as soon as he took office.
That action might not be the only cause of skyrocketing gas prices, but the symbolism of it represents the cynical attitude of the elites in Washington.
The pat answer of White House press secretary Jen Psaki is to blame the oil companies for not increasing production since, in her view, they have lots of money and are not tapping the oil leases they have.
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Of course, she didn’t mention how the Biden administration is limiting leases.
Besides, she said, it would take years and years and years to get Keystone XL Pipeline online.
Perhaps.
But recall the fight over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge pipeline. That battle continued so long that the pipeline could have been completed during the time the arguments raged. And the Biden administration in June suspended former President Trump’s opening of it for oil drilling.
Our neo-feudalist rulers in Washington don’t see the symbolism of Keystone.
Thus, the stickers people are putting on gas pumps with a smiling Joe Biden pointing to the gas price and the caption “I did that!”
And there’s more than gasoline. Diesel is at $4.614, up from $2.996 from a year ago. How will that increase affect food prices as diesel engines power tractors for planting, harvesting and more?
And diesel runs the trains and trucks to carry the food to processors and distributors. What’s going to happen with that?
It must have been during the 2008 fuel price hikes when I watched as a transportation executive illustrated to a group of college students the effects of diesel fuel costs.
I don’t recall the exact numbers the executive used, but he gave a dollar amount of diesel fuel and showed on a map how a big truck could travel on that fuel from the East Coast to well into the nation’s interior.
But on the then-current cost of diesel fuel, it was shocking to see how the truck’s range had been greatly diminished.
The fuel cost was no longer abstract: The executive gave a graphic illustration of how dependent trucks are on access to affordable fuel.
No matter what complexities might be involved, the increase in gasoline prices under the anti-fossil-fuel Biden administration is in vivid contrast to the aggressive Trump administration policies of energy independence.
Under President Donald Trump, we had that independence for a while. And the results were dramatic.
Having experienced the doubling of gas prices from 1973 to ’74 and doubling again in 1980, I noted that for a short time during the Trump administration that gas prices where I live had dipped to about $1.76.
As a result, during that brief time, gasoline — when adjusted for inflation — was equivalent to the 32 cents per gallon motorists paid in 1973!
That is what energy independence brings.
Not to mention the ongoing stability of not being dependent upon countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia for our oil.
Restore energy independence, lower gas prices and then we can all fill our gas tanks and buy groceries, too.
And maybe enjoy a good piece of cake.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
