I live in Springfield,MO. Our Utilities have doubled here. Now the water is going up. I just got an increase of 19%
on my taxes of my home. Gas is almost $2.00 a gallon and through all of this I have no wage increase. So do you?

At the rate we are going all I see is the US. going under big time. What are your thoughts?? Sorry, not a smiley face for pissed off~

PS....Tommykat is tried of hanging by a thread....are you?

________________
room for rent to right person...LOL. But may have to before long..:(

It ain't over
 

Gas is suppose to be upwards of $3 a gallon by mid - end of summer...... :(

Oh yeah......
 

Cigarettes have again increased in price, though this does not affect me beings I'm not a smoker, my friends in school (especially the under-agers) have been complaining like no other, but at least a lot of them are seriously thinking about quiting their expensive habit soon.....thank god!

Hi tommykat

I was beginning to think you were lost in a drain pipe or something.

LapDog

Hey LapDog,
Na, just lost in the mowing and watering all the flowers and garden....YIKES...there goes my water bill..lol.
A question for you...can you make my line of the cat hanging on look like a T<<as in field goal??. That would make my caption under my name understandable.
Kat

I can't promise I'll do it, but I think it won't take too much. Give me a couple of days and I'll try to do it when I'm in the mood.

LapDog

Cool LapDog.......
Email when the mood hits....:p

If the govt. would stop worrying about airline pilots & sanitation workers,
maybe they could step in and straighten these oil & utility companies out.


Why, oh why did McVeigh target the govt.? Why not oil company execs?

You know it just amazes me that the same people that pay $1.25 for a bottle of water complain that the Big Bad oil Companies are taking advantage of them. What do you suppose the mark up on the water is? These are publicly owned corporations. They have a duty to their stockholders to make as much money as they possibly can. I too dislike paying more and getting less BUT if you really believe “they” are making such obscene profits buy their stock.

Park your cars, boats, r.v's, motorcycles (sorry Big Daddy and Morph ;) ) don't fly, don't mow your grass, or use any thing that takes petro. Walk or ride a bike. It's supply and demand and as long as we all buy it like there is no tomorrow it will not go back down to a "reasonable" rate. JMO

my comments:

Rotten Mother ****ing, bastard, co*ks**king sons of *******...

Now for the less vulgar:

It seems to me that we have a conspiracy...and I'm not a conspiriacy theorist...we export oil from Alaska yet we import it for our own use...why don't we use the oil we produce for ourselves?...Increasing gas prices are bad enough if the oil companies were taking losses, but when they post record profits I have to wonder what the **** is going on...plus it seems that the prices are going up just when people start driving the most...hmmm...I wonder?

58Forever,

Exactly.


Q: If ALL major oil companies are posting record profits, and the cost of a barrell of oil is relatively cheap right now, then why are we paying outrageous prices for gasoline?

A: Because oil company executives enjoy forced anal sex, especially with no Vaseline.

BTW, the "water comparison" holds no water, no pun intended.

Divide the amount of your water bill by the number of gallons used in that billing period, and see what the price per gallon is. Water is one of the few utilities that is still a bargain.

My thoughts are basically that we are getting screwed because they can screw us, so why not screw us. And if people enjoy being screwed, we will continue to be screwed...

Well, no one is going to stop driving...we may drive less, at least I will, but we are so dependent on our own vehicles that it's impossible to force any kind of boycott...

And I agree, they can screw us because they can....:mad:

Another thing...


Where in the h_ll did this "energy crisis" come from? There was no crisis a year ago, or even 6 months ago. Why didn't anyone see such a "crisis" coming? If oil supplies are running short, why are there no "Sorry, we're out of gasoline" signs at gas stations ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY?

Energy was not a hot topic until after the election, when all of this madness seemed to begin.

Isn't it fairly reasonable to assume that oil companies greased enough palms of those currently in power to be allowed to "F" the American public? Nothing like this happened in the 8 years prior to the election, even with "Pinko Commie Tree-huggers" in control of the country.

Clint, can't really offer insight on what's happening in the Midwest. All I know is that some few companies right now are making a ton of money on resources that are necessities.

Thank goodness Enron or BP don't own the water or else that would be $100/kilowatt hour or $3/gallon too...

I have always conserved because I believe conservation is a good practice. And now I am conserving as much as I can. No travel unless absolutely necessary. Walk as much as possible.

I think the issue was NOT the election. The issue is that these "big" mergers, which were supposed to be "good" for the economy and shareholders, were lousy for the consumer. Limited choices and arbitrarily limiting the market. That's not capitalism, that's extortion.

Oh, and I almost forgot. These big mergers were approved by the Clinton administration. California energy "deregulation" was authored by a Democrat.

Bottom line... bribery talks...

My overall impressions/prejudices are that

(i) movements in prices (up or down) are good because they provide information to producers and consumers who can alter their behavior accordingly

(ii) that (i) only applies in uncorrupted (i.e. competitive and responsibly-regulated markets) markets

(iii) that the oil market is relatively uncorrupted and people can expect supplies to increase, which will then drive prices back down

(iv) that the electricity market is relatively corrupt, owing in large part to the special position of electricity providers in our country as large-scale, longstanding, geographically-defined but interlocked natural monopolies, which somehow makes politicians and pundits peculiarly unable to resist falling for their bullshit.

I'm fairly sure about (i) and (ii); I'm not so sure about (iii) and (iv). As I've said, these are just my impressions. I could envision arguments that could convince me that I'm wrong.

Ok, the world according to Chuck:

First who said that oil is cheap right now? I don't know the exact price, but I do know that OPEC just finished a meeting last month where they agreed to cut back production to bump the oil price. If they cut production last month, then the higher priced oil should be hitting the pumps right about now. Supply and demand ladies and gents.

Second, go to a mall and count the SUV's, minivans, and Ram trucks. These guys get around 17mpg. What did you expect to happen to the price of gas? Sooner or later it was certain to happen. That pesky supply and demand thing again.

Third, there was a major refinery fire in Cali (or Texas I foget which). Since the eco-types have enacted legislation that basicly bans building of new refineries they operate at around 95% capacity. When one goes down the impact is magnified. Supply and demand.....

Fourth, the oil companies are making a ton, but so is guvment. The federal gas tax is about .30/gal. Tack on whatever your state tax is and do the math. 'Big oil', whatever that is, isn't totally innocent, but Big guvment is at least their accomplice.

Fifth, those pesky eco-types are apocalyptic at the very thought of new drilling. Therefore legislation has been passed that makes it almost impossible. Now we're paying, literaly, for it. The danged supply and demand thing again.

ck_IN
 

Think you nailed it. Also, some memories are short...first warning signs came this time last year when prices shot up...Executive Order releasing some strategic reserves provided <B>short</B> term fix, but <B>NOTHING</B> done for long term.
Govt must address ASAP. Lots of proposal out there (ANWR, nuclear, etc.), but everyone has pet rocks they don't want touched.
Definitely a leadership challenge for the current administration.

ck_in
Where do you get the notion that refineries are banned!

Heck any burg in Kansas would let them build all they want, they need jobs. The Freedom Farm Act killed them, guess who did that one.

Part of the current crisis is that the oil companies were given the green light. Part is a growing shortage of infrastructure, but there is no law, anywhere except in parks, malls, and residencial areas against building it!

I live in California. We have a refinery fire prior to every summer vacation season. Helps to drive up prices. Just check the last three years. One or two every spring like clockwork.

BP/Amoco has been violating federal law by shipping Alaskan crude overseas to the Asian markets instead of for domestic use. Though the terms of the legislation for the drilling of Alaskan oil were spelled out, BP seems to have no problem violating it.

There is no oil shortage per se. California gov't officials mandated additional additives to "help" pollution control efforts, further driving up the price of gas.

The price for a barrel of oil from the Mideast has NOT changed significantly from a year ago. It is still around $30/barrel.

Please, don't make excuses for those who extort and manipulate their monopolies...

Clark Howard said on the radio day before yesterday that crude is currently going for $25/drum. He's a pretty reliable source.

LapDog
just repeating what I heard.

Crude oil is publically traded all day and all night. The rise last year was crude oil motivated but this rise is the oil companies saying refined product demand is too great for capacity, which they control. Since this seems to be a US problem and not world wide, it may quit if tankers start showing up with refined gas. Both Mexico and Canada could build refineries and under our trade agreement we could buy this gas.

Clint in Whichita:
"Why, oh why did McVeigh target the govt.? Why not oil company execs?"

Didn't the Marxist/Socialist extreme left wing have the Unabomber targetting oil, timber, and mining company executives? Yes. Doesn't the Marxist/Socialist extreme left wing have eco-terrorist organizations at work right now targetting honest, decent hardworking Americans who work in resource based industries? Yes.
If people want to live in a Marxist/Socialist country with a Marxist/Socialist government that owns everybody and everything, you can expect everything to cost more or be unavailable at an affordable price. You know, the toilet paper lines in the U.S.S.R. When people realize that virtually every problem we face is caused by large central governments taking total control of virtually everything except the Marxist/Socialist press (and screwing up virtually everything they touch just like the U.S.S.R.) and taking away individual human beings right to own property, including the fruits of their own labor, then we might be able to start solving some of the world's problems. We're better off going the way of the Soviet Union and divide into 50 seperate countries than try and make a Marxist/Socialist government work when none has ever worked before. And then we wouldn't have to subsidize all those Marxist/Socialist government bureaucrats.

RCGChief
LOL......you put the money there for me to do the buying of stocks and I will BUY..:D
As for me? I think that between the gas, electric, water and not to mention that my taxes just went up on my house 19 percent, then I might<<<(doubtful) think like you. Whatever...:rolleyes:

If the gas price increase was caused by a lack of supply, as oil companies are claiming, they wouldn't be recording Earth-shattering profits.

We should thank the oil companies. We will all be in better shape when we have to ride bikes. Ü

If the board of directors and top management of any publicly held corporation do not maximize the profits for the shareholders, they can be sued by the shareholders for not doing their job. Which is to maximize the profit investors get when they buy shares in a publicly held company. How much money does it cost the board of directors and top management if they get sued for not maximizing the return on investment for shareholders? And who pays the tab? Is it legal for the board of directors and top management of any publicly held corporation to ignore profit opportunities? If the politicians and bureaucrats are going to create all these profit opportunities with their ignorance, arrogance, corruption, and greed and lust for power, you can't blame the boards and management for doing their jobs to exploit the profit opportunities created by the ignorance, arrogance, corruption, and greed and lust for power of politicians and bureaucrats.

The CEO of Conoco oil company was on CNBC early this am. Announced the fifth straight quarter of record profits. The immediate question was put to him, hey are you going to build a new refinery? Much back and forth, resulting in the following info.
If they can maintain present profits margins, ie current gas prices vs crude they will use profits to drill for more oil. A refinery, if built would be overseas where it is cheaper. They asked if this was due to eco rules and he said no. Cheaper and less read tape, most places have the same environmental restrictions.
He also said, that he thinks this is in conformity with the energy plan to be put forth by Cheney. The CNBC people were a little speechless, and never did ask him if high prices might reduce the need for new drilling after we all go broke.

We all need to be very careful in what we wish for. Please take a close look at California's electricity shortage. It is due in no small part to doo gooder (see overzealous environmentalists) intentions and Government meddling. The Californians have not been building power plants. Supply has not kept up with demand and they are taking it in the shorts right now. I drive quite a bit in my job higher Gas price hits me right in the wallet. I don't like them either but please don't ask the Government to fix it. That is not the kind of help I need.

I have kids that live in CA, and they do not see the history of deregulation and subsequent woes at all like FOXnews. We have posters from CA and I would like to here from them. One of my kids is Orange county Repub and would love to use the issue but says they can't and will lose even more if they try.

IMO California's blackouts are at least partially caused by utility companies that are being run by people who can't really afford to...kind of like the Royals.

If I'm not mistaken, don't most electricty-producing facilities use oil or natural gas to make their product?

If so, the blackouts are actually being caused by the same companies that are raping American consumers.

Most of the electricity in my neck of the woods is produced by coal. The town in which I live has its own power plant. I don`t think many plants use crude to produce electricity.

Yes, here in California there are all sorts of issues with energy production...

a) restrictions on offshore drilling
b) restrictions on drilling on land
c) restrictions on refinery operations
d) mandated chemical additives to gasoline
e) additional taxes on energy
f) eco-wackos and nimbys fighting against all efforts to increase production
g) mega-refinery mergers resulting in fewer refineries and higher prices
h) mega-oil company mergers resulting in fewer oil companies shifting oil away from California and driving up prices
i) only one natural gas pipeline into Southern California controlled by El Paso Natural Gas (or some name like that)
j) lobbyists for El Paso wining and dining Ca. legislators to prevent add'l pipelines from being built
k) energy "de-regulation" which forbids long term contracts
l) energy "de-regulation" which allows the parent corporations to sell electricity produced in Ca. to out-of-state buyers, thereby decreasing arbitrarily the amount of electricity available in Ca. and driving up prices...

Do you want more?????

What's the difference between the causes of the energy shortage in California, socialist price and production controls, and the causes of the toilet paper shortage's in the U.S.S.R.? Socialist policies guaranteed Soviet consumers would not get gouged for toilet paper. The only problem was socialist policies also guaranteed there would be very little toilet paper available.
Socialist tax and regulatory policies combined with socialist judicial activism guarantee semi-monopoly statis for large corporations in a marketplace where you can only compete if you can afford an army of accountants and lawyers. Just like socialist policies in the U.S.S.R. guaranteed monopoly statis, and therefore miserable quality and availability, for government controlled businesses. If you don't like a socialist economy, including shortages and monopolies, you should be trying to end socialist tax and regulatory policies and socialist judicial activism which makes it impossible for new businesses to compete against the large corporations protected by the enormous expense of complying with socialist tax and regulatory policies and dealing with socialist judicial activism.

Maybe if there was a difference between the California Republican/Socialist party and the California Democrat/Socialist party, the California Republican/Socialist party would object to socialist policies. Maybe if there was a free press, instead of a U.S.S.R. type socialist press totally devoted to protecting the Republicrat (Demopublican)/Socialist Party, we wouldn't have the same problems with energy that people in the U.S.S.R. had with toilet paper.

Thank you Fly.

Oleman had asked ealier what law banned the building of refineries. Rather than a refienery or oil exploration project bleeding from the wound of a single law. It instead dies from the nicks of the countless regulations that you've in part detailed.

The libs and eco-wackos are an insidious but intellegent lot. Rather than instill a single 'thou shalt not' they instead layer their 'thou shalt nots' in thin but deep levels. But with the same, if not worse, cumulative effect.

Ck-in
Name me one little burg in Kansas or Ok or Texas that does not want a refinery and its jobs. Conoco just down the street said they didn't want to build here for they liked the profit margins of #2.00 gas. The profits they would use for drilling for more oil for their new third world refinery.

As for CA, happy to build a refinery here and ship daily. I bet I could get entire counties to be dedicated to refineries West of here with $2.00 wheat the norm.

You guys want to buy my bridge.

Name me one tiny "burg" anywhere in America which does not have a tiny minority of "NIMBY"s who can use the socialist tool of judicial activism to thwart or vastly increase the cost and feasability of any project.

Oleman, like the blind marksman, you keep shooting but fail to find the target.

It <b>doesn't matter</b> what some 'burg', interesting choice of words by the way, wants. The eco-wackos and their Clinton accomplices for the last eight years have made it impossible at a federal level to drill or build. Between environmental impact statements, EPA regs, Labor regs, FTC regs and regs from <b>any</b> of the alphabet soup of guvment we have, a new exploration or refinery project simply isn't feasible. Then lets toss in the fuel additives that are fed mandated and raise the cost of gas, while corroding piplines. And let us not forget any of the tree huggers that would love nothing better than to file a civil suit on behalf of the 3 footed, left eared, fur-bearing, barking butterfly that just happens to live where ever any new project is planned.

The high cost of gas my friend is largely self-inflicted. But in typical fashion we all cry foul, blame 'big whatever' and look for guvment to fix a problem that in part is guvment caused.

If it is impossible to build refineries as you all hopelessly project, how is Cheney going to build those 1300 he proposes?

Gee I don't know Oleman. Do you suppose the Vice President might act in conjunction with the President and Congress to rollback some of the regulatory sillieness that currently prevails? Thus making it easier to find new oil and then refine it so us, the people, can use it.

I know it's a wild, conservative, capitalistic thought. I'm sure a socialistic, environmentaly concerned, liberal would know much more about it. They always seem to if you ask them. Or even if you don't ask them.

Being a Cali native, we've seen our share of problems when it comes to basic necessities.

There was the severe drought that caused neighbors to physically confront you if you dared wash your car more than once a month.

We've got the Russian roulette earthquakes that are always good for some laughs.

We're the only state in the union with open borders to Mexico. (well, maybe Texas has that clause too.).

We've seen our electric bills put a fire in our shorts to exchange those 100 watt bulbs for eye straining 40 watters.

Now the gasoline lynching has compromised our vacation plans until 2005.

AND we still have the Oakland Raider fans to remind us of what our horrible public school systems is producing on an annual basis.

Other than that, life is good.....

Speaking of CA
There is an AP story on El Paso Natural Gas, which is the Bush "buddy" in this mess much like China and Clinton, that from their Southwest source of natural gas they manipulatied the price upwards by almost 3000% by selling and reselling it through affiliated companies before it was sold to generate the major portion of CA's electrical energy.

The FERC, the federal agency responsible for oversight, declined to attend the hearings.

Price fixing scams cannot exist in a free market, only in a marketplace skewed by socialist tax and regulatory policies and socialist judicial activism policies.

yoswif
you are wrong historically and theoritically that monoplies and prices fixing scams cannot occur in free markets. The whole chapter of anti-trust law in our history and around the world is in reaction to what you say can't happen.