Rant #2,989: Gas Money

Gas.
 
That is all that I am getting when I go to the gas station and fill up my car’s gas tank, as I did yesterday.
 
Notice how the price of gas is starting to go up after being down for so long?
 
And when I say “down,” I don’t mean down to the levels we experienced a few years ago … I mean down relative to what we have paid during the pandemic or endemic or whatever you want to call this thing.
 
In New York State, the multitude of taxes that we pay for our gas were removed months ago to ease the burden of paying for gas by drivers. We are taxed at a ridiculous rate, and with many drivers swearing off long drives to begin with based on the prices—which reached beyond $5 a gallon at one point—you had plenty of supply, little demand, and coupled with the loss of taxes, gas went down about $2 or so, in some places getting below the $3 a gallon mark.
 
Well, no more of that.
 
With Russia’s agreement with OPEC to limit production of oil, and coupled with some taxes going back onto the prices of gas, I noticed this week that at some gas stations, fuel had already gone up 20 cents per gallon—
 
Why, I don’t know, because the gas had already been delivered to many of these stations, so drivers were being forced to pay 20 cents more per gallon for the same exact gas that had been 20 cents less per gallon a day or two before.
 
Is it price gouging again? Of course it is.
 
President Biden said he was going to release more gas from the strategic reserve, but if gas stations are going to charge more per gallon anyway, then what is the sense of this?
 
(I know, this way we don’t have to get our gas from an outside source, but again, if the price is jumping anyway … ? And our president takes bows for this action yet!)
 
We have the gas—there are no supply problems at all—but the price has jumped, so what is the sense of all of this?
 
Last week, I paid $2.93 a gallon at my local gas station, and yesterday, that same gas station posted gas at $3.09 per gallon. I passed by the station on Saturday—I had filled up on Thursday—and it was still $2.93 a gallon.
 
So in a span of just a few days, the price at that station went up more than 5 percent in a short span of time.
 
I took a chance, decided to hunt around to see if I could do better, and I filled up at another station for $3.05 a gallon when I went to pick up my son from work.
 
I suspect that the next time I need gas, I will be paying way more than $3.05 a gallon, what with gas stations put into panic mode and with price gouging in full force and with the taxes being put back onto the gas in the coming weeks.
 
Heck, it is just another thing to take away what little money we all have.
 
Groceries are also going to go up even further, because once transportation costs go up, it has a domino effect on everything, and somebody has to bear these coats, so as usual, it is the middle class who is going to get zonked.
 
And our President tells us that we are not in a recession … c’mon now, do you really think anyone with a brain—and yes, as I have told you over the past weeks, that number of people is dwindling by the second—can see that not only are we in a recession, we have been in it for months.
 
I don’t really know what one can do to stem this latest gas tide.
 
I, personally, am driving more miles per week than I have in several years, as I figure I am driving about at least 160 miles per week in dropping off and picking up my son at work. His place of business has recently moved to new digs, but the location is about three miles east of where he was, and couple that with driving in a highly congested area, and my car is burning up gas at a rate I haven’t seen in a long time.
 
And then I have other places where I drive each week, so I simply cannot cut down.
 
And then today, I am forced to drive 40 miles there and 40 miles back to get my allergy shots—I won’t go into that story again with you—but that all adds onto my driving, which is impossible to cut down on.
 
When my family and I went on vacation, gas prices were finally plunging, so we went during the right time, during the July time frame, and driving through several states on the Eastern Seaboard we experienced a range of prices for gas based on the state we were in, so comparatively,, we did pretty well with the amount of gas we used.
 
If we were to take the same trip right now, I will bet you that we would be forced to pay plenty more for our gas, and who’s to say what that same trip will cost in the coming weeks?
 
And there really isn’t anything you can do about it; the only thing you can do is to roll your eyes when people like the governor of New York states that in a few years, gas-powered cars will not be available for purchase anymore in her state, and if we want or need a new car, we will have to go electric … which poses its own set of challenges and problems.
 
My car is now eight years old, so if I need a new car based on her edict, sorry, I will travel out of state to purchase a gas-powered car … and I will have to pay how much for gas to get to that out-of-state dealership?

Yes, the November elections are just a few weeks away, and I will gladly drive to the voting booth to get rid of these clowns, who evidently live in some alternative reality world, a different world than myself and millions of others reside in.
 
Have a good weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.