For the last five years, I've driven around 20,000 each year in town for business. That means that I'm spending around $3,000 a year for fuel for just myself and that doesn't include maintenance. At the beginning of the year, I swapped cars with my wife, giving her my Dodge Durango and I took back my Volvo Wagon. While it gets substantially better fuel mileage, my fuel costs for the year will almost double if prices continue to rise as they are. I know I'm not alone in this.
The politicians are running of the cameras to aspouse their bad ideas. Here's an interview below with Dennis Kucinch from yesterday. He supports a 100% windfall profits tax, which would go to tax credits to purchase a "fuel-efficent" american car and support mass transit. He should have consulted with his party's presidental candidates as they have described our economy as being as bad as The Great Depression, which I'm sure didn't see many people buying cars. After all, cars aren't free. Chuck Schumer proposed yesterday making the sales of some weapons to Saudi Arabia contingent in OPEC pumping more fuel. I guess he feels we are not dependent enough on foreign oil.
When asked what she could do now, Senator Clinton endorsed the windfall profits tax idea but with an emphasis on alternative fuels. That's nice but how does that help you and me? Our cars don't run on alternative fuel and its not like cars are free. Maybe if you vote for her, they will be since profits are wrong.
John McCain proposed relaxing the federal gasoline taxes for the summer, which would decrease the price at the pump 18 cents. This is a nice idea but 18 cents a gallon or $3.24 a fill up won't be the deciding factor for a trip to the beach. I'm sure that there are dozens of other proposals that will come out that will be as equally ineffective as the others.
Before real estate, I worked with a workforce training and development organization in DC on dozens of job skills projects. One of the projects was to train those to work in the pipelines in ANWAR, which was scrapped when those in Congress decided to put energy independence below an endangered gnat.
Instead, E85 was touted as the fuel of the future. So instead of using oil reserves there and in other areas around the United States, we're taking perfectly good food and making automotive fuel...driving up food prices. For the consumer, there's no savings since E85 powered achieve 5 fewer miles per gallon than their 87 octane counter parts. An E85 powered 4.7litre V8 Jeep Grand Cherokee achieves an EPA rated 9 MPG City / 13 MPG Highway. A 2.7litre V6 Dodge Avenger gets only 13 city / 20 highway.
So I'm frusterated since no one is listening. Anyone who feels that any of these knuckleheads will do anything is in a fantasy land. I'm just wondering to see what my fuel bills will look like this year as compared to last. How about you guys?
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