We are the ones who are responsible
By Jerome Christenson | Winona Daily News

Sorry John, sorry Hill; it’ll take more than $2.22 to buy my vote.

That’s the current bid anyway … at 18.5 cents a gallon, that’s what McCain and Clinton would save me on a tank of gas for the family car by giving us a “federal gas tax holiday” for the summer — maybe even all the way up to — oh, say — Election Day.
Sorry, folks, I’m not buying — or selling — but I might just take a moment to lay some blame. If you want to see who’s responsible for these outrageous gas prices go home and look in the mirror. Or blame your mother … your uncle … the fool living up the street … the goombah newspaper columnist who has three cars and is too dead-butt lazy to take a half-hour to walk to work. Sorry folks, if there’s finger pointing to do we’d best be pointing them at ourselves — the classic cocked-thumb, index finger to the temple pose being particularly appropriate.

We got ourselves into this mess and no amount of two-bit political pandering is going to get us out. The party’s over — we may not have hit the bottom of the barrel, but we’re getting close. We’ve spent a century swilling gas like freshmen at a frat party and we’re seeing the dawn of the morning after the night before. Our great national hangover is upon us, and like any hangover, there’s no choice but to suffer it out.

Yeah, I was right out there among ’em. I grew up with gas wars — 17.5 cents a gallon — and a set of drinking glasses with every fill. By high school, “Two bucks, regular” was the price of an evening’s socializing, maybe even a little romance. If cheap gas wasn’t our birthright, we surely didn’t know it. Civics class contrasted the wide-empty avenues in Moscow with traffic jams in LA to prove that it truly would be better dead than red.

Sure, there were a couple of hiccups back in the ’70s — but that was OPEC’s doing, and once we taught those (insert favorite middle-eastern ethnic slur here) a thing or two everything would be hunky-dory and Mr. Carter’s malaise would vanish like a puff of exhaust in a clear blue sky.

But somehow, while we were building freeways, closing up rail depots and shutting down bus lines, nobody mentioned that while we pumped more and more oil out of the ground, nobody but the Good Lord and Father Time could put any more back in. Now, all over the world oil wells are starting to suck and skrirkle like soda straws bottoming out a malted milk, and try as we might, we can’t find the fine print in either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights that guarantees our right to cheap gas.

It is sort of funny. The same free market that some people tell us is such a great thing when it prices poor folks out of the doctor’s office, turns into so many price-gouging profiteers in need of government regulation when the gas pump spins like a Las Vegas slot while they fill the tank on their $50,000 Denali. C’mon, it’s the same Black Gold, Texas T, that made Jed a millionaire — and if the folks pumping it can’t make enough to keep up their homes “in the hills of Beverly” they’ll bail out of the business — and since they’re the only folks making the gas — we’ll be in an even bigger fix.

And blaming the gub’mint gets a guy no further. The state of Minnesota boosted the gas tax by 2 cents a month ago, but Kwik Trip jacked it by a dime this morning. Can’t blame the station either when the price of a barrel of crude topped $120 with no end in sight.

Of course, the only reason we know about any of this is that we’re parked at the pump watching the dollars drain out of our debit cards.

Sorry to say, there’s no quick fix, happy ending here. Remember when two bucks a gallon was outrageous. … It won’t be long, and these will be the good ol’ days. Enjoy ’em.

Oh, in time it will get better. Folks lived well and got around just fine before gasoline automobiles, and things will be just fine when they’re so much scrap metal and memories. Just how we’ll manage it, I’m not set to say, but I’m pretty sure getting there will be a rough road, and we may as well get the trip under way. It’s just going to cost more if we wait.

And no tax holiday is going to change that.

Contact Jerome Christenson at (507) 453-3500 or jchristenson@winonadailynews.com.

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