[Coco] Eye of Ike approaching my home

[Frank Swygert]

Glad you're okay Roger! While ranting, I have one -- price of gasoline rose to just under $5 a gallon in SC in "anticipation" of the oil refineries being shut down for a while. We HAVE to have gov't regulation of the oil companies. I'm not one to typically want the gov't to step in (less gov't is best to me), but when pure greed takes over something we simply can't do without it's time. I'd rather see price regulation than the gov't take over refinery operations ("nationalizing" the refineries... I'd expect the gov't would give the oil companies a percentage of output or what it considered a fair lease price, couldn't just take them over). No one really wants gov't employees running refineries -- though they would be the same that work there now and it would take a while for "entrenchment" to occur. 

I can see prices going up a little in anticipation -- no one would complain too much about a $0.20-50 rise due to an impending storm. Gas was $3.59-$3.69 on average one day, $4.99-$5.15 the next. The SC governor passed an emergency law against price gouging and the next day the price went down a little to $4.69 in my home town (on average). My guess is the governor limited a price rise to $1 a gallon? I don't know the details.

The oil companies think we're all idiots. There is plenty fuel already made, enough for several days at a minimum, at the refineries. They should be able to weather through a storm. I can easily understand limiting supply (most stations here limited customers to $50, which at the old price was okay..., and they still ran out for 12-24 hours). Prices shouldn't go up much until/unless there's actual damage to something. They are quick to anticipate and raise prices, then very #$%^ slow to drop them back. 

How many of you remember the mid and late 70s oil crisis? Price didn't go up as much percentage wise that I can recall (I could be wrong, maybe need to research that...), though there was (understandably) limited supply. The reason is there was still gov't regulation of prices at the time. Reagan eliminated gov't regulation of a lot of things, and at first it was a good thing. Now it seems the bas#$%ds at the oil companies have learned to cooperate with each other. They all seem to go one after another -- if one raises prices, the others follow suit shortly. 

We pay premium prices for gas made with old oil for something that MIGHT happen, and now the price of oil is even down! If a refinery was definitely down a price increase might make sense, but not until. To top it off, it makes things like mandatory evacuations a big burden on people. So tax payers end up bailing more of them out. The total outrage is that in the wake of disasters like Katrina (and to some extent Ike) the oil companies report record profits! If the prices were raised to cover losses of refineries and such they wouldn't go up as much as they do (I think $0.20-0.50/gal would cover that -- think about the number of gallons sold!). They are raised due to supply/demand (supposedly), and we're all sc$%^wed.  The real reason is they see that they can make a lot of money off the misfortune of others (those in the wake of the storm). I can't see any other reason, it's not to cover loss of profits, which would be a justified reason for raising prices -- they are reporting even higher profits! 

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Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:40:46 -0500
From: Roger Taylor <operator at coco3.com>

My power just came back on about 2 hours ago, but hundreds of thousands 
aren't so lucky yet. The power loss occurred for my area right as the 
"eye" area of the storm hit, but even long before and after we were 
still getting terrible gusts of wind in all directions. In once instance 
a burst of wind so big came through that the trees which were full of 
water got hit from above I guess because they all kind blew apart and 
the air was filled with a huge cloud of water all the way down the 
road.. me and the son dove into the house in fear it was a tornado, then 
it just went away real quick to dead silence before coming back a minute 
later.

Anyway, it's over and I have lots of tree debree everywhere but nothing 
else to complain about I guess. I'm grabbing the rakes right now.

-- 
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
Magazine (AMC)
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