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$3.20 A GALLON FOR REGULAR FOR CASH
WPCNR MOVING ON. NEWS & COMMENT By John F. Bailey. September 15, 2025:
I drove out to fill up for the coming week Saturday and had a deja’ vu moment as I pulled in to my regular gas stop.
The price of unleaded regular had gone up from a very manageable $2.99 to $3.20.
Is this just the seasonable change over to winter gas?
Is this Middle East manipulation of their production?
Is it oil companies trying to beef up quarterly earnings?
Is this the beginning of steady increases in tariffs? Or all of the above?
Funny did any media even recognize this as a story? It is.
The Newsmobile took its usual 8 gallons but it cost $25.49 not the usual $23.92. All summer long I’ve been paying $2.99 ($36) to fill my 12 gallon tank, now that fill up costs $38.40. I get good mileage but do not do a lot of driving.
The average person commutes by car 50 60 miles if you commute to the city. After the over summer gas prices to encourage vacations, we get spoiled.
(Long paragraph ahead to give you the big picture)
If you earn under a $100,000 A YEAR, and have to commute by car this ominous upturn in the face of inflation which supposedly is now going to go up with the tariff policies the nation is imposing at the same time, the money people in Washington want to lower interest rates (which seems like a sure thing right now, because real estate and the banks and the stock industries have to keep us going, coupled with industries continuing to raise prices which will mean windfall profits for them, you have a real squeeze on those families on everything they need to buy to live and work and eat and take care of their health.
Look what is going up: Food, gas, health care, car prices, clothing, child care, airfare,house prices, layoffs, electricity
Look what is going down: jobs, purchasing power, benefits, aid, clean power
Looking at that new price of gas took me back to 1976 to 1980 when OPEC nations in the Middle East imposed the oil embargo in 1973 when Egypt and Syria crossed into the Sinai and attempted to seize the Sinai lands..this spiked gas prices up overnight. Gas lines around the block, arguments at the pump leading to fist fights. Trains were jammed.
Gas Shortage Sign in Connecticut During Energy Crisis
The gaslines cost President Carter a second term. Why? Here is how Encyclopedia Britannica explains it:
The Jimmy Carter administration began a phased deregulation of oil prices on April 5, 1979, when the average price of crude oil was US$15.85 per barrel ($100/m3). Starting with the Iranian revolution, the price of crude oil rose to $39.50 per barrel ($248/m3) over the next 12 months (its all-time highest real price until March 3, 2008).[11] Deregulating domestic oil price controls allowed U.S. oil output to rise sharply from the large Prudhoe Bay fields, while oil imports fell sharply.
Although not directly related, the near-disaster at Three Mile Island on March 28, 1979, also increased anxiety about energy policy and availability.[12] Due to memories of the oil shortage in 1973, motorists soon began panic buying, and long lines appeared at gas stations, as they had six years earlier.[13] The average vehicle of the time consumed between two and three liters (about 0.5–0.8 gallons) of gasoline an hour while idling, and it was estimated that Americans wasted up to 150,000 barrels (24,000 m3) of oil per day idling their engines in the lines at gas stations.[14]
When the Reagan administration came in, we continued to do business as usual with OPEC
We have learned nothing in 40 years.
We practice the comfortable art of wishful thinking.
Denying reality.
Dumb ideas in the 1930s made the depression worse.
Those same Dumb ideas were used in the 1990s (eliminating the Glass-Seagal Act comes to mind)
Now the 40 years between 1976 and 2025 has apparently taught us nothing.
The country is still partners with the Middle East oil producers they are holding us hostage again in a nice way of course.
(Another long long paragraph to round up the maverick cattle in the congressional herd:)
We are throwing out environmental protections. The oil industry now essentially the Standard Oil Trust recreated has had their way with the new administrations, all of the and restrictions on how they make oil how they pollute and deplete the ozone to the point where climate change has turned weather into something unpredictable and dangerous to the point where the planet is warming to destructive status. However, our “leaders” in congress continue to twiddle their thumbs and do nothing, empowering our arch enemies. And thinking everything will work out and “Happy Days a booming economy, and it is just a bad winter will come back” The more the leaders in Washington think that in both houses and in positions of power say that the more they believe it.
As Governor Hochul said this weekend “You have to govern in reality.”
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