Big, Bad Gasoline

With the decrease in gas prices, I'm thinking about an incident that happened in the summer. My wife was driving her Honda and she said, "I'm going to have to take the Honda in for repairs."

"Why?" I asked. "What's wrong?"

"It's sputtering. I take it up a hill, and the engine starts to cough."

This was during one of the mini-shocks, and we really didn't want to spend the money. "Is the 'check engine light' on?"

"No," she said.

"Let's see if we can wait it out."

So about two weeks later, my wife said the problem disappeared. Coincidentally, it was when she put new gas in the tank -- and not from the same place. We figured that the gas had been watered, and there was a lot of gas watering going on.

(* * *)

Some explanation.

With no gas, and people reluctant to buy gas, there had to be a way for small gas station owners to make up the loss in revenue.

The easiest way to do that was to dilute the product. Sometimes, they would cut the gas with water. Sometimes, it would be cut with other additives. These gas pumps are supposed to be inspected by the state to make sure they actually have gasoline, and not marmalade in them, but...well...you know...money talks.

Is the water bad for your car? Yes. Your car wasn't designed to run on water. It definitely wasn't designed to run on sludgy additive. The reason some cars were abandoned in the Energy Crisis is because, frankly, the engines were ruined by bad gas and the owners didn't have the cash to pay for the overhaul.

With a little water, the car might "skip", like my wife's car; with a lot of water or a lot of gunk -- well, who knows?

My wife and I made a point. We wouldn't shop at that gas station again. We couldn't trust them.

(* * *)

According to the site "Congressional Mandates Contribute to Higher Gas Prices", the price of gas is determined by four factors:

"rack price" -- the wholesale price of gasoline. This makes up for 50 percent of price.

federal and state taxes -- depending on the state, this is about 14 percent.

refining cost and profit -- about 28 percent.

distribution and marketing -- about 7 percent.

People in the state of Georgia want the price to come down, and they figure the best way to bring it down is by calling for lower taxes on gas. They remember when Katrina hit, and price gougers were charging $5-6 a gallon. The governor temporarily stopped collecting state income taxes.

The current state taxes are 7.5 cents/gallon and a 4 percent sales tax. All together, this makes up four percent of the state's revenues -- gasoline. Three percent of that money goes into transportation related issues; the remaining one percent goes to the general fund.

These are among the lowest gas taxes in the country, if not the lowest.
So the state is resisting any lowering of the Georgia gas tax, but are being fought by conservatives who see this as an easy way of shrinking the Georgia government.

Conservatives, or course, have a great solution to the gas crunch: several, in fact.

* Open exploration in the Arctic. In particular, tap the Arctic Oil Reserve. It will just be "a few pipes -- what could it hurt?" "It's the tree-huggers that are making you suffer."

* Remove the air quality restrictions. In order to help air quality, gas has to have costly additives. Take away the additives, and that will lower gas prices -- with a resulting drop in air quality.

* Remove "burdensome restrictions" on gas production. The buzz word is "deregulate". "Gas production needs to be deregulated!" That's the Word of the Day crossing every conservative politican's lips. "Deregulation". A chicken in every pot and a full gas tank.

When the primaries come, it's going to be very, very interesting -- how the blame game is going to work.

(* * *)

Interestingly, our property values have gone up. They've gone up because we're ITP : "inside the perimeter", the perimeter being I-285, which encircles Atlanta. The reason the prices are going up is because the commuters are thinking of moving back in to Atlanta.

Funny, I thought the reason they moved out of Atlanta was because of the "good schools" in suburbia -- schools which were suspiciously absent of black people. Now, the schools suddenly got better in Atlanta. As my late Dad would say, "Well, I'll be."

Meanwhile, homebuilders are taking a massive hit. Prices are dropping for McMansions in Rural Georgia. If you're willing to make a one hour drive into Atlanta every day and a two hour drive out, prices are a steal. I bet someone will make out big.

(* * *)

As I was driving home, I took a peek at the gas station that sold my wife that bad gas. It was a run-down looking place to begin with, and there was that yellow tape surrounding the missing pumps. The place was empty, the numbers were off the signs. It was a casualty. People have long memories, it seems.