Forget Congress, the White House, or that pesky economic princple of supply and demand ... the recent drop in gas prices at the pump is the direct result of a higher authority: God.
That's what Rocky Twyman, founder of the Pray at the Pump movement, claimed:
To solve the problem, Twyman isn't begging the Lord for any specific act of intervention. He is not asking God to make OPEC pump more oil. Nor is he praying for all the speculative investors to be purged from the New York Mercantile Exchange, where crude oil is traded.
Instead, he says anyone who wants to follow his example should keep it simple.
"God, deliver us from these high gas prices," Twyman said. "That's all they have to say."
Consumer advocates who have been howling about gasoline prices for months say they understand his frustration, even if they haven't tried his tactics.
"Given the complete inertia and silence of this White House on a crisis that has people feeling just hopeless, prayer is probably as good as anything," said Judy Dugan, research director with the nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog. "Frankly, I wish them luck."
Link - via Surfing the Apocalypse
(Photo: Paul Chinn/SF Chronicle)
anyway, neatoramawontsendmeapassword-- preaching to the choir here. i know that, you know that.. and actually, that GM plant i spoke of is shifting it's production from trucks/SUVs to sedans and smaller vehicles. this doesn't solve the problem, obviously, but they are making some changes. they should have pumped more money into their R&D department a decade ago and thought about how the market was going to shift. then they could have jumped into the new market ahead of the curve, and could have made a lot of money. instead, they maintained their agenda and now we're absolutely saturated with vehicles with nowhere to put them. but honestly, i'm glad they're failing. though i just bitched that it's destroying our local economy, it still brings a sinister smile to my face. all we can really say is 'i told you so.'
If the sky-being really cared about America's gas problems, he wouldn't have put so much of the world's oil under the Middle East. Praying about gas prices is just a waste of energy. And it's pretty selfish, too, considering the state of the world these days. Would you like to move to Georgia right now?
Didn't think so.
Essentially, people can't connect the dots. Locals don't seem to be able to make any changes in how they live.. they want their big SUV/trucks, boats, airplanes, RV's the size of houses, and other bourgeois/ baby- boomer 'toys'. They want to continue to live way out in the sticks or suburbs (often due to decades of 'white flight'), but never realized that would mean having to commute everywhere, at some expense! Those in the suburbs of fiscally ultra-conservative cities have often voted down the new local taxes for public transportation(subways or light rail that would have would eased this somewhat) in lieu of support for building huge sports stadiums, etc. So, they are basically clueless and short sighted about establishing real priorities for the common good.
I wonder if we get what we deserve, but that sentiment is not popular in America. We have always been a people who want our cake, and want to eat it too.