It finally happened, gas has hit 5 dollars a gallon in Los Angeles as of yesterday. Oh, sure, not at every gas station but once that psychological threshold has been breached, one has to wonder how long it will take for others to follow suit. There is an even more unfortunate twist to this event, California is probably the state, whose citizens are least able to absorb such a hit to their pocketbooks. California’s unemployment rate is currently standing at around 12% with LA county hovering just below 13%. These outrageous prices are unlikely to help that situation any.
Being an ex-pat Californian my emotions on this are mixed. On one hand I have a very hard time twisting up any sympathy at all for a state that continues to elect local, state and national politicians that seem intent on using the state as a huge social experiment while driving out jobs and businesses through burdensome taxes and over-regulation. Then turning around and taxing its remaining citizens to death for the privilege.
On the other hand all the people I truly love live in Southern California, and this is effecting them in a big way. It also has been one of the determining factors in my not returning home to be near family again and to continue a life there that has been postponed for almost 18 years now. Unfortunately, for me it would not makes sense to relocate there at this point as the employment prospects are dismal at best.
I have said for quite a while that 5 dollar gas would be the tipping point for America, that it was a psychological threshold that once crossed would signal the beginning of the end of the Obama administration. I still believe that to be true, I think when people from coast to coast start to feel the effects of gas prices not only at the pump but at the grocery store and when they buy other essential items, they will finally see, those who don’t already, what an ineffectual amateur we have in the White House. The White House today said that high prices were “not enough” for them to release oil from the strategic reserves. If this is not enough for them to take action, I have to wonder; What, exactly would it take for Obama to act as if he gave a tinkers damn about people suffering under these outrageous gas prices?
Anyone wondering why the Obama White House has not already tapped the US Strategic Oil Reserves, or begun, as they have been court ordered to do weeks ago, issuing drilling permits for the Gulf of Mexico, need only recall one quote from Candidate Obama in 2008.
While running for president, Obama famously said he sought to make electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket” through cap-and-trade legislation and “bankrupt” power plants committing the progressive crime of using coal as an energy source.
I’d say if you were wondering why Obama has been doing nothing in the face of what is by any measure a national emergency, besides his utter incompetence to hold the office of President, this would be it. This is Obama’s and the progressives wet dream – They don’t give two shits about you, you don’t think like them.
