Mitch Gann’s

My friend, colleague and fellow blogger Macy Swain (Night Blind) has noted a recent outbreak of slow-driving in our community, and speculates that the other drivers “are driving slowly to save gas. Nobody ever goes the speed limit on Court Street; people usually dart from lane to lane, shooting ahead if anybody dares to dawdle, honking, gesturing, giving the stink eye. Not today. I think my mates on Court are maximizing every drop” (The Go-Slow Club).

I have slowed down some myself. On a recent trip to Ann Arbor and back, I kept the speedometer between 62 and 65. Or tried to. It wasn’t easy with behemoths flying up behind me and swerving at the last instant to pass. How much gas does an SUV suck down at 80+ mph? A lot more than my mini-van was putt-putting along. By going slower, I get 27 mpg on the X-way, an increase of five miles per gallon. It adds up. The next step is to get rid of the mini-van.

“Oil hike sparks ’serious concern’” (BBC News):

The US and the four largest economies in Asia are to voice “serious concerns” over “unprecedented” oil prices. Energy ministers are meeting in Japan a day after a record one-day jump in the crude oil price, to $139 a barrel.

I also would like to voice “serious concerns.” Indeed, I am also going to voice “serious irritation.”

Later in the same article, we get this:

On Saturday, US energy secretary Samuel Bodman said the price surge was a “shock” but not a crisis, amid fears the oil price spike could help tip some of the world’s economies into recession.

Personally, I would not voice “shock” because I filled my tank on Thursday. However, I am raising my irritation level to “very.”  After that the only stage left is pissed.

It’s been a long week.  I intended to blog more, but life got in the way.

And while I was focused on the mundane details of life, oil prices shot up $11 bucks a barrel and Barack and Hillary held a late-night tete-a-tete.

What the world needs is a pause-button.

Ronni Bennett, on her Time Goes By blog, has this to say about money and politics:

. . . it has been said that should Barack Obama win the Democratic nomination, there is precedent for him to hold a fund raiser to help refill Senator Clinton’s personal coffers. This is disgusting – moreso in a time of $4/gallon gasoline, 47 million people without health coverage and skyrocketing food prices. If there are going to be fundraisers, certainly there are more deserving beneficiaries than rich presidential candidates.

I won’t be contributing to Mr. Obama’s fund-raiser on behalf of Mrs. Clinton, should it ever occur. However, I can’t see singling it out as a bad example when presidential campaign spending is setting records and we are still six months from a decision. (Six months! Can it really be that long to go? The horror, the horror . . . .) It’s all a huge waste of resources. 

Yes, I have been known to make a political contribution, and will do so in the future.  But Big Money Politics is one of the things dragging this country down.

One of the things.

After flirting with the four-dollar a gallon mark yesterday, gas prices in our area slid back a bit. I filled my tank today with $3.969 a gallon gas. I needed 11 gallons, so the price drop saved me 33 cents, which I plan to invest in corn futures.

Gas prices in my area (Flint, MI) hit $3.999 for a gallon of regular today. Let’s call it four dollars a gallon and be done with it.

It’s a psychological mark. Last week, I paid $3.799 a gallon to fill up. So today’s price would cost me an additional four bucks for a 20-gallon tankful. I can afford the four bucks, but the $80 for a fill up hurts. And it feels bad to see that price and to know it is going higher still. Why wouldn’t it hit five bucks a gallon this summer? I see no reason for the increases to stop — unless demand decreases.

I’m thinking twice before I jump behind the wheel. Except to go to work, of course. Luckily my commute is under 10 miles. The round trip is costing me about — four dollars.

“A new wrinkle in smoking enforcement” Reuters:

Cigarette vending machines in Japan may soon start counting wrinkles, crow’s feet and skin sags to see if the customer is old enough to smoke.

The legal age for smoking in Japan is 20 and as the country’s 570,000 tobacco vending machines prepare for a July regulation requiring them to ensure buyers are not underage, a company has developed a system to identify age by studying facial features.

I don’t smoke and I don’t live in Japan, so this age-detecting technology is of no immediate concern to me, but you know that if it works, it will spread. Those of us who have a perpetually youthful appearance, despite our elder status, may be in trouble. Apparently, if the machine isn’t certain of your age, it will card you. Who wants to be carded by a robot? It’s been a while since anyone carded me. In fact, I can’t remember ever being carded. I have always had a mature look, even when I was a kid. Now the gray hair and beard are a give-away.

Come to think of it, I’m not concerned.

Saying that “the government has run amok fiscally,” former Congressman and former Republican Bob Barr has announced his candidacy for the Libertarian presidential nomination. (See the LA Times article.)

I don’t know Bob Barr from beans, but I like his way of putting things. Run amok, indeed! Both the Republicans and the Democrats at the Federal level have lost any sense of fiscal responsibility. When we had the “tax more and spend more Democrats” and the “cut taxes and cut spending Republicans,” we could count on some sanity in the budget process. I’m not talking fairness or effectiveness, just sanity. Sure, the two sides seldom agreed on fiscal spending priorities, but they seemed to agree on the basic principle of having enough revenue to cover expenditures. At least most of the time. At least close to enough.

Then somewhere along the lines, both parties got hooked on the idea of borrowing. Well, why not? It’s the American way. We the people set a bad example for the politicos.

Or was it the other way around?

I doubt I’ll vote for Bob Barr, but I like his budgetary rhetoric.