What else? GAS PRICES

American car manufacturers are REALLY shortsighted. Take the Geo Metro, for example. A nifty little car; gets about 50 miles to the gallon. Quentin Tarantino drove one around for the longest time – even after he was completely 100% famous. Oh. Right. They stopped making that one. Then there was the fully electric EV-1. Oh yeah. One couldn’t buy an EV-1 – one could only lease. GM pulled them off the market and took them away from the people that had them. No more EV-1.

We’ve always bought American – trying to do our bit for the economy – supporting the U.S. autoworker, blah blah blah. We felt even better about not simply buying American, but for owning two Fords, due to Ford’s progressive policy on providing health coverage for domestic partners.

British Petroleum is doing this unheard of thing, called smart business policies that take into effect the changing economy and global need for fuel alternatives. They have been working with solar power, which extends the arm of Big Oil to the construction biz of solarizing homes. They now do this thing where, for every celebrity that hires BP to completely solarize their home, BP will solarize the home of a low income dweller for free. Kinda cool. And they do it here in the U.S. of A.

I am quite worried about the U.S. autoworkers – one look at the depressed and crumbled pit of despair and despoiler of human dignity that is Detroit - a huge crystal ball to the rest of the U.S. auto manufacturers and the towns that they are housed in with respect to what is shortly to come. I hope they have all sent their various applications and CV’s into the other guys in preparation for the impending horror – the horror that will be the auto-worker losing their job first, so the top of the corporate food chain can keep their shirt.

I heard a rumor that PWM’s – (People With Money) are purchasing up bulk amounts of fuel – like commodities – to be on hand for them should the time come that it is rationed to the rest of us folk.

In real life, not rumor, those of us who are already on a budget must do something differently. Here in Los Angeles, we have people who live on minimum wage that are pawning their stuff to put gas in their car to get to work – there is no subway that will take one west of Highland, since the folks in Beverly Hills, Bel Aire, et al, don’t want that element coming into their part of town. A bus ride is 2-3 hours.

Manpants and I have been feeling mighty guilty for quite a while because one of our vehicles was the Explorer Sport – a 15 gallon smaller version of the regular ole Ford Explorer that gets about 18 miles to the gallon. It has been great for the dogs and great for the various trips; great for being able to actually see when we drive, due to the sheer volume of other sight-blocking SUV's on the road here – but having it in this day and age has been eating at our souls. So, Friday, Manpants took it to the Toyota dealer and traded it in on the zippy new, 40 miles to the gallon, Toyota Yaris. Estimated yearly savings are that of a really decent vacation someplace beautiful. I have a feeling, based upon the large number of Yaris cars that were sold over the weekend at the one car dealership we used, that we’re going to be seeing a lot of this.

Right now would be a really good time for GM to pull their corporate heads out of the oil drum and re-introduce assembly of the Geo Metro and the EV-1.