Published: May 15, 2008 12:08 am            

Mike Reliford: Talk about liquid gold: 5/15/08

Just for the heck of it, see if you know what the following have in common:

Bottled water, milk, Pepsi and Coke, Snapple tea, Minute Maid orange juice, Dawn dish detergent, charcoal lighter fluid, liquid Tide, Windex, Starbucks Frappuccino iced coffee, lemon juice, shampoo, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, Krazy Glue.

Lipton iced tea, Elmer’s glue, Gatorade, brake fluid, Nyquil, Pepto Bismol, Scope, Evian water, printer ink, Jack Daniels bourbon, Visine, Nasacort nasal spray, rubbing alcohol, and perfume.

They probably have a lot in common. Many are produced by the same companies, they’re liquids, and they all are available to consumers anywhere.

They also, by the gallon, cost more than gasoline. At least they did in March.

At that time, gasoline was averaging around $3.50 per gallon. It, of course, has gone higher since then, doing the daily pump jump that drives drivers so nuts.

An “oil bizness” guy was using this pricing ploy on a recent talk show to let us know just what a great deal we’re getting with the “still-low” rates at the pumps.

That’s a bunch of bull — uh, er — loney.

Tap water comes out to about zero per gallon. That will replace all bottled water if I so choose. And I can live without Windex ($10.21 per gallon), Hershey’s syrup ($13.23), liquid nails ($24.02) and Red Bull ($30.69).

Unless we go back to hitching posts and redo all the city zoning laws concerning animals, I can’t function without gasoline.

I can do without Cover Girl nail polish ($892.80 per gallon), Visine ($995.84) and Nasacort nasal spray ($2,615.28). And if I’d known Scope mouthwash cost $27.20, I would have swished and swallowed, not swished and spit.

Here’s the thing: families, economies, recreations ... living, really ... have all been fine-tuned around the gasoline engine.

Gasoline, unlike fake nails and energy drinks, has pretty much reached the realm of being a necessity — a utility, not a luxury.

If Krazy Glue raised its price more than the current $2,322.29 per gallon, who would give a flying flat flowery flip.

There is a crisis under way, much of it to do with changing climates in the industry, much of it to do with flat-out greed.

Presidents can’t control oil companies, but they have in the past railed against business practices which emitted a certain odor. Often that presidential pulpit could slow or halt the practice, or at least make it more palatable to the paying masses.

Something tells me if our president’s men had business interests in ice cream and not oil, there would be no hand-holding garden walks with Arabian princes but a lot more finger-in-the-face discussions while there is still a lingering American economy to worry about.

We Americans have had it pretty good for a long time with gasoline prices, at least compared to the rest of the world. And our leaders should have seen this coming.

But, like the debt we’ve built during the current war, they put off until tomorrow. Now they’ve let mass transit go to hell, encouraged multi-car families, built bigger and faster cars (including those that look like military vehicles) and left the public unprepared for the sticker shock at the pumps of America.

And it doesn’t help when oil executives go before congress and act arrogant about the whole thing when a minimum wage worker has to work a couple of days to afford one tank of gas.

I guess I’m heading into the “conspiracy thinking” stage of my life. I think they did see this coming but are so concerned with being re-elected they don’t want to touch on bad news or rock contributor’s boats.

Of course, I also have this nagging thought they might already have cures for a lot of stuff, from the common cold to cancer, but those nagging lobbyists from the pharmaceutical industry just won’t ...

Sheesh. I surely don’t think that ... do I?

MIKE RELIFORD can be reached a mreliford@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2647.

        

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