For consumers, the (missing) penny begins to drop:
"The high prices hurt everyone,'' said Rosemary Daly as she purchased $18 of gas Friday for her Ford Taurus station wagon at a Valero gas station in Yucaipa."So many people can't afford to pay these high prices,'' said Daly, 60, a nurse at Riverside Community Hospital. ``Many people have to take money away from other things to buy gas.''
The price for a gallon of self-serve regular Friday at the Valero station at 32749 Yucaipa Blvd. was $2.219.
That was 51 cents higher than the national average of $1.709, the Auto Club said.
Michael Coffey, a nurse at Redlands Community Hospital, spent $20 on Friday to pump gas into his Nissan Xterra at a Shell station in Redlands … and his tank still wasn't full.
"I used to buy premium gasoline, but to save money I'm buying regular,'' Coffey said.
The 37-year-old Redlands resident said he has cut back on fast food in order to have more money for gas.
Our Googling Monkey found the source of that meddlesome penny:
U.S. Gas Prices a Penny Short of Record
Updated: Monday, Mar. 8, 2004 - 5:14 PM
By The Associated PressWASHINGTON (AP) - The average retail price of gasoline climbed 2 cents last week to $1.74 per gallon, the Energy Department said Monday, about a penny shy of the highest price since the department began collecting data.
Together, the high prices for crude oil, strong demand and low commercial inventories made gasoline expensive this winter. Analysts expect those same trends to be in place this summer, the peak driving season.
(emphasis mine)
Gannett explains further:
Experts say that unless Americans drive less or the economy flags, gas prices will spike in the spring and late summer, perhaps reaching $2.50 a gallon in August.
I predicted a few weeks back that Bush's ultimate undoing with the American electorate would be gas prices in the Heartland topping $2/gallon. The pocketbook trumps everything in election politics, despite the Bush spin doctors prognosticating on the overarching importance of national security and the "war on terrah".
As I packed lunchboxes this morning, Secretary Don Evans on NPR blamed falling consumer confidence number on the Democratic presidential candidates beating up on Bush; obviously, his driver still fills the gas tank of the Commerce Department's SUV assigned to Evans.
[Note: the impetus for this story was putting $15 into the tank of our Honda this morning, and finding when I started the engine, the gas gauge barely hit the midpoint.)
This is another reason Florida is lost to Bush. The number of tourists arriving by plane is way down in the aftermath of 9/11 but we've seen an uptick in the number of visitors coming by car.
With gas prices this high those numbers will drop, especially in the Florida Panhandle which gets the bulk of its visitors from neighboring states.