Brutally Honest Rant - 05/09/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: The Annual Gas Nag
Audio Transcripts
05/09/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing over and over and over again and expect to get a different result. I can certainly relate to that definition after seeing people make the same mistake over and over and over again and expect things to be somehow different when it comes to computers.

We certainly do that with our political process! We swap between Democrats and Republicans thinking that the next guy will somehow be different, and yet are actually surprised when the next election time comes around and it is business as usual… especially when we vote for people who are not supposed to make it business as usual! Vote third party? Oh they’d like to, but they don’t think third party candidates would have a chance… mostly because everyone is swapping between Democrats and Republicans.

Insanity, to a “T”!

And so it goes as well with the price of gasoline. Every year right around this time we see the prices go up and up and up. Every year right around this time the media goes into hysterics. Every year right around this time we have Wall Street futures experts going into hyperactive fits about what the price of gasoline “may” reach. Every year we right around this time we talk about who is to blame for it all. Every year right around this time we ask why can’t the government DO something about this.

And this has been happening EVERY SINGLE YEAR!

(Reagan Clip: “There you go again.”)

And every year we get PHONY messages about what needs to be done. We get really BAD ideas being thrown about by politicians and special interest groups looking to expand the scope of government and looking to pilfer even more money from us. They want to punish oil companies for problems that THEY THEMSELVES pretty much created! They want to tax oil company profits heavily, even though those taxes will be passed on down to US through higher prices at the pump.

(Reagan Clip: “There you go again.”)

Every year we hear about some one-day “gas out” scheme that fraudulently claims to make a statement but doesn’t really accomplish anything! Worse yet, the same message gets passed on pretty much word-for-word as the previous year’s message.

(Reagan Clip: “There you go again.”)

We hear about raising the minimum fuel efficiency standards, but only doing so by the SMALLEST of levels, and not in the course of months or even years, but IN DECADES! DECADES! By the time fuel efficiency levels get to where they need to be NOW, it will be the year 2020! That’s thirteen years of dealing with this problem, and by then those levels will STILL be abysmal, pitiful, and unacceptable. And that’s also assuming that we haven’t turned into a Mad Max society by then because of the sheer INSANITY of this seemingly eternal issue.

(Reagan Clip: “There you go again.”)

And yet somehow the REAL message doesn’t seem to sink in. The message does not seem to enter into our collective heads. We simply DO NOT want to accept the TRUTH when it comes to dealing with higher gas prices.

And so I am here once again to give you that TRUTH. And if this is my purpose in life to constantly browbeat society over this and to remind them of this TRUTH, then so be it.

(Reagan Clip: “There you go again.”)

Here it is, boys and girls: if you do not like the price at the pump, then it is UP TO US to do something about it!

Let’s get brutally honest here… our government is not going to do anything significant about this issue until WE – yes I mean ALL OF US – do something significant on our part. And I don’t mean just sitting around and complaining about the price of gasoline or writing letters to our elected grifters and shysters demanding that THEY do something about it. THEY WILL NOT do anything significant until they know that WE are serious about it, and that means actually DOING something that we probably will not like, but it has to be done anyway.

If you do not like the price at the pump, then the ONLY way you can demonstrate that is to STOP DRIVING!

I am serious about this… as I have always been about this issue.

A couple of days ago pseudo-libertarian Neal Boortz gave a hypothetical situation where a family of four was going to Disney World in Orlando and how much they would have to pay to drive there and back as the price of gas goes up. He argues that the difference is miniscule. Well why the hell is that family DRIVING to Disney World if the price of gas is an issue? Why the hell are they even GOING to Disney World to begin with? Save your money and buy a couple of movies on DVD. Or better yet, just take your kid to the Disney store at your local mall. You get the same experience for less money, plus the food at the food court is cheaper, the lines are shorter, AND the water at your local mall probably doesn’t smell or taste like sulfur. Yeah, that’s one dirty little secret that doesn’t get mentioned in those commercials.

If you REALLY want to make a statement about gas prices, then WE – ALL OF US – have to make that statement by cutting back on our driving habits! We have to stop driving like gas is cheap and plentiful, because even when the prices are low, those days are DEAD! It means no more road trips. It means no more “cruising”. It means no more long vacations far away from home. It means only using your vehicle for necessary trips, or carpooling, or doing a whole bunch of errands in ONE trip instead of fifty separate errands.

And WE have to do this! The government isn’t going to do these things for us. The automakers certainly will not stop making gas-chugging urban assault vehicles until WE stop buying them. You want alternatives? Well you have to BUY them! You have to WANT them bad enough so that they will happen!

Now, if you want to REALLY want to look for a way to cut back on driving then try this: MOVE CLOSER TO YOUR WORKPLACE!

Again, I am DEAD serious about this! I did this TWO years ago this month and my life changed for the better because of it!

For seven long years I put up driving almost a hundred miles a day to and from work. This normally would take me about fifty minutes per trip to complete… or at least it did when I first started making that commute. Then it grew to a two-to-three-hour drive through heavily-congested areas to where the commute was literally KILLING ME! I was going broke because of all of the money that I had to spend on gas and all of the money that I had to spend every six weeks on servicing my car. And the stress from that commute was so bad that I was coming home every night feeling like I was about to have a heart attack. I probably would have had one too if I didn’t do something about it.

So I moved… and now I live just two miles away from work, I have almost everything I could ever want just down the street from me, and I don’t have to fill my car up every two days. The differences in my life and in my finances are like night and day.

Almost this time last year my parents followed suit. They were driving even longer commutes, and it also was killing them. They moved closer to their respective workplaces… not as close as mine, but it was still a significant shift for them. They have told me that the financial difference for them is like getting a second paycheck. They look better, they sound better, and they feel better about themselves because of it.

And a lot more of us need to do just that!

Our whole society here in America revolves around this idea that we can live in the suburbs and work in the city. And that idea worked as long as there were available houses, affordable cars, affordable gas, and relatively short commutes between work and home. That was the whole suburban dream back in the 1950’s that is reflected even today.

Well guess what? Those days ARE DEAD!

Our obsessive quest for available housing are putting many homeowners into debt thanks to risky mortgages with adjustable interest rates that are already driving some of them into bankruptcy. Affordable cars? Does spending $50,000 on an urban assault vehicle count as “affordable”? Relatively short commutes are pretty much a thing of the past, as some people have to literally drive FOUR HOURS to get to their destination, and that’s just one-way! If you work in an office and you spend as much time commuting to-and-from work as you do in your work, then you clearly do not have a short commute!

And now our dysfunctional energy policy is completing the failure of this suburban dream. We have built a society that is dependant on vehicles, and on vehicles dependant on an energy source that is slowly bleeding us to death. That is unacceptable and it has to change!

And we cannot expect our government to act in our best interests in this matter. They haven’t so far, and they have no reason to do so now. Remember: THEY are the ones that set up our dysfunctional energy policy in the first place! THEY are the ones that green-lighted the idea that we can get most of our oil from foreign sources. THEY are the ones that have prohibited the creation of new oil refineries in this country and are overburdening the current refineries so that THEY WILL break down and further jack up the price at the pump – as they are doing right now. THEY are the ones that made sweetheart deals with the Middle East and with Venezuela and with a whole bunch of other countries that hate our guts but will still give us that oil “fix”. And so far THEIR so-called “solutions” to this problem have been even worse failures than the Drug War, Prohibition, and the FEMA Katrina response all put together!

So the only way that things are going to change is if WE make those changes ourselves! WE have to use the only things that we have at our disposal to deal with this problem: our wallets and our personal habits. We have to make the sacrifices before any other changes can be made.

And I also know the short-term and long-terms consequences of this. Yeah, either way our economy will suffer. But that suffering will be short-term if we change our personal habits when it comes to driving and gas use now. However if we do nothing now and let circumstances change those habits for us later on, then the devastating effects of our economy WILL be long-term. If you think that things are getting rough now, then you haven’t seen ANYTHING yet! This is a subject that can literally destroy this country if we do not address it… first on a personal end, and then on behalf of our grifters and shysters.

(Computer – some stuff)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

I gotta tell you something folks… I spent my early childhood years in the 1970’s, amidst the whole mess with OPEC and the price of gas and gas outages and odd-even gas days. Times were tough for my family. I was a latchkey child before the term even was invented… and without the latchkey to boot!

But we survived. At the time I didn’t know why we couldn’t do go-karts or go out for ice cream on a regular basis like we used to do, but later on I understood. Society didn’t just spontaneously come to an end when children couldn’t go to Disney World every summer, nor did they die of boredom when the only thing they could use to cool off is a garden hose.

And guess what? Your kids will not die of boredom either if you make those same kinds of sacrifices today. They may not like it, but they will eventually understand. That’s one of the downsides of being a parent. Sometimes you have to make choices that simply suck.

Accept it. Deal with it. Learn to love it. Because it will only get worse for us all if you don’t.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

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