Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Sometimes You Have To Look Elsewhere For The Story

When I was a kid growing up in Southern Minnesota, my iron ore-mining Uncle Dick would sometimes call us and have us read any newspaper stories we had about his company, Reserve Mining, because the stories were different in Southern Minny, just six hours south of where he lived. The Duluth paper would print one side of the company's story...probably what the company wanted employees to read, but our Rochester paper would print uncensored and unedited stories out of the company, which was struggling for survival.

It's much the same today, despite the fact the world has indeed grown smaller through technology. I find myself checking BBC and Rueters and Guardian UK for a lot of news items that just don't get covered by the SCLM (So Called Liberal Media) in this country.

I found this one tonight.

An excerpt:

Exxon's huge 500,000 barrel a day installation at Baton Rouge, Louisiana is "fully operational", according to the department, along with Total's facility at Port Arthur, Texas.

Both had suffered reduced production because of the storm, as had a number of others in places as far afield as Illinois and Ohio.

Five more - all in Louisiana and previously shut down - have lit their flares, indicating they are either in the process of restarting operations or preparing to do so.


Read it, and then drive around and see if our gas prices are coming down accordingly. The excuse given last week was "supplies will be short" when the prices shot up with no justification (i.e. dealers gouged us). Now, with all these refineries back up to speed or nearly there, you'd think we'd see prices shoot back down to the pre-storm $2.59 or $2.69 - which were still ungodly high and still a gouge in the eye, but certainly better than $2.99 to $3.19. Gas should still be what it was at the start of summer: below $2.00 per gallon. Anything more is a freakin' gouge. Period.

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