A Blast From Mark Kirk's Energy Past

UPDATE:

Here is a bit of history on what made our gas prices what they are today. It explains why Mark Kirk will never agree to anything on oil that would ever help the American consumer. His party has too much at stake in support for OPEC and multinational oil companies. Democrats want to bring some of that money back into the US Treasury. Not a bad idea considering the money wasted on Mark Kirk's Iraq War.

***************

I've been pretty busy and a holiday is coming up, so I'll do what the networks do and show a rerun. Mark Kirk claims he's the man on gas prices. I thought not back on May 5, 2006 not long after Kirk had pretty much the same gas price event at a Marathon station in Mt. Prospect in April 2006 he's now complaining about (see here too), and I still think Kirk has hurt consumers on all issues, including energy. At Kirk's 2006 gas station event, he touted more freebies for oil companies and "E85" fuel, which contains 85 percent ethanol and most recently resulted in the high flour and cereal prices we are suffering now. Here's the blast from Ellen's Illinois blog past (try not to cry when you see the gas prices we were complaining about two years ago):

When you're alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go - downtown
When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know - downtown
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?

The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares
So go downtown, things'll be great when you're
Downtown - no finer place, for sure
Downtown - everything's waiting for you

Petula had a point back in the '60s. It sure is a lot more fun working downtown than in the suburbs. Problem is getting there. You can drive. It's about 25 miles from SE Lake County at 2.98/gallon in a Grand Am at 24 mpg city, 32 highway according to the EPA, so it will cost you approximately $3.33 one way, and for the week, it will cost about $33.38 and of course that doesn't include city parking at about $26 a pop, with a total for the week of $163.80. A 10 ride pass on Metra is about $33.15 from Highland Park. The Union Pacific and Milwaukee North lines are ok, the UP Northwest Line is even better, but that new North Central line that was promised to folks moving into new subdivisions sprawling further and further from the city has a difficult schedule according to Buffalo Grove and Vernon Hills residents. There are no express trains and it takes forever.

If you choose Metra, you are bound by their schedule and their slowdowns and outages. The trains are late and break down a lot more than they used to, even if it's just raining out. It doesn't even take a snow storm anymore to delay the trains. I remember when you could set your watch by the Metra Trains, not so any more. What ever happened to all the talk about extending the "El". That would be great, but republicans have other ideas.

Problem is that the Bush/Cheney "secret meeting" energy policy does little for public transportation. It's the old auto industry/oil industry system pushing folks to drive and allocating relatively little to public transportation as public policy.

Mark Kirk has been all over the district lately trying to show how much he cares about gasoline prices, but the problem is that he has been supporting the Bush/Cheney/auto industry/oil industry energy policy all along, so the photo ops at gas stations that sell E85 fuel are not all that impressive.

Here is a list of cars compatible with E85 fuel and its pretty expensive and not readily available everywhere. Also, ABC News reported that "ethanol has less "oomph" than gasoline, so you'll get fewer miles per gallon than you would with a full tank of gasoline."

Maybe E85 is at least a small solution to the problem, but the point is that we would not be in this predicament if folks just listened to Jimmy Carter who was telling the truth back in 1979 instead of going for Ronald Happy Day Reagan who was just lying about the energy policy we needed in the US in order to win the presidency and enrich corporations. Things would not have gotten worse had congress, including Mark Kirk, not swallowed the 2005 Bush energy policy that gave us costly unending war, serious environmental problems, high energy prices and subsidies for the oil and gas industries.

The Union of Concerned Scientists had this to say about the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that Kirk supported:

...Congress chose to largely follow the path of a 19th century fossil-fueled past instead of crafting an energy bill for the 21st century that would lead us to a clean energy future. UCS opposed the bill because it fails to reduce our dependence on oil, fails to address global warming, fails to reduce home heating and gasoline prices, fails to significantly increase the deployment of renewable energy and actually increases the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Years ago, a friend of mine from Woodstock who was saddened by the push to move businesses outside of the famed Woodstock Town Square to the outskirts, requiring a lot more driving around, said that the country was suffering from transportational arrogance. He was correct at the time and that transportational arrogance only grew and grew until it ultimately exploded under Bush/Cheney and congressmen like Mark Kirk.

Kirk can stand outside of gas stations all day long and it will never make up for his votes for oil based energy and oil based war. Maybe he'll be able to sell folks on his energy concern if he starts offering full service for no extra charge, wiping folks windows, filling their tires etc.