Complaint Central

When I was 14 (1978) I worked in a gas station. I made $4/hour. I worked anywhere from 5 to 10 hours a week on the weekends. Good pocket money for a kid. I should have learned back then to save my money but that's another story - lest I digress. Gas prices where pretty high right at that time. If you check history you'll see we were having a big energy crunch. Some places were rationing fuel, you could only go on odd or even dates based on your plate number or your dob or some crap like that. Gas went up into the high dollars in `78. I can recall customers coming into the station (we still had mostly full service and I did all the "check your oil maam?" stuff) and cussing out the station owner (and that was dangerous because he was a REALLY big guy and had quite a right hook) saying he was price gouging and just trying to rip everyone off. There are websites that indicate what fuel prices were, one shows a price in 1978 of $1.86 and into 1981 $2.77 then in 1985 $2.07 and finally in 1986 $1.58. I'm not sure if those are acurate for my area of the country but those prices will do for conversation sake. I got my license in 2-80 and was driving to work at the gas station or a restaurant - several part time jobs at the same time. Gas was $2.76 in 1980. My truck (a gorgeous 1970 Chevy fire engine red) had two fuel 20 gallon fuel tanks. If the above numbers are accurate then it would cost me about $110 to fill up. It seems to me more like fortybucks a tank. The truck got six to eight mpg depending on how heavy my foot was. Now that I was 16 I think I talked the station owner into paying me $5/hour and I'd drive to the race track, pay my way in and work on his pit crew. Evidently this was a good deal so he took me up on it. I worked about 20 hours a week. So I was making $100 a week and it cost me $80 to fill up my truck. I usually planned it out so I didn't spend more than half my income on fuel.
Here we are in 2006 and fuel prices are approaching a $3/gal average. There are people out there working for $8-$10/hr. Suffice it to say some people and I don't mean a kid in school on his first job but I mean the income provider in a family is having to figure out how to pay for fuel to go to work.
If there's one thing I know the elected officials are supposed to do is represent their constituants to the best of their ability. I can say this - either these fuckers are disabled or the voters can pick for shit.
It's time for the folks on capital hill to do their damn job. GeeDub, I've been a supporter of yours since you started running for your first term. You've let me down old boy.