The Usual Suspects

(if its golden, it has to be Royal)

Buried in all the news today was an item about oil prices rising to $75 a barrel. I have blogged about this before (see laughing all the way from the pump)where I pointed out the screw job that Big Oil was doing on the American consumer. (Not that I don't think we should let gas prices go through the ceiling to cut consumption and maybe, just maybe, save the planet. But, let that be through taxes, not profits. And, that is another rant.)

The point is, that when the price of oil goes up per barrel, the price of a gallon of gas at the pump goes up out of proportion, that excess being the windfall profits that Exxon/Mobil and their cronies are putting in their pockets. Here is an updated graph:

(note that taxes haven't gone up, just profits)

There may be 20,000,000 gallons of gasoline sold in the US every day. That works out to a windfall of at least $14,000,000/day for Big Oil. That's about $5 billion a year.

Just think how much health care for kids that would buy. Of course, as you can see on my side bar, we are approaching $300 billion for the War in Iraq.

Damn we waste money.