The gas prices matter

I was in Canton yesterday when I spied the scene in the adjacent photo. It was at the Valero gas station at the northeast corner of Ford and Haggerty Roads.

Did you know, by the way, that Ford and Haggerty is the most dangerous intersection in Wayne County?

I liked the sign for two reasons: the price is below $4 per gallon, and the premium for payment using a credit or debit card is just $.01 above a cash payment.

I look around lately for a price below $4 per gallon, and it seems I'm running out of options. My last fill-up was $65. When I passed the gas station yesterday, my tank was three-fourths full and I couldn't really take advantage of it.

The other reason that I liked the sign is that a credit or debit card user is not being gouged by the retailer. I've read that the increase to the retailer for a payment using a card is $.03 or $.04 per gallon, and to my mind the retailer is using this as a convenient ruse to pad his profits.

If the normal premium for a card is $.10 per gallon, the cost to me for the $.07 per gallon increase over the retailer's $.03 per gallon cost for an 18-gallon tank is $1.26. In the 21st century, that's an absurd amount to pay for convenience in a highly technical society like ours. I'm not sayin' there oughta be a law - Caveat emptor - but I can still resent it.

The price of gasoline is an odd duck in the marketplace. Most of us, particularly in the suburban Midwest, cannot avoid using it, and paying for it on a regular basis. It requires time to do. As you're pumping, the mind wanders, and no doubt the price you're paying as you pump arises in your mind. And it hits those with lower incomes particularly hard.

A politician would be wise to be wary of the specter of high gas prices, particularly in an election year. And it is this tightening vise into which Obama has stumbled. Imagine, the man who was going to reverse the rise of the oceans - he is tagged with being responsible for gas prices doubling since his inauguration.

Anyone with smarts and knowledge knows it's a complicated story. But when Obama said a while back that he would like to see gasoline prices rise to nudge us toward high-cost alternative energy sources, and the people left suffering can least afford it, I can't give him a pass. It is proving to be preposterously inept politically, in addition to his normal operational and leadership ineptitude.

But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.