Oil companies don't control oil prices any more than farmers control corn, pork and rutabaga prices. Certainly they are happy to get more for their product when the price goes up but they also take it in the shorts when the prices go down. When grain or pork belly prices go up do farmers get blamed for ripping off the consumer?

Back in 2001 when gas went below a dollar a gallon oil companies were living off reserves, now they are making big profits. But, if you look at the return on investment, it’s not out of line with what other industries make. Everyone loves to hate them but what are your alternatives? Without profits, investors (including most of your retirement funds!) take their money elsewhere and companies eventually go belly up. Would you like congress to run the oil business instead?

I paid $2.62 a gallon yesterday to fill up my Blazer and the lawn mower/snow blower can. When I ran that through the consumer price index calculator it was less than the 33 cents a gallon I paid in 1972. I don’t like paying today’s fuel prices but I don’t like paying more than twice as much for a new Triumph than I paid for my first new car either. I respond by riding the bike as much as possible. Yesterday was the first time I put gas in the Blazer since May. My heart does NOT go out to those people driving Hummers, Super Cab 4x4 pickups and Corvettes when they whine about gas prices.

Motorcycle and car prices went up a similar percentage, as did milk, ice cream, chocolate bars, bread, chicken pot pies and porterhouse steaks. Are all those businesses ripping us off too?

We all like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists. But when push comes to shove most of us are sheep who do what we are told. Worst of all, a lot of us become unpaid agents of whoever is controlling the agenda by enforcing the current dogma on the few rugged individualists who actually exist.