So for the second time in two years fuel prices are exceeding $3 per gallon, and it's gotten a lot of people in a lather. This, though, is what happens when people get jittery about the workings of the market. There was jitteriness about the economy after the 2001 Islamo-Arab acts of war euphemistically called the 9/11 attacks, but the economy didn't skip a beat. Gas prices spiked to $3 last year and then dropped below $2 per gallon for awhile during this past winter.
It isn't stopping political jitteriness. Republicans who should know better are once again getting it backwards by demanding interference in the market instead of getting production increased while the Democrats do the only thing they are capable of doing on any issue - they're demagoguing it.
While some areas of energy policy do need a look, ultimately one can solve a lot of problems by simply leaving the market alone. The market can help in the area of oil sands, a source of fuel far more promising than biofuels, popularly pushed as alternatives to oil-based fuels but which aren't adding up in mileage.
The gas that is the rhetoric about gas prices needs to be shut off and calmnes brought into the debate.
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