I'm sure you've already heard...

It's been all over the radios, news papers and television stations. You've all heard your coworkers, family members, friends and strangers talk about it. You yourself have undoubtedly have surely and very recently grumbled to anyone that would listen about the same topic. The rising prices of gas. And now, I'm going to talk about it myself.
In Pennsylvania today the prices at the pumps were right around $4.00 a gallon. Where I live each and every gas station flew $3.99(9) as the going rate. In New York where my parents live in Jamestown, prices are about the same if not a little higher. Gas is usually more expensive there anyways, most likely due to the smaller population and thus, less total sales. At this point, where gas is more expensive than milk, general life gets a little more difficult. People, myself included, don't do as much any more because of the ridiculous prices. Less going out for dinner, less going to the movies, less shopping, less of everything that benefits the local economy. Instead, people are turning to the internet to fulfill their needs, which results in the exportation of U.S. money, often times, to an overseas market. True, our government must have realized what is happening and just how much this is impacting our economy. As of late, congress have been going on about "banning together" and lowering gas prices through legislation. But can this really even happen? Does congress really have any control over the price of gas? If they do, does that mean they have some kind of control over the prices of other things? If they wanted to, could they jump in and tell "forcibly" decrease the price of kool-aid? Personally, I don't think they can really make a difference with the price of gas. It seems unlikely to me because congress doesn't (or at least has never made it clear to the public) have any jurisdiction of the prices of anything (as far as I know.). The companies that distribute gasoline are not government affiliated companies and the prices of their products should only be able to be manipulated by stockholders and company management. This leads us to a whole other problem. If Congress can't actually do anything about prices, why are they creating all this hype for something they just can't do? Is it because they have found a way to do so? Or is it simply to distract us from other economic problems that are pillaging American's for all they are worth? Needless to say there are plenty issues persisting now that could use some distracting. Rising interest rates, extreme unemployment, phenomenal overspending by the government, the huge and rising national debt, the continuing war that we are, hate to say it, loosing, and so many other things that affect each one of us. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
I saw a commercial yesterday, for an oil company that said they were spending 3 billion dollars ( If I remember correctly) to expand their refineries so that we will have more oil. I watched another for a coal company that claimed were also spending huge amounts of money on their facilities so that we can continue to use "our cleanest and most abundant resource". My first point should be that coal is not a clean resource, nor our most abundant. Solar energy is by far the most abundant power source in the world. Then, in this area, wind and water energy and around the world, organic matter (i.e. Ethanol). This commercial is lying. Now my second and most important point is, if they are energy companies and have all that money to spare, why not put it towards development of new sources of energy, or addition of solar panel fields, or hydrogen facilities. Not only will they not lose any money, they will gain it! A move like that would attract stock holders, turn out to be a hugely progressive step to prolong the life of the company, help the environment and the national economy. Along with that, reducing our dependence on foreign oil would take us out of so many military occupied countries and be a good step at ending the war we are currently fighting. In fact, we could even help to minimize our debt a little if we could develop new energy and sell our surplus! Wow, that sounds like a great idea! But why are the oil and coal companies so against it? I understand that everybody "hates environmentalists" but were being struck with a problem that can be solved now, before were totally out of oil in just a few years, or later, when we have nothing left. Why won't oil companies work with a little bit of change, even for the sake of our country? Well, humans resist change naturally, but more prevalent here is the grotesque amounts of money they are already making. This is a multi-billion dollar (and much more) industry. There obviously afraid to risk anything going wrong. No matter what they try to do, change happens, and is going to happen to them. If they refuse to adopt new methods we are going to run out of oil, which deletes the oil industry in total. If they do work on alternative energy methods they are going to have to risk stock holders not buying into it right away.