Well, gas has now reached $3.00 a gallon in Houston, something that has never happened before as far as I know. The stations in my Oak Forest neighborhood are selling gas for $3.05 to $3.09 a gallon. It's higher in some parts of the city and lower in others.

According to the GAO, the increased gas prices have taken $20 BILLION away from consumers. That's $146 for every passenger vehicle on the road. That's $20,000,000,000 not being spent elsewhere, which can't be good for the economy.

Unfortunately, gasoline is one of those things not affected so much by Adam Smith's invisible hand of the marketplace. People HAVE to buy gas to get to work, etc. In most cities we don't have a lot of options. It's the car or nothing. In other countries, where good mass transit is the norm, we would have the option of taking a train to work.

The reason given for the increased gas prices is not the usual middle east tension. This time it's lowered refinery capacity. The oil companies have taken a bunch of refineries offline for "maintenance" or switching over to different blends of gasoline. Go figure. They choose to do that during the run up to the season for the highest demand for gasoline???????

Something is rotten in the state of Texas.