Karl Klockars

Chicago keeps on surprising me.  First we get our foie back.  A rollback of government that proves that sometimes there are exceptions that prove rules – this rule being, of course, that when Government takes, they take for keeps.  No givebacks – and to continue the schoolyard metaphor, no tagbacks, no keepsies, no bounce no play.  We’ll figure out what those mean in relation to The Man sometime later.

Now I see that the gas surcharge tacked onto every cab fare is going to slide back, back, back an entire fifty cents since the price of gas has slid downward into the world of $2-3 per gallon.  Who ever expected this?  I had just wrapped my head around the idea of never roadtripping again, of never being able to see America by car, of only being able to spring for a short ride up to the Wisconsin Dells and then living in a parking lot somewhere because I couldn’t afford a hotel because of the bleeding gas prices.

Now you tell me that I can afford the price of gas all the way to Minneapolis or Memphis or some other city that starts with “M”?  Amazing.  So why hasn’t anyone brought up that nickel that everyone wanted to save by tearing open every ocean bed and wildlife reserve in the country?  Or are we waiting on that one. Maybe we’re all shocked by the cab thing.

When they passed the $1 surcharge to cabs, I didn’t pay much attention.  I figured, hey – another buck here and there, and it’s not even going into the political coffers.  It’s just going to cabbies.  No worries here, and I barely ever take cabs anyways.  I realize today, that I don’t think I ever expected that surcharge to ever be rolled back.  Oh, sure, they wrote into the wording of the legislation a bunch of pie-in-the-sky foolheadedness like “when gas prices come down” and other silly such-and-such.

I wonder what lowly page or gofer tugged on the robes of Power and said to them, “hey, remember those gas prices?  Those two quarters have to come off of that surcharge, boss.”  Regular cab riders probably felt how I felt when I got an email from Netflix telling me that they were lowering their rates.  A magical moment, indeed.  Money for nothing and our chicks for free.

All of this is a roundabout way of thinking about gas prices.  As someone who gets himself to work by sitting on an El train for 45 minutes at a stretch and worrying more about the crossword puzzle than by gas prices, I’m sure the situations were a little more dire for suburbanites who can’t do a damn thing without some sort of fueled vehicle.  Take that, suburban sprawl.

When gas prices were in the Ludicrous Range, I was imagining redesigned suburbs, where the stores and living spaces were densely packed around a railroad hub, with stores and restaurants and services all packed into one or two square miles, and towers of condominiums made up the residential portions.  Everyone could get what they needed by foot or bike, trains would take people into the city, and barely any gas would be spent.  It would look a lot like Dekalb, but without all that unnecessary NIU stuff in the way.  And more dorms, basically.

But now as we get back down to prices that we would have thought to be absolutely insane a few years ago (remember when Illinois rolled back the gas tax so we could keep our fuel under $2 or so?), I have to wonder exactly when we’re going to get that nickel taken off our gallon of gas for all the new drilling we’re doing.  You remember, all that drilling that we have to do NOW NOW NOW, all that opening of spaces for oil companies to get in and start prospecting NOW NOW NOW, all that oil we’re going to take out of places around here so we don’t have to pay them over there.

Does anyone have the courage to stand up and say, for himself and not for his or her party, “I was wrong.  I wanted to drill, and I was wrong about it.  I really did think it was the only option to save us from high gas prices – but I made a mistake.  My heart was in the right place, and I know that energy independence is still extremely important to us as a country – but I guess it was things like demand, as well as speculation and other economic factors.”

“Why didn’t we stop and think about it for a second?  Did all of a sudden there appear double the amount of cars in the world?  Twice the amount of petroleum products?  It doesn’t make sense, does it?  No, not in retrospect.  We were scared, as politicians, and as citizens. We wanted to do something.  And I am able to admit that I messed up.  Now, if everyone that accepted money from oil companies would just give back all that lobbying money, that’d be great.  I’ll put some of mine toward tidal and wind energy.  Thanks.”

Not bloody likely.  It’d also be great to see someone on the left stand up and say, “Hey – next president?  I’m assuming it’s going to be you, Mr. Obama, but regardless, I really think we need someone to take a serious look at nuclear power.  They don’t build those things like they did 30 years ago, so if anyone on the left side of the aisle is still terrified by the thoughts of No-Nuke rallies in their district, we can do some education on the subject and help with that.  But it’ll sure be a hell of a lot better than coal, don’t you think?  Seriously, guys.  C’mon.”

A guy can dream.  And now, I’m a guy that can dream while driving a hundred miles for a sandwich again, without feeling a tremendous amount of social guilt.  But – we should all continue to give H2 drivers the finger.  That will never go out of style.