I don’t know about you, but I’ve about hit my limit with the excruciating price of gas.  Mind you, I only use premium unleaded in my car as it requires 92 octane or higher (in Texas, law requires premium to be 93 octane, so I’m safe there).  When last I filled the ol’ tank (all 17 gallons of it!), I paid $3.07 per gallon.  Ouch!  Oil prices keep pushing upward and smashing previous records, so it can not possibly get better in the near or even distant future.

And can you guess who benefits most from the exorbitant prices?  Well, one could safely assume it won’t be the consumer.  Just look at the income of Lee R. Raymond, CEO of ExxonMobil, who retired in December.  For successfully guiding the company through its mergers and acquisitions, and for breaking all profit records at the expense of we the people with a net income in 2005 of $36.13 billion, he was paid the equivalent of $144,573 per day.  His income last year alone was around $400 million.  While Americans struggle to keep up with skyrocketing fuel prices at both the gas pump and at home, oil company executives are laughing all the way to the bank.

While I support the free market system and capitalism (although both could use a healthy dose of scrutiny), raping consumers with such blatantly untoward and harmful greed is not helping solve our country’s economic woes.  With a soaring national debt and most Americans just scraping by, it’s also important to point out that Mr. Raymond will not be paying his fair share of federal taxes on all that dough.  Bush’s tax cuts reduced the tax burden at that level by hundreds of thousands of dollars.  The average American, on the other hand, only saw a savings of about $15.  Is there any doubt in your mind who will be paying for our deficit in the years to come?  It certainly won’t be people like Raymond and other oil industry insiders, including Bush and Cheney, since Republicans have seen fit to cut their taxes dramatically whilst allowing them to pillage the collective U.S. pocketbook with oil prices that have surpassed unbelievability and are rapidly soaring toward scandalously outrageous.

Oh, and you can bet that hard-earned nickle you’re squeezing also will be spent to fill up your car or heat the water at home before all is said and done, and not because the market demands it; it sure as hell doesn’t demand record-breaking profits by big oil and overflowing pockets by its executives.  No, poppets, we are getting the shaft without even a reacharound to compensate.