Can somebody explain what the H is going on with gas prices. Yes, they are lower than they were and I should be soooo happy and grateful!

But oil barrel prices peaked at $147 a barrel and the most I paid in California was $4.97 a gallon for REGULAR leaded gasoline. (Taxes are included at this point CaliforniaGasolinePrices.com

Barrel prices have gone as low as $32 or so and I have paid as little as $1.79 per gallon of regular gasoline in California.

But since December low barrel prices have fluctuated between $32 and $45. But gasoline is up to $2.27 for regular today 2/7/09 (According to Bloomberg: WTI Cushing Spot is $40.17/barrel. Spot is what we pay today not for the future price (Nymex Crude Future), which by the way is currently priced at $40.17—the same)

So, help me out here, we will round off and use simple numbers and calculations to be able to do this in our heads.

The price of a barrel of Oil at its high was $147 which translated into $4.97 / gallon gasoline prices (what I paid for it.)

If the price of a barrel of oil goes go down in half, say to $75/barrel, then the price of gasoline should be cut in half—to say $2.50 a gallon. Makes sense.

And by that rationale if $75/barrel price goes go down in half again to $37.50 (which it did and then some) the price of gasoline should be cut in half again—to say $1.25 a gallon.

Well, that certainly didn’t happen, of course you have to consider that the state and government taxes add around $0.64 per gallon which includes federal excise taxes of $0.18 per gallon! Taxes are a pretty significant addition and is overlooked when we start looking at how much big oil is making…

What’s interesting to me at the moment is that from the recent low of $1.79 (including tax) when barrel prices were $35, to now when barrel prices are fluctuating between $35 and $45 and gasoline is fluctuating between $2.10 and $2.27 for regular. So I’m saying (speculating) that the service stations who have claimed to be the innocent victims of gasoline price outrage only making a measly 5 cents per gallon are playing around with the margin of about 35 cents. Raising the prices immediately in step with oil barrel prices and then lagging behind to reduce the prices when oil barrel prices go down.

I am taking into account that the supply purchased needs to be recovered before the change is reflected into the price at the pump.

I’m thinking that the sheeple are so happy we’re not paying $5 a gallon that they are willing to overlook the small potatoes.

I say we are getting bent-over at the pump and we need to scream over it! I say the governement taking 64 cents for every gallon sold of every car, boat, motorcycle, lawnmower, etc is very wrong!

The government is taxing gasoline at almost 40% with gas prices of $2.27! Are you telling me that this is okay? And California is billions of dollars in the deficit hole! How many gallons of gasoline are sold in california in a day? How much tax revenue is collected in a day? Where is all that money going?

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Other Articles:

Gas prices drive up sales tax revenue in state

Higher gas prices mean increased tax revenue for California

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Additional information:

A Primer on Gasoline Prices

Gasoline Wikipedia

Current Gas Prices and Price History

Why Gas Prices Rise as the Dollar Falls

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Other Voices:

Why Gas Prices are Rising Again

Pros puzzled by gas prices

Gasoline Prices Revisited

Technorati Tags: explanations, Gasoline prices, Government, News, Oil Prices, Op/Ed, Politics, revenue, Taxes

The answer is here and obvious! FeenX Gallery!

Have you been to FeenX Gallery lately?

New look, new design, new feel. Same great quality art, photo’s, books, and cards! From all over the country all over the world!

Art is a gift that will last a lifetime and can be passed down from generation to generation…

Choosing Art can be a personal thing, give the gift of art by letting the receiver make the choice! Gift certificate packaging is a gift itself—very impressive!

I personally shop at FeenX Gallery all the time!

—iChef Retail

FeenX Gallery is also a sponsor of Irascible Chef, but this is not a paid advertisement.

Technorati Tags: America, Art, Books, Cards, China, Feenx Gallery, holiday shopping, Italy, Phil Ribaudo, Photography, USA

Oil three (2 spot and 1 future) oil prices that I watch are now all below $70 a barrel! Hello! A barrel of oil is in the $60’s!

Why am I still paying $3.59 a gallon?

Barrel price was more than twice as high and the price of gas was $5 a gallon! Should a gallon of gas now cost at least half of that???

What the hell is going on? Gouging—that’s what!

Technorati Tags: advantage, Barrel/Gallon, Gouging, Oil Prices, prices going lower

Questions that still remain:

• Why aren’t gas prices half of what they used to be if the price of oil is half of what it used to be? Oil was at $147 gasoline was $5. Why is gasoline still$3.69 a gallon?
• Now that gasoline is falling will we still be as fast to move on alternative fuel sources? Will we have the wherewithal to get off the juice? Or find our own juice and get off our dependency of foreign providers and become oil independent?
• Will energy independence be a priority or not?

We’re talking about National security!

—iChef Retail

Technorati Tags: alternative fuel sources, Donald Trump, energy independence, falling, national security, Oil Prices, —iChef Retail

Maybe you can change the world with words and a network! IrascibleChef makes things happen! Like Santa Claus, he knows when you are naughty or nice! He will put coal in your stocking if you’re not careful! Safeway didn’t like the lump of coal they got based on the the IrascibleChef’s visit to their deli section last week!

The first and second step have been taken, let’s see where they go!

Dear Valued Customer:

Thank you for your recent correspondence regarding the Deli Department of your local Safeway store.

You expressed your concern regarding the level of service that you received at the Deli Department. We sincerely apologize for any blah blah blah you may have encountered. Safeway continuously weighs options to provide the highest quality blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Blah, blah blah. Thank you again for your patience in this matter.

If you would like to discuss this further, please blah blah blah blah to this email or call our free number at 1-877-723-3929. One of our associates will be happy to blah blah blah blah.

We appreciate your blah blah blah blah blah blah. Thank you for shopping at Safeway.

Sincerely,
Customer Service Center

We shall see how sorry they really are! See, they use the word may, as if they may not have… which makes me think not very sorry! I wrote a pretty lengthy in depth review and they still aren’t sure if I did in fact encounter a problem.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience you may have encountered.

I’ll let you know! You know I will…

—iChef Retail

Technorati Tags: Customer Service, iChef, iChef Retail, Review, Safeway

WHa happen?

Those who know me, know that this cannot possibly be a serious question. The answer is never, as in, never-ever-ever!

Goes down like this, the automatic clothes dryer’s “Stainless Steel” drum gets a tear in it. Let me be more specific: a 2004 LG Super-Dooper expensive ($800) (my bad, $1100) dryer’s “Stainless Steel” drum gets a tear in it and needs to be repaired! Thank goodness for the home owners home shield insurance that covers such disasters!

Mr. Fix-it shows up and the conversation goes something like this:
Mr. Fix-it: “Lets get the money out of the way first, that will be $60 for the service call. Then I can start.”
Me: *I felt dirty like it was some sort of pay for play scenario* “do you take credit cards?”
Mr. Fix-it: *what am I a prostitute?* “no, cash or check.”
Me: “Do you have change for $100?”
Mr. Fix-it: “I only have $39 in change”—of course he does.
Me: *If I only had $59 would he do the job? He should at least give me a kiss if he’s going to be short a dollar!*
Mr. Fix-it: *What is this guy waiting for? I’m not going to kiss him.* “I have change in the car.”

After the money was exchanged for service, I was off in the corner smoking, he was fiddling with the dryer. Mr. Fix-it tells me he’s never seen such a thing before, it’s cheaply built he says. I say the dryer actually cost A LOT of money! He says, I’m sure it did, still cheaply made, that’s the way it is these days.
Great!

Bottom line—repair needs to be pre-approved by the insurance company! What? I already paid the monthly bill and the co-pay service fee and it might not be approved? He left without giving me the dollar—didn’t even mention it!

Relax, it’s only a dollar—Fuck! A minute later there is a knock at the door—Mr. Fix-it back with the 4 quarters. Thank you! Very nice man and was very helpful!

Okay what does this have to do with Barbra Streisand? Well, today I had some laundry to do and no clothes dryer to do it with! Old school, hang the clothes on the clothesline, or on the clothes hanging contraption thingy.

Those were the days my friend...

How do you dry clothes on a clothesline? (I should post the instructions on eHow.com)
First you have to shake each piece of wet laundry and try to balance the clothes evenly so as not to knock over the contraption. Clothespins, I have to give it up to, because clothespins are a nifty invention that still works! The idea of hanging clothes on a line to dry is simple enough; the clothes bake in the summertime sun and dry in the ever so gentle breeze. They do this on their own! Can you imagine? No rumbling in the dryer, no gas and or electric needed to be paid for, no carbon emissions contributing to the planet’s fever… Which everyone knows the prescription—more cowbell!

When the day is almost done you go back out pull your clothes done one piece at a time, fold it and stack it in your basket—done!
You get a sense of the old homestead, real housework, the way it used to be done, the way I did it as a kid, and this weird peaceful tranquility—the kind of mindless tranquility that reminds me of ironing.

Hanging does take a little extra time, a little more effort and the clothes aren’t so soft and fluffy, but hell it’s better for everyone isn’t it? Maybe if you only have to do one or two loads in a couple of weeks time—maybe!

This is the Barbra Streisand part, she told us a couple of years ago this is what we all needed to do to save the planet. (prescription=more cowbell) There’s just something wrong with BS telling us the way we all should do things. You certainly know she’s not personally hanging up her freshly cleaned dirty panties for the gentle breeze to blow through and the entire world to see. I would even bet she’s not having her hired help (you know, the people doing the work that Americans won’t do) do it either.

Could Barbra Streisand be right? Of course not, but I thought it might be fun to think about it for a second. Hypocrites of the world—Kiss my ass!

Anyway, I had a good day hanging, drying, and folding the fresh clean air smelling clothes right off the line. Great experience—I did do it that way as a child. I think it was a way to save money when the weather was right. Maybe next week I try washing the clothes in a bucket or with a rock and a washboard.

Plunge and scrub and if it’s still dirty, you plunge and scrub some more!

Or, maybe not…

Technorati Tags: barbra streisand, Customer Service, Dryer, iChef, iChef PSA, iChef Retail, laundry, mr. fix-it, old fashioned

New owners doing their best to run service into the ground

Sometimes when you find a place, a little hole in the wall place, a place you can count on time and time again—it’s the right price, located in the right place even includes free parking and free Internet, you take for granted that it will always be this place. But nothing is forever… and once it stops being that place, it’s hard for it to ever recover. Because once trust is betrayed there is forever doubt…

This is a story of such a place that betrayed our trust. And because they made it so miserable for us, challenging us by saying things like, “tell whoever you want, we never want for business!” we would like to remind people that such betrayers of trust are defiantly out there! They think we the people are powerless against them and their poor service, that we don’t have choices, that our voices won’t be heard nor our warnings heeded! This event happened to us in 2006—I told you don’t cross us! We’ll tell the world about it!

1 of 5 stars
iChef Mindimer
South Bay
Oct 17, 2006
4/4 found this review helpful

The person I stayed with here has been staying here for a dozen years at least. It’s perfect for coming up from the South Bay and dining around this amazing neighborhood for the weekend.

However, the ownership changed three months ago, and after our first night with the new people, we will never go back. They are rude, combative, and let the cleaning staff steal whatever is left behind. I went back for something and was actually told that there was nothing they could do if the cleaning staff had been by. Of course, my item was missing and the owner just shrugged.

Our toilet didn’t flush, our door didn’t lock, and our things were stolen. All of these things were our fault according to the management. They told us to come get a plunger, just shut the door tightly, and tough luck for leaving anything behind.

When we said we’d be writing a review on my site, he said go ahead. He didn’t care that he’d lose loyal customers because, “We never lack business.”

Tips/Secrets: — Don’t leave anything behind–management does not care that the cleaning staff will steal rather than turn in objects left behind. Terrible service and refusal to correct problems—arguing is futile!

Would I recommend this hotel to my best friend?
no way! Not even to people I don’t like!

So as Howard Beale exhorts to the viewers to get angry with society, I plead with you: Go to the windows and shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

FOUND! The PowerPoint slide show of this event that we showed in board meetings on poor customer service—Customer Service Hell!

Technorati Tags: bad hotel, Customer Service, iChef, phil tour, san francisco

(in my calculations of gas future costs I planned on $5 a gallon gas in the next couple of years, to which one of my colleagues chortled, “feeling a little bullish on gas prices are you?” This from a man who drives a V-8 Audi Super-Guzzler…) Well, I felt like gas prices will be there in the next couple of years anyway. And besides there’s no reason in the World that prices will be coming down anytime soon when so much money is being made from the something that costs no more to pull out of the ground then it did in the last few years… I believe it costs Saudi Arabia $2-3 per barrel—at current figures $137/barrel. $134 profit per barrel. What’s the percentage of profit here?!?!! Mother…

Not where I wanted to go. Okay, let me just say no one is chortling now except for you know them—Saudi Arabia and the US Government who makes more on taxes on gasoline than the profit by big oil over the last 10 years… I digress again. I am sorry. No, don’t drill here! No, don’t have new refineries here! No, don’t open more nuclear power plants! No! No! No! No! Don’t do that! Just complain that we have to defend a region of the world that’s crazy messed up because WE ALL USE too much oil from those foreign places when we do have an option right here! I am sorry for that.

The car. I wanted a Prius, but the extra expense of that car does not make economic sense even at $5 gas and 120,000 miles… Too damned expensive! The Honda Hybrid—Too freaken small and ugly!!!! Nice looking, little more room, less expensive alternatives—Too far away from today!

There it was roomy, stylish, decent mpg(—better than my current car), different, cool, and reasonably priced! The 2008 Scion XB!

Haggle-free, only one price regardless where you buy it anywhere in the country… Part Two coming soon…

Technorati Tags: auto, iChef Retail

Technorati Tags: audi, car repair, Customer Service