$300

I was working in Quicken tonight entering some receipts and decided after entering in a frightening receipt for puchasing gas for my car today (and I didn't even begin to fill up) to see how our gas expenses compared to this time last year.

For the first four months of 2008 (and April isn't over!) we've spent a whopping $1739 on fuel for our two vehicles.
For the first four months of 2007 we spent $1426.

For comparison sake I went back to 2002, the first full year we lived in our current house, which would make the distance we drive to town and work roughly the same. Taking into account I personally didn't make as many trips back and forth to take kids to school, etc. it is still a SHOCKING difference. In the first four months of that year we spent less than $300 on gas. I subtotalled our fuel expenses for the last 7 years by year, and you can see it creeping up year by year, until the last couple of years, when it began to shoot up really quickly.

Does the current administration understand that their cozy relationships with the oil companies, and their failure to be advocates of middle and poor Americans is making it almost impossible for the average lower-income (and many middle income) workers to even GET to work?

My contempt for them cannot be measured.