Gas hits $5.30 in rural areas; nationalization or breakup needed

When you see stories like this, something has to be done.

The cost of gasoline in some rural American areas (especially in the West) has now reached $5.30 a gallon. This is of special annoyance because some communities don't even have utilities (let alone public transport), so they have to use gasoline and diesel in generators that power their homes. And they have to use more gas in their cars because the closest shops might be miles away.

Rural areas are much poorer than America's vast suburban expanses anyway, so it hits especially hard. While people in urban areas of New York and New Jersey spend as little 2.05% of their income on gas, folks in rural areas spend as much as 16.02%.

This issue is much more serious than a lot of people think. If people can't afford gas, they end up neglecting their medical and even dietary needs.

We long ago reached the point where nationalizing or breaking up the oil industry is our best option. I know the U.S. doesn't have as much oil as some countries that are a fraction of its size, but it has refineries and oil corporations. Thus it certainly is possible to nationalize. What's going on is really a form of exploitation - which is what led Mexico to institute nationalization.

But with so much consolidation in the oil industry, which has contributed to the high prices, perhaps the Justice Department should force a breakup of the industry before trying anything else. It happened once before, in the early automobile era, so why not now?

Communities today can't survive on gas that's $4 or $5 a gallon. They just can't, so action has to be taken now.

(Source: http://www.wbir.com/news/national/story.aspx?src=nletter-news&storyid=60313&catid=16&source=nletter)