Hurricane Katrina, Part Deux

I guess what really gets me about the situation is who will suffer because of it. The people who are really going to take the hit down where it happened are the poor people; the ones without insurance, without transportation, and currently, without income. The rich and the middle class will mostly be OK and they'll be educated enough to know where to go to get money for the damage. The people who will be hurt in the rest of the country as a result are also the poor. Sure gas prices are higher for everyone, but the poor pay a higher percentage of their earnings for essentials and essentials are about to get more expensive.

One oil pipeline is down right now because of a power outage the oil companies couldn't be bothered to plan for. That pipeline goes to the east coast and will likely affect the delivery schedule there. I'm in the midwest but I just paid $2.999 per gallon for gas. So, since the east coast can't get fresh oil, Iowa has higher gas prices? I know they're also going to have to repair quite a bit of damage to some off-shore rigs and that means that they are going to raise prices to make up for it but I think they're glad to profit from something like this. What it means to the rest of the country is that the higher fuel costs will result in higher transportation costs for everything we buy and that's going to hurt the people who can least afford it the most.

I know that New Orleans wasn't hit directly by the hurricane, and I know they just had a little flooding really. I've also been to New Orleans, and It's a really neat place. I don't want to live there or be there during a tropical storm of any kind, but it's a neat place to visit. I know I sounded harsh when I said that it was a bad idea to move to where tropical storms ravish the countryside every year, but it's true. The people who were born there on the other hand have less of a say in the matter. I can spare a little sympathy for people who are having their entire life history flattened.

There is a culture and a feel to those regions that would be completely lost if everyone moved out and I think that it would be missed. I know that many places have bans on building new buildings in areas that have been flooded in recent history. I don't know if these areas have them, but I think it's something to think about. I would still feel bad that people who have lived there all their lives had to move farther out and we'd loose a lot of very valuable land to flooding but it would make a nice park. We'd also loose a lot of farmland to forced sprawl, but a lot of farmers are going to have a hard time this year because of higher fuel costs, so maybe they'll be looking for a new job anyway. I don't mean that to sound harsh, I just want to think it could be made convenient for everyone concerned.

Anyway, I said I was tired of hearing about Katrina and here I go with more about Katrina. Let's try something else shall we?

As I said earlier, I filled my tank at $2.999 per gallon today. The regular unleaded (87 octane) was going for $3.099 at the same station. What's interesting about many of the places I've filled my tank is that the 10% ethanol blend fuels have been the middle grade fuels and been cheaper. It makes sense that ethanol fortified fuel would have a higher octane rating because ethanol has a higher octane rating than octane. What I find unique is that it's almost always 10 cents cheaper per gallon. I'm guessing that it's subsidized because it's an earth-friendly fuel additive that's made domestically and they're trying to get people to buy more of it, but I'm thrilled because, living in Minnesota, all my gasoline contains 10% ethanol anyway so, while the prices are pretty bad, I still get a little break.

Since MiPod has been dead for most of this trip, I've been listing to a lot of radio. I haven't been able to find a lot of college radio, but I've found the occasional NPR affiliate, and there's almost always some sort of hard rock station within range. The best part about hard rock is that, because I have to switch stations frequently due to my rate of travel, even if I'm starting to get a weak signal and getting some static, it's OK because it sounds a lot like the music they're playing. I mean with hard rock, it's not so much a mater of signal-to-noise as it is noise-to-other-noise.

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