Let me be clear and unequivocal: the price of a gallon of gasoline has nothing to do with human rights, implied or otherwise. It does have to do with human activity - greed, ignorance, complacency, decline of the frail condition that's been constructed by the master builders of American society, and fraught with contradictory proclamations. Indeed, what happened to Kansas? Who is Michael Diamond and why is his name now Clarence?
With no doubt or prejudice, but with a fair amount of derision and accusation, it should be said that complaints coming from the exurban centers of American prosperity and clean living as to the market price of gasoline are rooted in decisions. Decisions as to proximity to place of work. Decisions as to method of transport. The decision made to buy a large vehicle so that "we could have space for the kids". Decisions operate and interact in the arena of trade-offs and the architecture of cost. As the historically acceptably-sized space of American cities has been clouded and lamented by today's frontiersman's yearning for the lost masculinity that comes with chopping wood and triumphantly riding a tractor mower, the predictable (and well-documented) flight to geographies in excess of fifty miles from places of work and entertainment has worked its way into media accounts of a new lament: it's a frightened cry from the fringes of the metro.
What's lost in the frenzy to build a ceiling on the market-determined price of a commodity is the absurdity of the notion that there are enforceable human rights attached to foolish and self-serving decisions made in the absence of coercion. And that there's an "entitled" range for the price of the commodity in question; this range being ultimately not defined according to the lifestyle decisions made by the individual consumer, but rather elucidated through a pick-and-choose style of political rhetoric that is at once free market and ruggedly individualistic, then wrapped in complaint, while ironically throwing the full weight of the liberal regulatory regime behind the continued operation of an SUV along the clogged and crumbling interstate route of a 100-mile commute.
The god standing behind the American flag so spangled may or may not have laid down a set of commandments to the Justice Department, defining when and how to form a council or a task force, or whether or not to start an "investigation". But this god has been installed into the halls of power by an electorate that has overwhelmingly voted for the resident and disingenuous soothsayer. And the Republican soothsayers are not interested in price manipulation, unless it's lip service paid while leaning on the podiums of the outer-suburban town hall. You've picked anti-abortion and deficit-financing for geopolitical disaster. You've chosen to be Ayn Rand's biggest fan, in the abstract, since you don't read books; a temporary and illicit enrichment of populism, a lie which harkens back to the days when progressives in Kansas not only called for government intervention to prevent hardship (on those less fortunate and constrained in their consumer decisions by the rape of their humanity), but also took the bus.
