Price gouging, had it with traffic, Katrina

There is a convenience store in our area that basically has a monopoly. They tried to use this monopoly to price gouge it’s customers this week. Everyone predicts that gas prices are going to go up in the next week or so because of the impact from Katrina. However this gas station thought they would begin profiting from the disaster immediately. On Monday the cost of unleaded was $2.64, on Tuesday these bastards raised the price 25 cents to $2.89 a gallon. Obviously their cost didn’t go up overnight yet they raised their prices 10% overnight to pad their pockets. I went ballistic when I saw it. When I got to work I immediately went to the attorney general web site and reported the price gouging. On the way home from work, even though I needed gas, I bypassed the store and instead dumped gas into the car from a 5 gallon gas container I had in the garage for the generator. This morning on the way to work the price had magically dropped back to $2.67. F those jerks, I will avoid buying gas there like the plague if possible.

Speaking of the drive into work, today was again record setting. It took me 41 minutes to reach the first traffic light, a distance of 2 miles. The entire commute took 98 minutes. This was with us leaving our driveway at 6:29 AM!! The dump trucks are a big part of it but I also realized that the traffic light timing at that intersection was overwhelmingly biased towards the traffic turning ONTO the backlogged road instead of the traffic already sitting in the backlog. So I sent want is becoming my daily email to transportation officials about the stupid light timing and demanding that the dump truck start times are pushed back to what they were. I will continue complaining louder and louder until something is done, I can’t use an adjective to describe how annoying it is to be greeted by this mess every morning.

The Katrina aftermath instead of getting better each day seems to be worsening. New Orleans seems to be unraveling into a state of lawlessness and the flooding is horrific. I was talking to Ali about in the long run whom is better off in terms of recovery. I think in some ways the people that had their homes totally destroyed will be better off than the ones whose homes will be sitting in flood waters for days or weeks. Imagine trying to repair all the water damage that will be there, the house will have to be gutted and redone basically and even then you could have lingering problems. At least the homes that got smashed will be starting fresh. Plus homes that are knocked down are covered under hurricane policies, houses sitting in flood waters are not covered by hurricane policies and unless the homeowner had separate flood insurance they are SOL. Anyway you look at it, it is going to go down in history and be a storm that is talked about when I am old and gray.