Gas prices 'serious' hardship for 4 in 10 Americans | News-Gazette.com

For older Americans, it's worse.

The share of seniors expressing financial hardship over gas prices hit 76 percent; it was 68 percent in March.

Gas tanks are draining family budgets - TwinCities.com

For every $10 the typical household earns before taxes, almost a full dollar now goes toward gas, a 40 percent bigger bite than normal.

Households spent an average of $369 on gas last month. In April 2009, they spent just $201. Families now spend more filling up than they spend on cars, clothes or recreation. Last year, they spent less on gasoline than each of those things.

2009: Energy Sec. Last Year: You Know What's A Swell Idea? $8 Gas! - Forums

REP. CLIFF STEARNS, R-Fla.: Last September you made a statement that somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe, which at the time exceeded $8 a gallon. As Secretary of Energy, will you speak for or against any measures that would raise the price of gasoline?

Power Line - Chu Eats Dirt

The truth is that liberals generally want higher energy prices. This is because they are either unconcerned with, or actively hostile to, economic growth. They think the world is rich enough already. (The common belief among liberals that there are too many people in the world rests on a similar foundation.) Thus, they are content to see energy prices rise, even though such increases necessarily dash the hopes of lower and middle-income Americans for greater prosperity.

The liberals who hold these views generally enjoy material circumstances consistent with their view that the world is rich enough already--for them, it is. But they know it is impossible, politically, to state clearly what they are up to--limiting the aspirations of their fellow Americans for prosperity and material success. So it is nice when, every once in a while, the truth comes out.