Today in Patronage County, everybody was filling up his gas tank to avoid the holiday price hikes this week, and our three Cost-Conscious County Commissioners were complaining about the high price of gasoline these days.

“Why do they always raise gasoline prices before a holiday?” asked Commissioner Filch.

“It’s a tradition,” said Commissioner Swindle. “Clueless Consumers expect gas prices to rise, so when they do, they grumble about it as they pay it.”

“According to a recent study, gasoline price hikes are a function of wholesale prices, not greed as some may suspect,” added Commissioner Pilfer.

“That survey was probably paid for by the Gas Price Gougers of America,” said Swindle. “Have you seen the gas prices in Kentucky these days?”

“For the first time in three years, the average price of gasoline in Northern Kentucky is more than $4 per gallon. The price is more than 20 cents a gallon higher than the average price across the Ohio River in Southwest Ohio,” Filch explained.

“And the national average price of a gallon of gas is about 20 cents higher than it was a year ago,” Swindle said. “You can thank Obama’s Feckless Foreign Policy for keeping our energy costs unaffordably high.”

“But that still doesn’t explain why gasoline prices always seem to increase right before a holiday,” Pilfer said.

“That’s easy. Oil companies raise their prices for the same reason dogs lick themselves, Swindle concluded. “Because they can!”

This op-ed column never appeared at any time in the feisty Mt. Washington Press personally edited by eminently renowned publisher Dennis Nichols