Free Republic

One-third of Americans have changed their Fourth of July plans due to high gas prices, an Emerson College Poll released Friday found. The survey, taken June 28-29 among 1,271 registered voters, found that 33 percent have actively changed their travel plans this holiday weekend due to consistently high gas prices. “Regarding airfare, 18% have changed plans because of issues with plane travel,” the survey found. The results come as gas prices remain high, standing at an average of $4.842 on Friday after reaching an all-time high of $5.016 on June 14. Even so, gas prices are still well over $2.40...

But Obama is one of their own. So too, one would assume, are Chrissy Teigen, Steven Colbert, John Legend, Don Cheadle and "Real Housewives of Atlanta" star Kim Fields, who, as the New York Times tell us, "was photographed flying into the island." As the Times would gingerly report, "Democrats supportive of the former president privately expressed surprise at the casual disregard for optics and wondered why it took until just days before the party for Mr. Obama to change course." The "optics" in question, however, dealt exclusively with COVID. The Times would seem to have missed the real story....

President Obama scolded “those of you who are buying gas-guzzlers” during remarks about clean energy at the North American leaders’ summit in Canada on Wednesday. Obama said he viewed the clean energy sector as an “enormous opportunity.” The United States, Canada, and Mexico made a pledge to use clean energy sources to generate half of their electric power by 2025. Chuckling, Obama warned that oil was a “finite resource.” “Oil is cheap right now, but it’s not going to be cheap,” Obama said. “I’ve said this before. Those of you who are buying gas-guzzlers, I’m telling you, because it is...

A vacationing U.S. President Barack Obama accused Congress on Saturday of holding back the U.S. economic recovery by blocking "common sense" measures he said would create jobs and help growth. In remarks recorded on Wednesday on his campaign-style bus tour in Illinois and aired during his holiday in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, Obama said the stalled construction, trade and payroll tax bills could give a boost to the economy. "The only thing preventing us from passing these bills is the refusal by some in Congress to put country ahead of party. That's the problem right now. That's what's holding this country...

With news that Congress has passed its ballyhooed $1 billion “Cash for Clunkers” bill, we feel compelled to voice our skepticism about the program. Here’s the bill in a nutshell: Buyers of new vehicles between July 1 and November 1 will be given a voucher for $3500 if they forfeit a post-1984 car or truck that has been registered for at least one year and has a combined fuel economy rating at least 4 mpg lower than their new vehicle. The voucher grows to $4500 if the increase in fuel economy is 10 mpg or higher. The old car or...

At a time when many Los Angeles County residents are grappling with the squeeze of an economic downturn, dozens of top county government officials are tooling around in "unjustified luxury vehicles" costing taxpayers as much as $50,000 each. More than 1,400 county workers are given take-home cars, even though some don't have official authorization to drive them, and at least 30 employees aren't paying the required taxes on the vehicles. Meanwhile, county employees were involved in 1,852 accidents in their take-home vehicles over the past few years - with 830 accidents in 2005-06 alone that cost taxpayers $6.7 million. The...

....I thought one of the points of having [a hybrid] was you couldn't go out there and burn up a lot of gasoline and get lousy miles per gallon statistics and so forth and so on. His sister picked him up in a Maserati. A V8 400-horsepower Maserati took Algore III home.

The religion of the left seems to be environmentalism, and the everyone knows what happens when religious figures on the right are exposed as hypocrites. Ted Haggard, Jim Baker and others have claimed to stand for one thing and privately lived a life that conflicted with their stated beliefs, and the media covered it non-stop. In contrast, the media ignore that the darling of the Democratic presidential candidates has again been nailed as an environmental hypocrite. Barack Obama was outed as an SUV driver in 2006, who said at the same time, "the blame for the world's higher temperature rests...

Fatter drivers cause increase in gasoline consumption, says study Being overweight isn't just bad for your health. New research suggests that America's obesity epidemic is also feeding the growth in U.S. fuel consumption. Americans are pumping almost 940 million more gallons of gas into their vehicles than they did in 1960 because the average American is roughly two dozen pounds heavier. That amounts to $2.8 billion more spent on gas each year, if gas is selling for $3 a gallon. So says a new study from researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Virginia Commonwealth University. Researchers used...

Assembly Bill 2791 would penalize SUV and minivan drivers in California This bill establishes a program, developed and administered by the Air Resources Board (ARB), to provide discounts of up to $2,500 to buyers of new cars that emit relatively low amounts of greenhouse gases and air pollutants and to impose a surcharge of up $2,500 on buyers on new cars that emit relatively high volumes of these gases and pollutants. . . Bill George from wedrivecalifornia.com was on the show at 4:00 to discuss the proposed new law.

No gas hogs in LaLa Land ROWLAND NETHAWAY Senior editor Californians are strutting about congratulating themselves for their new state law requiring higher automobile fuel efficiency. They believe that California's new state law will force car manufacturers to stop producing gas-guzzling vehicles responsible for global warming. The logic behind the new law requiring greater fuel efficiency from car manufacturers is a faith-based belief that the automobile industry is involved in a giant conspiracy to deny the public fuel-efficient cars. Ford, General Motors and the other car manufacturers, according to these anti-big business addicts, have the secret to 300-miles-per-gallon internal...