The taxes have contributed in paving the way for what are record high or near record high gas prices.

To update Thursday's blog post, High Gas Taxes has been added to my accounts of Boutique Gasoline Blends and Oil as a Commodity as an additional contributor to the high price of gasoline at the pump.

Boutique Gasoline Blends: Refineries, as mandated, must follow through for each region of the country by shifting from winter-grade to summer-grade fuel. The Chicago region must comply to its own gasoline boutique blend. The winter to summer switch started in1995 as part of the Reformulated Gasoline Program (RFG), established though the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments as ordered by the EPA, to reduce pollution and smog during the summer ozone season, June 1 to Sept.15. 

Summer grade gasoline is more expensive to produce because of the ingredients it must contain which requires refineries to shut down briefly before the new blend of fuel can be produced.

Oil as a Commodity: The government prefers a weak dollar and is doing nothing to strengthen or to stabilize it. As a commodity, the cost of oil hasn't gone up, but as the dollar loses value more dollars are needed to buy the same amount of oil .  The gold market goes hand-in-hand with the dollar's worth. As the cost of gold rises, the dollar weakens. As the cost of gold drops, the value of the dollar rises. 

The U.S. government, by flooding the marketplace through printing $2 trillion worth of extra dollars, has made the money at our disposal worth less. This accounts for rising food prices at the supermarket and elsewhere.

High gas taxes: In Illinois, there is a 19 cent per gallon tax on gas, a 21.5 cent per gallon tax on diesel, and other taxes of 31.6 cents which includes a 6.25 percent sales tax calculated off the retail price less federal and state excise taxes and a $0.003 per gallon tax for an underground storage tank fund, and other local sales and gasoline taxes.

Might a one-year moratorium be wise to declare on the federal gas tax and on other state gas taxes that don't have to do with the issue of safety on the roadways in order to ease the burden on the American people, many of whom are spending all or much of their discretionary income on filling up at the pump? An incident that took place today prompted me to add the following thoughts to was to have been a limited additional blog post about the high price of gasoline.

An incident happened Thursday that prompted me to write more than I had planned to do.

In Part 2 of my three-part blog series on high gasoline prices (Obama claims oil part of Energy Policy), I touched upon the controversy over ending government oil subsidies to big oil companies. 

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, an ardent supporter and co-sponsor of the "Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act," was rebuffed on a 51-47 procedural vote in the Democratic-controlle... in the Rose Garden to end the $4 billion in tax subsidies to oil companies. A two-thirds vote was needed to proceed.

Two Republicans -- Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both from Maine -- crossed party lines and vorted to repeal the tax breaks. Four Democrats -- Senators Mark Begich (Alaska), Mary Landrieu (La.),. Ben Nelso (Neb.) and Jim Webb (Va.) -- voted against the bill. 

President Obama, in his Rose Garden speech, asked whether Congress would stand with the big oil companies or with the American people. 

But what about the nature of oil subsidies which have been seemingly maligned to convince the American people that oil companies no longer need subsidies (tax payer money) because they are pulling in record profits. 

President Obama stated in his Rose Garden speech March 29 that the $4 billion (subsidies) could be put to better use on alternative energy investments.

Who is President Obama kidding after the bankruptcy of much-publicized Solyndra and countless other boondoggle green investments where countless millions of taxpayer dollars have already been lost! 

Not understood by many is that subsidies really refer to tax rates. Oil companies receive the same tax rates as do other companies to help facilitate more oil supply, such as encountered by the very costly process of exploring for oil. Oil companies taxes amount to 40 cents of every dollar earned. Apple, in contrast, is taxed 20 cents for every dollar earned.  

Mr. President, if you are so opposed to oil company subsidies (tax breaks) when oil companies are already paying what seems like a fair share ..., why then is your administration subsidizing oil drilling in Brazil?

Even if the $4 billion in subsidies were taken away from oil companies, most experts agree that the tax incentives in question don't have much effect on gasoline prices, one way or the other. 

Wrote Stephen Brown, a professor of economics at the University of ... "The impact would be extremely small.  If the subsidies were cut, the average person would spend, at most, just over $2 more each year on petroleum products."

I

t's about time Democrats took a stand against President Obama by keeping in place oil subsidies (tax breaks), which will prevent Obama from following through with his plan to invest the saved $4 billion of oil subsidies in additional unprofitable and unproven green energy ventures. 

Oil is not a thing of the past. It is of the present and the future. It's an organic, a natural, and a proven source of energy.

Really, Mr. President, might you truthfully inform the American people if there is really room in your Energy Policy for oil and for that other important fossil fuel, coal, when only several days ago your EPA mandated new rules and regulations that will doom coal-fired electricity plants, as was noted in an article several days ago by Jordan Weiss, "Did t...