By Sean Sullivan Lagniappe columnist

OK, I just got done re-reading the Bill of Rights, and as always it was a great read. On this read through I was looking for something specific, not just the general patriotic zeal I take from this document. I was looking for the expressed right to buy gas for less than $2 a gallon.

Oddly I didn’t find it. I found no reference to a guarantee that gas should be affordable for “working Americans.” By the way, what’s with the working Americans phrase? The richest people I know are “working Americans” and seem to work as much as they succeed.

To stay comparable to the time period in which the Bill was written, I searched for guarantees in the price of hay or oats or other transportation fuels of the day, and there are none. Our founding fathers, while establishing many rights that would be the foundation to our great country, did not guarantee the price of fuel.

Of course I found this shocking after watching a couple weeks of news stories with some slack jaw standing at the gas pump telling the television reporter that “the government better do something quick about the price of gas.” If you follow the common sentiment these days, we need a parental government force to come in and set an artificial price for our fuel. That train of thought makes as much sense as letting Patrick Kennedy start driving D.C. school buses.

Let me wax rhetorical for a second here; when were we guaranteed cheap gas and at what price is gas cheap?

Another term that seems to be a conjoined twin to “working Americans” is the term “fixed income.” I’ve watched a couple of news stories about the effect of rising gas prices on people with “fixed incomes.” Who are these fixed income people? The way I see it, it’s the majority of us. I know what my next pay check will be, do you? If you do then you’re on a fixed income. I’m on a fixed income like 90 percent of Americans, so throw that flawed term away … news jockeys.

When we get to the root of the subject, the price of gas has risen too quickly an has caught the attention of the people who have then caught the attention of their elected representatives, but just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s the government’s job to come in and fix it.

Now that you think that I’m the most out of touch American since Tucker Carlson and his stupid bow tie, let me say the price of a gallon of gas chafes my ass! The only difference is that I don’t want mommy and daddy Federal government fixing the problem for us. I want options; I want a real free market when it comes to energy choices. For example ethanol. Seventeen years ago, I spent a few weeks in Kenya and even back then they were using this alternate fuel in equatorial Africa. In a country that couldn’t prevent ivory poachers from hijacking and killing tourist in the bush and could barley provide electricity intermittently to its biggest cities, they did have the foresight to offer more than one fuel source for motor vehicles.

When I left Kenya that was the last of I heard of ethanol until last year. Ethanol, hybrid cars and fuel conservation are ways of reducing our dependence on gasoline and a way to temper the market price for said fuel. To us the consumers and to the overbearing state and federal government, let’s use the power of the free market and not government controls t reduce the price of energy.

I see a bright future of alternate fuels and vehicle engines that get 100 miles to the gallon. The problem is that even then, I see somebody with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a case of beer in the back seat wedged between the baby seat and the Play Station complaining about the price of ethanol and how that effects those on a fixed income.

Sean Sullivan is Lagniappe lagniappe columnist. Contact him at ssullivan@lagniappemobile.com.

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