Path: csiph.com!feeder.erje.net!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!newsreader4.netcologne.de!news.netcologne.de!peer01.ams1!peer.ams1.xlned.com!news.xlned.com!peer01.am4!peer.am4.highwinds-media.com!peer02.iad!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!post02.iad!fx08.iad.POSTED!not-for-mail Content-Type: Text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: Jeff-Relf.Me @. Message-ID: References: Newsgroups: sci.physics,comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.checkmate Subject: Summer of 1979. User-Agent: Jeff-Relf.Me/X.HTM Lines: 59 X-Complaints-To: abuse@usenet-news.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 09:45:10 UTC Organization: usenet-news.net Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 02:45:05 -0700 (Seattle) X-Received-Bytes: 3369 X-Received-Body-CRC: 2654451399 Xref: csiph.com sci.physics:704640 comp.os.linux.advocacy:468839 alt.checkmate:208347 > Nixon created the best gas crisis. > His gas pump lines were the greatest. Really ?! how can you beat this (TheAtlantic.COM): In the summer of 1979, when the Iranian Revolution led to a decline in the global oil supply, OPEC announced yet another substantial price increase. Oil prices were up more than 1,000% since the start of the decade. The long lines returned. Fistfights broke out as drivers accused each other of cutting. One Brooklyn man fatally shot another in front of his pregnant wife. Ten days later, another man was stabbed to death. “One line was shorter and they both tried for that,” an officer explained. That June, Levittown, Pennsylvania, went up in flames in a gas riot with protesters chanting, “More gas, more gas!” Jimmy Carter was failing on his energy agenda. Members of Congress were “literally afraid to go home” over July 4th, noted Carter’s domestic adviser Stuart Eizenstat, for fear of encountering “angry constituents.” More than half of states enacted odd-even rationing laws, which designated the day a person could fill up based on the last digit of his license plate — that is, if supplies were available. Carter did not give up. .... He told Americans they had to drive less, carpool more, and use public transportation. .... The speech didn’t work. Carter’s approval ratings continued to plummet. Conservation did not seem to be what most Americans wanted. And Americans blamed Washington for the panic at the pump. “Carter, Kiss My Gas,” became a popular bumper sticker. .... Shortly before leaving office, Carter persuaded Congress to enact the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which protected vast amounts of land from becoming sites of oil exploration and production. .... As the novelist John Updike wrote in Rabbit Is Rich, the nation was “running out of gas”; knew “the Great America Ride is ending.” Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, had a very different vision of energy policy. “First we must decide that ‘less’ is not enough,” Reagan said on the campaign trail. “Next we must remove government obstacles to energy production. … It is no program simply to say ‘use less energy.’”