More Pain At The Pump: New Jersey To Make You - Gasp! - Pump Own Gas?

As we enter Day x — where ‘x’ is a variable between 3 and 14 — of the Great Media Hype About High Gas Prices Of 2006, the politicians are all working hard to make sure that we possible voters know that they, too, know gas prices are high, and they’re going to fix it.

The highlight of this so far was a this report by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, that compared how the Senators who wanted to be tough on big oil also, for the most part, drove gas guzzlers. (Also, they left several cars idling in the parking lot for periods of time. But of course.)

A little closer to home, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine is threatening to change the only thing that really made the Dirty Jerz different for all these years: You might have to pump your own gas. Or, at least, you’d be given the option to. Corzine says this proposal could save motorists about 5 to 6 cents on the gallon.

While the proposal is probably a good idea, you might be wondering how this is addressing the problem of high gas prices, when in fact it’s simply addressing the problem of, uh, having to pay people to pump your gas. Still, it seems odd to make people pump your gas, when in fact gas-pumping is one of the easier tasks for able-bodied people, right up there with self-service soda and petting a dog.

Naturally, the proposal has opponents, who are attacking everything from the aforementioned statement to State Sen. Joseph F. Vitale, who said that “[s]elf-service gas is discriminatory.” And, the move seems to actually supported by big oil companies, who would (assumedly) like to keep charging the same prices and pocket the extra pennies.

New Jersey is the only state besides Oregon that bans drivers from pumping their own gas. The chances of it joining the other 48 states in giving drivers the freedom to pump is about 1 in a million.

Corzine’s other proposal is to lower the speed limit to 55 miles per hour, which will probably be implemented right around the time when they change to the metric system and everyone’s driving hovercars.

Corzine pushes self-serve gasoline [Inky]
Going a Short Way to Make a Point [Washington Post]
Photo by Sister72