Stories

Gas prices are clearly affecting  small-town motorists’ decisions to hit the road as driving on rural interstates fell 7 percent over the last year, reports the Center for Rural Strategies’ Daily Yonder Web site.
High gas prices and a generally spooky economy have curtailed Americans’ driving this summer, across Yonder most of all.
The Federal Highway Administration, [...]

The Daily Yonder — the Web site of the Center For Rural Strategies — reports that its rural stock index outperformed other major indexes in the last year:
In the last year stocks of rural-based companies that benefit from high energy and farm commodity prices have soared. In the last several weeks, however, those same companies [...]

As Republicans and Democrats debate whether the Texas oil man in the White House or the San Francisco liberal with the gavel in the U.S. House of Representatives is to blame for high gas prices, one senator is rejecting the premise of the dispute.

U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, tells the Omaha World-Herald that gas prices are the top issue with his constituents in the western swath of the Hawkeye State.
“There’s no question it’s the No. 1 issue,” said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.
King said he represents thousands of rural constituents who use a gallon or more of gas every [...]

A statewide radio ad focusing on his plans to lower gas and energy prices was released today by the campaign of incumbent U.S. Rep. Tom Latham.
The 60-second ad, which is the first mass media buy of the 2008 4th District congressional campaign, discusses Latham’s view that Congress needs to work immediately to increase domestic energy [...]

U.S. Rep. Tom Latham says his party can capture the gas-price issue in the fall. What’s more, he said the GOP is standing on the right side of history with what he believes is a tide-changing troop surge in Iraq. Latham, who represents Iowa’s sweeping 4th congressional district that runs from the Minnesota border down to the Des Moines area, faces Democrat Becky Greenwald of Perry in November.

Carroll Mayor Jim Pedelty takes a broad historical view of the dynamics associated with rising gas prices.

“We have seen a gutless energy policy over the last 35 years,” Pedelty said.

That goes for both federal and state government, the mayor says.

As the city adapts to higher prices, Pedelty said, the local fallout could have been prevented [...]

A new poll from Ipsos Public Affairs shows that when gas hits $4 a gallon 74 percent of Americans change driving habits. That jumps to 85 percent for $5 a gallon — a figure some analysts believe is possible.

Here are results of the Ipsos Poll:

Among those who have changed their driving, the median gas price [...]

[Commentary] U.S. Rep. Steve King is behaving like Rodney Dangerfield's character in “Caddyshack.”
He so desperately wants to be in the country club crowd that he’s willing to say anything, do the bidding of the cocktail-and-croquet crowd, just to get into the front doors of the aptly named Bushwood (the name of the club in the 1980 movie).
King will [...]

In an a news conference in LeMars Saturday with Iowa Independent and print and television media, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., passionately defended an immigration compromise now before Congress and called for more nuclear power to be added to the nation’s energy mix to help break dependence on foreign oil.
McCain, a leading GOP candidate for [...]