I saw an interesting letter to the editor in my local paper. It said that while we can piss and moan all we want about gas prices, the "enemy" is not Big Oil, but our local governments. The example given was as follows:

If you fill a 15 gallon gas tank, the oil companies make between $1.05 and $1.50 in profits. However, in NY, the federal, state and county taxes collected average $8.70!!!! That's based on federal tax of $0.18 and state and local taxes averaging $0.40. So, who is doing the reaming here???