it IS imperative we do something

about the cost of home heating oil (and OTHER utilities as well). i have mentioned SEVERAL times before, my father's (who will be 82 this month) last oil bill was over $700.00. who can afford that? even working families. that is a STRAIN.
Fuel dealers say customers can't pay bills, Larson proposes bill
By Susan Haigh
HARTFORD, Conn.—More than 60 days delinquent in paying her oil bill, a desperate Middletown woman recently called Peterson Oil Co., asking for help.
more stories like this
Jim Meehan, president of the Portland-based home heating oil company, said he has other customers who are more than 90 days late in paying their bills. Given the rising price of fuel, coupled with higher food costs and other expenses, many of his customers cannot afford the $1,000 it often costs to fill their oil tanks.
"We try to accommodate. It's tough," he said, adding that some customers owe $1,500 to $2,500 in back heating bills, creating a cash flow problem for his business. "They just have no way of paying it."
Meehan and a group of fuel dealers appeared at the state Capitol on Monday with U.S. Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., to support federal legislation that aims to remove the speculation in the energy futures market. An Energy Department official this month said market speculation on energy prices may have added as much as 10 percent to crude oil costs.
Larson's bill would require investors in the commodities market to be able to take delivery of the petroleum product in which they are investing. Such a move, he said, would eliminate speculators from the market.
"I think the government has to step in here and say to speculators, 'No, you're no longer going to be able to do this,'" Larson said. A U.S. Senate hearing on the issue is planned later this week........

this story takes place in maryland

but it's the same in connecticut. my 82 year old father got an oil (heating) bill for $728.00. how are people (working families and like my father, the elderly and retired) supposed to pay that? his electric bill went way up as well.

how can we all afford 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 utility bills? how much longer do you think this is going to go on? i mean how much longer before we all STOP paying our bills because we CANNOT.

(king george has to pay his bills for the crawford ranch, no? doesn't he see we're all f**ked?)

The Power Drain
THE PINCH AT HOME Many Residents Stung By High Cost of Utilities

By Kirstin Downey Washington Post Staff Writer

George Mann, an $18-an-hour grocery store clerk in Waldorf, found himself trembling last month as he wrote the check to pay his $644 electricity bill. Still financially recovering from a $549 electricity bill in January, Mann said he noticed he was "shaking" as he paid the bill, full of anxiety about how he would find the money to pay other household expenses for the three-bedroom rambler where he lives with his wife and four children.
"When they deregulated the market, there was supposed to be competition and prices were supposed to go down," he said. "But why did the bills go in the opposite direction?"
That is a question being echoed in households across the region, particularly as heating bills rise in the coldest months of the year. .............