Gas Pains: How America’s Wealthy Get Theirs…

   Ouch. Like most Americans, I’m suffering a severe case of gastric distress. At the pump. It’s painful when half a tank–for a small car–costs over $30. We watch, horrified, as the price per gallon escalates and we are powerless to do a thing about it. We don’t know if we’re coming or going…I take that back…ordinary folks aren’t doing either one. We’re staying home, plotting forays like military strategists: How many stops can I make on my way to or from work to save gas? What’s open early and how can I keep frozen foods or meats from spoiling in the trunk for nine hours? If I shop after work I won’t be cooking before 7:00 or out of the kitchen before 10:00 and I’m too tired to shop and cook anyway…Taco Bell’s cheap enough…fat fast food, carbs and empty calories never looked so good…

   Makes you wonder what other folks are doing with their time and money. $4 per gallon doesn’t have much impact on the well-to-do. According to economists, the richest 10% of Americans own nearly 80% of all wealth. Like Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, who retired a couple of years ago with a $400 million “Golden Parachute”. He’s one of that 10%–even if he’d swear he’s a retiree living on a “fixed” income. John and Cindy McCain, with a net worth of $40 million, are members of the Ten Percent Club. So are Romney ($202 million), Clinton ($34.9 million), Dubya ($21 million) and Dick Cheney ($80 million). The Obama family, whose net worth is a paltry $1.1 million, isn’t among the elite.

   If the uber-rich aren’t spending the bulk of their cash on gas, grits and gravy, where is their money going? I did a little on-line shopping. Topic? New fad consumables for those who can afford them. The best of the best took me right back to gastric distress:

   It’s coffee. Kopi luwak; the rarest beverage in the world. Seems that civets, cat-like mammals, climb coffee trees in the jungles of Indonesia and gobble up the ripest beans they can find. In short order, they ingest, digest and produce some fine, fermented coffee beans. The rare beans are crapped out in cat-poop. Indonesian villagers hastily harvest the feline fertilizer, by the lump, for export. It’s gotta be fresh, mind you, and it’s gotta be in its original cat-poop lump form so that buyers know it’s authentic kopi luwak. Enzymes (and waste) in the civets’ digestive tract add something extra special to the ordinary coffee bean.

   Purveyors (and happy consumers) swear by it. It’s “…the best I’ve ever tasted…smells musty and jungle-like green, but roasts up real nice…a little funky…almost syrupy…not your average coffee aroma…”

   Animal Coffee, a prime distributor, sells regular kopi luwak for $75. a pound. For the coffee connoisseur, however, Animal Coffee offers a premium Arabica kopi luwak in a two ounce pouch…for $40. That would be $320. For a pound of coffee. With a musky, fresh-roasted manure bouquet…

   Maybe only the very rich have the stomach for it. And with a gastric gap like that between the haves and the have-nots, it’s little wonder that wealthy Washington has done nothing, for decades, to promote alternative energy and protect the rest of us from a looming oil crisis. They’ll suffer gas pains at the pump only if they pay the price at the polls.