Thursday St. Louis will be among 28 cities around the country where union members will march on gas stations to protest high prices.

Today the United States Congress will take up a debate about whether or not to stick it to the oil companies by taxing their proifts.

Sometime this week, some guy in an auto shop in St. Louis will make about $100 to plug a machine into my car and tell me there's nothing wrong with it.

This is the racket that has developed out of America's addiction to cars. The gasoline thing is well documented in this space, and most others. The only thing I wonder is if gas will eventually be like the housing market: inflate so much with no significant increase in demand that the bubble bursts. Kablooee! Prices tumble and oil executives get fired. Poetic justice.

The car thing, to me, is almost as much of a crime. There was a time not too long ago that a knowledgeable person (I can put my late grandfather, my father-in-law, and one of my good high school friends in this category) could open up the hood of a car and determine what was wrong with it. Then, they could take a ride down to the auto parts store, buy two or three things, and fix the problem. Done. No muss, no fuss.

Of course the auto companies didn't like this because parts were being purchased from someone other than them. And dealers were mad because their high paid mechanics weren't getting paid to do the work.

Well, the computer age certainly allowed them to fix us! I drive an old beat up car, built in 1994, which is now carrying nearly 150-thousand miles. But it's just new enough that it has a computer attached to its "check engine" light.

The only computers that can talk to it come from the good people at General Motors. That means I get to go to a dealership ($!), or a mechanic who sent his first born to Detroit in return for that computer ($!). Only they will be able to assure me that I'm not going to be stranded on the side of the road in the coming days. (This despite the fact that a belt, which even I could tell was shredding, has been replaced and was likely the problem)

There are a lot of great things a computer can do for the operation of a car. But just like the network in your office, and so many other computerized locations, a shroud of mystery has descended that leaves otherwise intelligent people at the mercy of machines and the companies that own them. In other words, the price of getting certain problems diagnosed on your car has probably gone up as much as gas. You just may not have noticed.

All I know is I will vote for any expansion of the Metro Link that comes up in the near future. I'd like nothing better than to tell the gas companies and the car companies to take a flying leap!