San Diego, California (CNN) -- For me, the issue of skyrocketing gasoline prices came into focus about four years ago, when the national average that Americans paid at the pump reached an all-time high of $4.11 a gallon. Today, the average -- up 30 cents in the last four weeks, and 13 cents in the last week alone -- is about $3.70. In the summer of 2008, I pulled up next to a gas pump off a major highway in Southern California where -- apparently, a few minutes earlier --  a recreational vehicle, which held more than 100 gallons, had stopped to fill up. The price was still on the screen: $500.
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Ruben Navarrette: Californians are fatalistic about high gas prices, and remember 2008
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Even if you take the bus, he says, high gas prices affect the cost of food, other goods
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Navarrette says presidential candidates' promises of lower gas prices are empty rhetoric
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He thinks a good move would be negotiating to buy more oil from Mexico, a friend and ally
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@placeholder nationalized the oil industry in the 20th century and foreign companies are prohibited from drilling.
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And let's face it, the United States would rather work through that issue than work with countries that are hostile to @placeholder.