Another huge jump in L.A. gas prices

Forget about oil prices tumbling - the gasoline market marches to its own, often-mysterious drummers, which is almost always bad news for consumers. It's certainly been that way over the past week: An average gallon of regular in the L.A. area is $3.971, up almost 13 cents, according to the government's survey. Predictably, there are explanations: refinery problems, demand during Labor Day weekend, the storms back east. In the immortal words of Roseanne Roseannadanna, it's always something. The problem with these explanations is that the price of oil has been plummeting for some time (crude futures rose today). Last I checked, you get gas from oil. If oil goes down, you'd expect gasoline to follow. At least you wouldn't expect it to go up 13 cents, right?