Putting your money where your mouth is -- but not where your wheels are.

I was at a small-town farmer's market on a recent Saturday. It takes place in the local hockey rink, and features a mix of artisans with sea-glass jewellery, market gardeners with organic produce, fair trade coffee, and pleas for local causes. The crowd was mostly locals, with a sprinkling of tourists. Many of the tourists' cars sported Obama bumper stickers.

Near the entrance to the market, one bumper sticker caught my eye: "I buy local first."

The sticker was on a Japanese car.

Why doesn't God just create more oil?

Where to start with this?

Rocky Twyman has a radical solution for surging gasoline prices: prayer.

Twyman - a community organizer, church choir director and public relations consultant from the Washington, D.C., suburbs - staged a pray-in at a San Francisco Chevron station on Friday, asking God for cheaper gas. He did the same thing in the nation's Capitol on Wednesday, with volunteers from a soup kitchen joining in. Today he will lead members of an Oakland church in prayer.

Yes, it's come to that.

"God is the only one we can turn to at this point," said Twyman, 59. "Our leaders don't seem to be able to do anything about it. The prices keep soaring and soaring."

Bilcon seeks damages

A New Jersey-based company called Bilcon had plans to build a quarry on Digby Neck. This is a gorgeous, environmentally sensitive spot: a narrow arm of basalt sticking out into an ocean that is home to sensitive whale populations and a healthy lobster fishery.

The quarry would have seen tons of basalt ripped out of the ground and sent to the US for use in building roads. All-in-all, a Class A project when it comes to environmental benefits.

After much lobbying, those opposed to the quarry were able to convince the powers that be that the project merited a full panel review -- the most in-depth level of environmental assessment. The review ruled that the quarry should not proceed.

Now Bilcon is seeking $188 million in compensation for this "regulatory failure."

As Jim Meek writes in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald:

Mr. Appleton, a veteran international trade litigator who has written books on NAFTA, said Monday that the "wheels fell off" this regulatory process.

The Fournier panel "included novel, non-scientific criteria" in its decision, Mr. Appleton said.

"They used this concept of community core values, which they had no authority to invoke. Bilcon was never informed of these community core value criteria so it could address them."

Imagine! Looking at community values! Ludicrous.

I just hope my kids don't hear about this litigation. What about the time last summer they asked me for ice cream? And I said we might get some? But using the non-scientific criteria that it was getting too close to dinner time, I wound up saying no. Their expectations were shattered. I should have compensated them with brownies -- or maybe an increase in allowance -- instead.