• Twitter
  • Facebook
News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Gas attack

Indiana, having solved all other crime problems, has let its attorney general, Steve Carter, assume the duties of gasoline czar. If you think you are being overcharged for gas, just turn the dealer in. Not everyone is impressed:

How does Indiana's gasoline czar know a station is guilty of "excessive pricing"? When its competitors are charging less. Possibly Indiana motorists, even without a crack staff of taxpayer-funded investigators, are also capable of gathering this information. They could, say, consult those gas station signs with the prices displayed in big numbers. If that takes too much effort, here's a website where they can do gas price comparisons without even leaving home. 

I don't quite understand where Carter gets the legal authority to dictate gasoline prices.

The law kicks in when the governor declares "a state of emergency," and what is forbidden is gasoline that is "grossly more expensive" than that before the emergency was delcared. What's the emergency? High gas prices? That's sort of convenient. What's "grossly" more ezpensive? A little subjective, yes?

Quantcast