Stations Boycott Their Own Gas Over Prices

(CBS/AP)  It's not just drivers who are sick of high gas prices. Sky-high numbers at the pumps have prompted some Wisconsin service stations to boycott their own high prices and stop selling fuel.

With Memorial Day— the traditional start of the summer driving season — upon us, AAA says prices at the pump have continued to rise, though increased supplies might help prices start leveling off in time for the long weekend.

It says the national average for regular unleaded gas has topped $3.22 a gallon; that is up 37 cents from a month ago. Illinois had the highest state average price for regular unleaded, $3.52.

AAA says the Midwest is being hit especially hard because its refineries are under repair.

Only one state, New Jersey, averages less than $3 a gallon for regular unleaded.

Manager John Schwartz of the Towne Market Mobil in the Milwaukee suburb of Mequon said that $3.59 a gallon is too much for people to pay, so he's got his own solution: He has decided to shut down the pumps in protest.

He said the business will close the pumps at midnight Thursday and re-open them on Friday. Schwartz says the move will cost him some money, but he's willing to foot the bill to protest the high prices.

Schwartz says he and the station's owner got the idea from a national gas boycott e-mail that circulated about a week ago.

"Somebody's got to try it, and I guess I'm the first to do it," Schwartz told CBS affiliate WDJT.

Yellow tape now surrounds the pumps at his station. The convenience store is still open, however.

In Brookfield, Wis., Jeff Curro has been selling gas for 20 years at his Shell station. But not now: he's also turned off his pumps because the price he's paying to supply the gas to his customers is just too high.

Curro says his three-cent-a-gallon profit margin is eaten up by the credit card companies that get an average of 3 percent on every gallon sold. Credit-card processing fees rank as the second-biggest expense for gas station owners.

Casey O'Gorman has also stopped selling gas at his West Allis Shell station; he's now doing business only as Auto Analyzers.

But experts doubted that the one-day boycott of gas stations popularized in the e-mail would have any beneficial effect for consumers — and would only end up hurting small businesses rather than oil corporations.

"Logically it doesn't make any sense whatsoever," said Tyson Slocum, energy program director at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.

Protesting drivers would simply shift their gasoline consumption from one day to another, and would not hurt overall sales, Slocum said.

"If you want to make the oil industry nervous, don't threaten them with something you can't threaten them with. What would be far more effective is if folks spent their day calling up their senator or Congressperson and demanded they do something about record oil company profits," he said.

Enough people may have done that to encourage Congress on Wednesday to narrowly pass legislation that would impose stiff penalties for those found guilty of gasoline price gouging.

[sjc_1]

As long as we remain at the mercy or corporate greed mongers, we will continue to have these problems. The Senate asked the industry to build more refineries more than 5 years ago, they said no. We did nothing. If this continues to be the case we will continue to be under the control of people we did not elect and can not get rid of.

[DrColes]

We in the United States have high gasoline prices because the oil industry has not built the needed refineries to respond to the demand; in fact, the industry has actually closed refineries. By doing, this the industry manipulates the market. The government is at fault!

Monopolies are illegal in the United States except where allowed such as utilities and these monopolies are then regulated (public utilities commissions, etc.). This and other industries within the United States have found a way around the legal definition of a monopoly (antitrust) laws. We will never achieve competition within the oil industry unless we redefine the legal definition of a monopoly to include and industry that will not compete is a monopoly. We have state and federal legislators who are stupid and/or are to busy spinning political garbage to manipulate the masses to make the proper changes needed.

From the business side of government. The only reason for government in the United States is to maintain a level playing field. Government has abjectly failed to do its job in the oil and health care industries.

If industries won%u2019t compete, then they are a monopoly (our laws would have to be changed regarding the definition of a monopoly) and must be regulated. We must return to a market economy in these industries or they must be regulated.

Hope this is not to simple, but I wanted everyone to understand.

www.InteliOrg.com

[DrColes]

We in the United States have high gasoline prices because the oil industry has not built the needed refineries to respond to the demand; in fact, the industry has actually closed refineries. By doing, this the industry manipulates the market. The government is at fault!

Monopolies are illegal in the United States except where allowed such as utilities and these monopolies are then regulated (public utilities commissions, etc.). This and other industries within the United States have found a way around the legal definition of a monopoly (antitrust) laws. We will never achieve competition within the oil industry unless we redefine the legal definition of a monopoly to include and industry that will not compete is a monopoly. We have state and federal legislators who are stupid and/or are to busy spinning political garbage to manipulate the masses to make the proper changes needed.

From the business side of government. The only reason for government in the United States is to maintain a level playing field. Government has abjectly failed to do its job in the oil and health care industries.

If industries won%u2019t compete, then they are a monopoly (our laws would have to be changed regarding the definition of a monopoly) and must be regulated. We must return to a market economy in these industries or they must be regulated.

Hope this is not to simple, but I wanted everyone to understand.

http://www.InteliOrg.com

[DrColes]

We in the United States have high gasoline prices because the oil industry has not built the needed refineries to respond to the demand; in fact, the industry has actually closed refineries. By doing, this the industry manipulates the market. The government is at fault!

Monopolies are illegal in the United States except where allowed such as utilities and these monopolies are then regulated (public utilities commissions, etc.). This and other industries within the United States have found a way around the legal definition of a monopoly (antitrust) laws. We will never achieve competition within the oil industry unless we redefine the legal definition of a monopoly to include and industry that will not compete is a monopoly. We have state and federal legislators who are stupid and/or are to busy spinning political garbage to manipulate the masses to make the proper changes needed.

From the business side of government. The only reason for government in the United States is to maintain a level playing field. Government has abjectly failed to do its job in the oil and health care industries.

If industries won%u2019t compete, then they are a monopoly (our laws would have to be changed regarding the definition of a monopoly) and must be regulated. We must return to a market economy in these industries or they must be regulated.

Hope this is not to simple, but I wanted everyone to understand.

http://www.InteliOrg.com

[DrColes]

We in the United States have high gasoline prices because the oil industry has not built the needed refineries to respond to the demand; in fact, the industry has actually closed refineries. By doing, this the industry manipulates the market. The government is at fault!

Monopolies are illegal in the United States except where allowed such as utilities and these monopolies are then regulated (public utilities commissions, etc.). This and other industries within the United States have found a way around the legal definition of a monopoly (antitrust) laws. We will never achieve competition within the oil industry unless we redefine the legal definition of a monopoly to include and industry that will not compete is a monopoly. We have state and federal legislators who are stupid and/or are to busy spinning political garbage to manipulate the masses to make the proper changes needed.

From the business side of government. The only reason for government in the United States is to maintain a level playing field. Government has abjectly failed to do its job in the oil and health care industries.

If industries won%u2019t compete, then they are a monopoly (our laws would have to be changed regarding the definition of a monopoly) and must be regulated. We must return to a market economy in these industries or they must be regulated.

Hope this is not to simple, but I wanted everyone to understand.

http://www.InteliOrg.com

[DrColes]

We in the United States have high gasoline prices because the oil industry has not built the needed refineries to respond to the demand; in fact, the industry has actually closed refineries. By doing, this the industry manipulates the market. The government is at fault!

Monopolies are illegal in the United States except where allowed such as utilities and these monopolies are then regulated (public utilities commissions, etc.). This and other industries within the United States have found a way around the legal definition of a monopoly (antitrust) laws. We will never achieve competition within the oil industry unless we redefine the legal definition of a monopoly to include and industry that will not compete is a monopoly. We have state and federal legislators who are stupid and/or are to busy spinning political garbage to manipulate the masses to make the proper changes needed.

From the business side of government. The only reason for government in the United States is to maintain a level playing field. Government has abjectly failed to do its job in the oil and health care industries.

If industries won%u2019t compete, then they are a monopoly (our laws would have to be changed regarding the definition of a monopoly) and must be regulated. We must return to a market economy in these industries or they must be regulated.

Hope this is not to simple, but I wanted everyone to understand.

http://www.InteliOrg.com

[DrColes]

We in the United States have high gasoline prices because the oil industry has not built the needed refineries to respond to the demand; in fact, the industry has actually closed refineries. By doing, this the industry manipulates the market. The government is at fault!

Monopolies are illegal in the United States except where allowed such as utilities and these monopolies are then regulated (public utilities commissions, etc.). This and other industries within the United States have found a way around the legal definition of a monopoly (antitrust) laws. We will never achieve competition within the oil industry unless we redefine the legal definition of a monopoly to include and industry that will not compete is a monopoly. We have state and federal legislators who are stupid and/or are to busy spinning political garbage to manipulate the masses to make the proper changes needed.

From the business side of government. The only reason for government in the United States is to maintain a level playing field. Government has abjectly failed to do its job in the oil and health care industries.

If industries won%u2019t compete, then they are a monopoly (our laws would have to be changed regarding the definition of a monopoly) and must be regulated. We must return to a market economy in these industries or they must be regulated.

Hope this is not to simple, but I wanted everyone to understand.

http://www.InteliOrg.com

[seadogstyx]

If people would put 1/2 a tank in their vehicles at a time, rather than filing them, there would be more fuel in the supply chain, which should drive down prices based on supply and demand. When we fill up our cars, we make them rolling storage facilities, holding sometimes a week's worth of gas. The only change that drivers would have to make is to stop at the gas station more often. Obviously this only applies when we are talking about normal commuting, rather than long road trips, but the impact on supplies would be real.

[kailumego1]

I'm sick and tired of Republican imperialist "puppets" coming up with these ridiculous asinine solutions, "drive less". This country, the capitalist profiteers have made American citizens "car" dependent.

You morons that come up with this ridiculous remedy were have you been stationed on Pluto, compared to Great Britain, France, Sweden, etc....we have the lousiest mass transit system.

Maybe if our central and local governments would improve the mass transit system, making us less car dependent then wouldn't be in this mess.

However, that would be counterproductive to North American Automotive Companies and Oil magnets like Standard, Shell, Exxon Mobile,etc..

Where do you morons come up with your logic from watching reruns of "Wall-Street"??????

Where are the intellectuals, besides this random gibberish???

Automakers, Oil companies, etc.. could care less about how this quagmire has affected American citizens, all they care about is "net profits".

So, if you geniuses think profit margins should trump what's in the best interest of the whole, then sit back and watch just how receptive the American public will be when it really takes a "huge chunk" from the middle-class.

Being an entrepreneur should not come at the price of forcing millions into economic ruins, and only an individual[s] that foster imperialist ideology would think otherwise.

[mmnc07]

Since 1977, governments collected more than $1.34 trillion, after adjusting for inflation, in gasoline tax revenues%u2014more than twice the amount of domestic profits earned by major U.S. oil companies during the same period.

**This was taken from the following website http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1139.html


Under provisions of the Omnibus Budget Revenue Reconciliation Act of 1990 (OBRA90) (24) the tax rate on highway and motorboat fuels was increased by five cents per gallon. Thus, the tax increased from 9 to 14 cents per gallon of gasoline. Half of the increase in revenues from the gasoline tax imposed on highway use vehicles was dedicated as additional funding for the Highway Trust Fund. The remaining half in revenues was deposited in the General Fund and dedicated for federal deficit reduction. http://www.ncseonline.org/NLE/CRSreports/Transportation/trans-24.cfm

From 1987 to 1997, U.S. vehicle miles traveled increased 34%, yet only 3% more lane-miles were added; http://www.rppi.org/pbrief19.html

IDIOT, I do not think so. I am simply not someone who just believes what I hear on the radio and/or television.
Just so that you know:

At a rally in Appleton, Wis., on March 30, President Bush came down hard on Democrats for supporting an increase in the 18.4- cent-a-gallon federal gasoline tax,

The last increase was in 1993

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A172-2004Apr9.html