Fuel sellers cashing in on others' misery

Families have given up vacations this year because of the high price of gasoline, and the cost of products from refrigerators to tooth brushes reflect the cost of the fuel to deliver them to our local stores.

Most of us resist the temptation to take it out on the attendant at the gas station register; we know pricing is set far up the chain from the retail pump.

It's the oil companies, say some, pointing to record profits. It's the ethanol industry, say others with a vested interest in the status quo.

It's China, India and other booming economies say economists, where the first thing an improving standard of living translates into is the purchase of a small car or motorbike and the gasoline and oil it takes to keep it running.

For example, one story about the Olympics noted that there were 53 cars registered in Beijing in 1984. Today there are three million.

Whatever the true cause, we don't like to believe people we may know are involved in ripping us off at the gas pump, but that's just what Attorney General Jon Bruning said has happened.

He filed charges against a gas station owner and the general manager of a large fuel distribution center, both in Eastern Nebraska, with various counts of theft by deception, criminal simulation and deceptive advertising.

It seems the general manager of the distribution center saw the chance to make a quick profit and persuaded the owner of two gas stations to sell ethanol-blended gasoline at the same price as regular unleaded gas, pocketing the difference in price in addition to the legitimate profit. They kept it up for a year before Bruning filed the charges.

They're not alone in taking advantage of other people's misery. Bruning's office has received about 90 complaints involving 35 stations over issues like pricing, advertising and pump calibration. The attorney general's office says it is continuing to work with the Nebraska Department of Agriculture's Division of Weights and Measures to investigate the complaints.

Unscrupulous fuel dealers should be on notice they are being watched and those pumps better be dispensing the products they say they are at the price advertised.

And kudos to Bruning and his associates for making sure they do.