Mississippi AG Plans Fight on Price Gougers

Mis­sis­sippi Attor­ney Gen­eral Jim Hood

Watch out, gas sta­tion own­ers, Mis­sis­sippi Attor­ney Gen­eral Jim Hood is com­ing after you.

As well he should.  Cur­rently, price goug­ing is against the law, but appar­ently some gas sta­tions in Mis­sis­sippi raised prices prior to Hur­ri­cane Gus­tav.  Some raised the prices by astro­nom­i­cal amounts.  Per the Sun Her­ald:

“We sent peo­ple out down there Wednes­day,” Hood said, “and we saw where prices shot up some places as much as 32 cents a gallon.”

Hood said they reviewed cur­rent Mis­sis­sippi laws, but found they could not charge the offend­ers since they raised prices in advance of Gov­er­nor Haley Barbour’s dec­la­ra­tion of a state emer­gency last Thursday.

Con­se­quently, A.G. Jim Hood is plan­ning to pro­pose sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion his office pro­posed prior to Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina, which totally dev­as­tated the entire seventy-five miles of the Mis­sis­sippi Gulf Coast.

It would allow the Attor­ney General’s Office to declare a state of emer­gency only for the pur­pose of enforc­ing price-gouging laws and pre­serve the governor’s author­ity to declare the over­all state of emer­gency needed to deploy resources, seek fed­eral assis­tance, and stream­line local gov­ern­ment response.

I hope this time they can get the law passed.  It is about time price gougers are held respon­si­ble for tak­ing advan­tage of not only hur­ri­cane evac­uees, but any sit­u­a­tion (such as another ter­ror­ist attack — God for­bid) where the pub­lic has an exi­gent need to stock up on much-needed sta­ples such as fuel, bread, or water.

Go get ‘em, Jim.

Source:  The Sun Her­ald

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