Mississippi AG Plans Fight on Price Gougers

September 4, 2008 By
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood

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

Filed Under: Hurricane Gustav, Politics Tagged With: , ,

Work, Gustav, and Celebrity Politics

September 3, 2008 By

Well, today was my first day back to work since Hur­ri­cane Gus­tav rolled through Louisiana and parts of Mis­sis­sippi. No dam­age was incurred here at our office – I was con­cerned about the amount of storm surge our build­ing would see. (It’s on an island.) From var­i­ous reports, the storm surge in Pascagoula was about ten feet.  Thank­fully, we didn’t get any water.

I spent most of my morn­ing tak­ing off the plas­tic we use to cover our com­put­ers and also attend­ing my grad­u­ate course via com­puter. All in all, just another slow Monday-Wednesday.

Ona totally dif­fer­ent note, I have been intrigued recently by the stance dif­fer­ent celebri­ties are tak­ing in this pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.  I have been sur­prised some­what, also.  John Voight is for McCain, and Lind­say Lohan made a halfway-intelligent obser­va­tion about Sarah Palin’s sit­u­a­tion.  Most of the time I am dis­gusted by celebri­ties’ views on pol­i­tics — sim­ply because they hardly know what they’re talk­ing about and usu­ally just regur­gi­tate what they’ve heard com­ing from the far left.  I must say that it is a refresh­ing change to hear that some celebri­ties (i.e. Clint East­wood, John Voight, Nick Clooney) are actu­ally think­ing for them­selves.  Amazing.

Filed Under: Hurricane Gustav, Politics Tagged With: , ,

Watching Gustav

September 1, 2008 By
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Con­tin­u­ing blog cov­er­age of Hur­ri­cane Gustav’s impacts on the Mis­sis­sippi Gulf Coast…

Update 2:05 p.m. — And another tor­nado warn­ing just south of us in Jack­son County.  This par­tic­u­lar cell is mov­ing at about 29 mph.  Take cover, people!

Update 1:30 p.m. — I just shot another video in our front yard of Hur­ri­cane Gustav’s feeder bands.  Not too dra­matic, but hope­fully it gives a sense of the rain and wind we’re get­ting (not as much as I thought it would be).

Update 12:25 p.m.  Here’s a video of a neigh­bor in Van­cleave of the effects of Gustav…Quite entertaining.

 

Update 12:10 p.m. Just got another tor­nado warn­ing for the Ocean Springs area.  This is our biggest threat right now.  So far no reports of dam­age from these.  I’ll keep you updated.

Update 11:35 p.m. Just got a Tor­nado warn­ing for east­ern Har­ri­son County and west­ern Jack­son County.  A tor­nado was spot­ted near Ocean Springs headed north­west at 48 mph.  Had a warn­ing ear­lier for north­west Jack­son Co. of a tor­nado head­ing north­west at 51 mph.

Good morn­ing, folks.  It’s 10:30 a.m. here on the Gulf Coast of Mis­sis­sippi and we’re cur­rently get­ting some heavy rain from Hur­ri­cane Gus­tav.  We haven’t lost power at all, which is great.  We have really been blessed so far with this storm — no heavy winds really or tor­na­does — and our prayers are with our neigh­bors in Louisiana.

Here’s a pic­ture I took yes­ter­day when the outer bands of Gus­tav were mov­ing into the area.

The outer bands of Hurricane Gustav
Filed Under: Hurricane Gustav, weather Tagged With:

A little Gustav video

September 1, 2008 By

Here’s a video I just shot of the bands of Gus­tav mov­ing over our house.  Noth­ing like what Louisiana is get­ting, but I wanted to show every­one what we are experiencing.

Filed Under: Hurricane Gustav, weather Tagged With: