January 02, 2013
Wednesday PM

The price for gasoline in Ketchikan is more than $1 per gallon over the national average and 80 cents per gallon over the state average; in Metlakatla those same numbers are more than $1.50 per gallon and at the state level $1.30 per gallon.  Either the wholesale distributors of gasoline in Ketchikan think they have an unlimited license to steal, or they are the most incompetent business managers in the state and in the nation.  This problem is chronic and persistent, and there are no excuses.  It is time to fire these people. 

Dirtbagging a whole town with these rakeoff, ripoff profits is damaging not only to individual interests, but places the economic interests of the entire community at a competitive disadvantage because of the excessive greed or incompetence of a family or two.  Pull their licenses to operate, and replace these operators. 

I keep hearing all this crap all the time extolling the virtues of free enterprise, but this is not free enterprise.  This is a small group of greedheads going way out of their way to damage the free enterprise interests of this whole region.  We cannot compete advantageously if our costs are higher than someone else’s, and it is impossible not to have higher costs when you are paying far more for basic products than folks have to put up with elsewhere. 

The platitudinous excuses presented in the past by these people have basically been along the line of “you all don’t know what we have to put up with,” and “we bought these tanks of fuel at a certain price, so we have to keep charging this higher price.”  But when the price is down they still charge this higher price.  If they are that incompetent at inventory control, they do not belong in business anyway.

I respectfully demand full-scale investigations by the City Council and the Borough Assembly, by the Governor’s office and the state leglislature, and by the Feds.  The people of this region as U.S. citizens have the right to benefit from free enterprise, and when some small gang of hyenas decides that free enterprise is not good enough for them, their licenses to operate need to be pulled immediately.

David G. Hanger
Ketchikan, AK

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