GOP Gas Pains In Ohio: VP Cheney Calls Boehner's Tax Suspension 'False Notion'

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Whatever one thinks about about Vice President Dick Cheney, this fact cannot be ignored. He's an oilman at heart. And Cheney says U.S. Rep. John Boehner, the House Republican leader from SW Ohio, isn't really doing much for consumers by pushing legislation to temporarily suspend the federal gasoline tax. Cheney says it is sort of an empty fraud. You didn't know Boehner, R-8 Butler County, was behind that plan? You thought it was John McCain and Hillary Clinton's idea? Well, you would be wrong.

On May 30, Boehner said he was "supporting legislation . . . to suspend the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax for the summer. No one should mistake this for a comprehensive solution, and I'm under no illusion that this is going to end the pain motorists are feeling."

To be fair, Boehner also said he wanted to end earmarks to reduce the federal budget deficit (a pet project), although it was not clear how that would ease the nearly $4 per gallon cost of gasoline.

Cheney says suspending the gas tax won't really help consumers at all. The vice president basically dumped on the idea. Ohio's newspapers pretty much ignored the slap at the state's top GOP official in Congress. Cheney's words were widely reported:

"I think it's a false notion, in the sense that you're not going to have much of an impact, given the size of the gasoline tax on the total cost of the gallon of gas. You might buy a little bit of relief there, but it's minimal."

Ohio State U Uncorks Economic Research: Wine Prices Dip When 'Net Sales Allowed

COLUMBUS (TDB) -- Economic research about online wine sales shows Ohio consumers with a taste for the grape are going to be squeezed out of some cash by a new state law. The measure took effect this month and bans large wineries from shipping directly to customers who shop on the Internet or order by mail. The data published by Ohio State University and George Mason University in Virginia says online competition lowered wine prices by up to 40 percent in a local market.

Ohio's wine industry is the beneficiary of legislative and lobbying sleight of hand that prohibits wineries bottling more than 150,000 gallons a year from shipping directly to Ohio purchasers. OSU and George Mason researchers teamed up to study what happened to prices in northern Virginia in 2004 after federal court rulings knocked down a state-imposed trade barrier against online competition. Alan Wiseman, an OSU political science prof, said prices fell 40% when local stores in Virginia confronted interstate shippers.

"Consumers are better off when local stores have to compete with online sellers. Virginia merchants reduced their prices to meet online competition, and I think the same thing would happen in other parts of the country if the laws allowed. The results suggest that brick-and-mortar stores were quite calculating in how much more they could charge customers. They knew that their prices couldn't be too far above out-of-state merchants, but that they could still charge a premium because of shipping costs."

The researchers studied the 50 most popular wines in American restaurants, which were named by Wine and Spirits magazine. They compared online versus store shelf prices.