Hahahaha! This is hilarious. Not only is it #2, but since it creates an arbitrage situation, it will:

- Put border town gas stations out of business, or greatly cripple their profits. Gas stations themselves tend to make very little money off of gasoline, unless they are in a prime location. (i.e. have a captive audience) They tend to make money off of the "convieniences" they sell. So they can't decide to eat the loss on gas, since the margins are thin anyway. People will go out of their way to save a buck, so if there's a much cheaper gas station 10 miles away, they'll go.

- The people delivering the oil products also have the choice to deliver to states with less overhead, therefore limiting the supply to Wisconsin, and with constant demand (which will probably decline, albeit in disproportion), increase prices even more.

So, all in all, if I were the guy pumping gas, I'd be irate and ask for a picket.

Good followup, though I'm not sure I buy the second consequence you suggest. Oil companies don't care about "overhead" per se so much as profit. And it doesn't hurt their bottom line if a gasoline pump in Sheboygan adds 30 instead of 20 cents to what the customer pays -- drivers still needs the gas, so demand won't decrease (much), and having the reseller (the gas station) punch in a higher tax number isn't any huge overhead.

Although if he's trying to institute a separate tax mechanism, I can see a little of the effect you're referencing. But probably not enough to drive the company out of the state, to avoid dealing with compliance.

So, all in all, if I were the guy pumping gas, I'd be irate and ask for a picket.

Notice how carefully-drawn the characters are. The "GOP" character wears a bowtie and suit (indicative, no doubt of "old money" -- he probably has ties to the oil companies!) and small intellectual-looking glasses. The ordinary guy (wearing a Milwaukee Brewers' T-shirt) of course espouses the Democrats' view that higher taxes are good, or at least won't cost him more.

So the message of GOP-bad, protesting-is-bad is instead subtly communicated to the reader's social sense: Hey, don't think about costs to you; remember: these guys are greedy dweebs. Don't you hate their smug arrogance?

Propaganda in the purest sense.

The funny thing is, I'm familliar with the Milwaukee area, and it is the older (and wealthier) urban voters (the guy on the left) who tend to support the Democratic party (in fact, I know an ardent Democrat who looks a lot like that, round glasses, suits, and all).

In contrast, the comparatively younger working-class family people (the guy on the right), have generally moved to the county next door (Waukesha County) and tend to support Republicans.