Instead of ranting on the Vice President’s uttering of The F Word to Senator Depends Patrick Leahy (D-VT), let me instead focus on an issue dear to the hearts of Americans: gas prices. In a recent interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, Cheney describes a problem with the nation’s supply:

“We’ve got — I talked to a — a CEO of a major oil company the other day. He has to produce something like 51 different grades of gasoline for the U.S. market because of our Clean Air Act requirements and the fact that, you know, what you produce and sell in Detroit probably doesn’t satisfy the requirements in Chicago, doesn’t satisfy the requirements in Peoria.
“You’ve got to have a different blend of gasoline for each and every one of those jurisdictions to meet the air quality standards. That complicates it. You can’t import as much refined product from Europe as you used to be able to do because they don’t produce any other product....”

My friends, what we have here is so much governmental regulatory BS that it restrains the oil industry from getting an adequate supply to market. Here in Phoenix, we run a summer blend with MTBE as the oxygenate compound...a compound which has been BANNED in California and many other states. This is why prices are so high.
I don’t care what the environmentalists say, we’re not in the 1960s. Congress should streamline the Clean Air Act to get rid of 46 of the different “boutique” gasoline blends, leaving the market with four regional summer blends and one national winter blend.