Newest EPA Dictate: Minimum Gasoline Purchases

And if they can place a minimum on how much gas you can purchase, the precedent is now put in place for a cap on how much gas you can buy.

The Environmental Protection Agency is going to require all consumers to buy at least four gallons of gasoline from certain gas pumps after the new E15 ethanol-gasoline blend is introduced into the market.

The new regulation was revealed in an Aug. 1 letter to the American Motorcyclist Association, which expressed concern that the vast majority of motorcycles and ATVs in use today aren’t designed to operate on E15 fuel and residual fuel from a pump that serves multiple blends might harm these tanks.

This minimum mandate attempts to dilute residual amounts of E15 that will be left in the shared hose.

“Not only do we find it unacceptable for the EPA to mandate that everyone — including our members — buy minimum amounts of gas, but the EPA answer simply won’t work because of the sizes of many motorcycle and ATV gas tanks and the fact that off-highway riders take containers of gas with them on their trips, and most times those containers are much smaller than four gallons,” Wayne Allard, AMA vice president for government relations, said.

“The EPA has no business mandating how much gasoline Americans have to buy when filling up at the pump. What if a rider doesn’t have a motorcycle with a four gallon tank? Or if someone wants to fill a canister for their lawnmower or outboard boat engine, but it only holds 2 or 3 gallons?” Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) said today.

“Or what if an American, struggling in this economy, just can’t afford 4 gallons of gas?” Sensenbrenner added. “This is just one more example of how problematic the EPA’s E15 partial waiver is. This is not a solution to misfueling risks — it’s a ridiculous and unworkable mandate.”

"...a ridiculous and unworkable mandate," Congressman?  When did you wake up? You are talking about the EPA -  an agency that is currently collecting millions of dollars in penalties from oil companies and refineries for not using a product called "cellulosic biofuel" in their mixes. The fact that this particular compound does not even exist has had no effect on the EPA's rule-making, instead, they actually upped the blend quota for their imaginary substance in 2012.  This agency makes its living off the ridiculous, the unworkable, and the job-killing, sir - and the more they feed, the stronger they become, and the more they devour...

But hey - that's OK.  Vote for Barack Obama, and empower the despicable, incompetent Lisa Jackson, perhaps the embodiment of "the banality of evil".

Then blame George Bush, when you are waiting on endless gas lines to pay $8/gallon for three days worth of fuel.

Makes as much sense as anything else these days...