One of the great priorities of the left is to get Americans out of their cars and onto public transportation. When the masses no longer have access to cars, it clears the streets for the limos of the nomenklatura, just as it did in the old USSR, and still does in North Korea. The best way to accomplish this goal is to push up gasoline prices. Energy Secretary Steven Chu famously hoped that energy prices would double, and President Obama also admitted to wanting energy prices to rise, just not too quickly, lest the frog catch on the water is getting hot. Due myriad regulations, California's gasoline market is cut off from supplies from other states. Unique blends of gasoline are required, and only the state's refineries are set up to produce them. And because it is all but impossible to build a new refinery, and expanding production at existing refineries runs into a regulatory blizzard, capacity is closely matched with demand, with little spare capacity in the event one or more...(Read Full Post)