<The freeway system was subsidized and build by Eisenhower as a civil defense measure. The overpasses were to be a minimum height to accommodate truck carrying missiles.

That's the story and they're sticking to it. I have not researched the history of the interstate, but I'd bet a lot that this scenario was used to justify sticking at least part of the tab on the Defense budget. Anyone have more on this?

"Designer gas," or gasoline specifically formulated for certain areas for whatever arcane reason (especially California), is actually a big factor in preventing competition between local and out-of-state gasoline suppliers and allowing prices to hang at levels they would not normally. States that don't have a lot of this crap going on have much lower gasoline prices.

Subsidizing oil prices is an extremely lousy idea. If prices are not allowed to rise to their natural levels, the market will not kick in to encourage substitutes. If the prices are allowed to rise and they don't go up, well, maybe there isn't as big a shortage of oil as everyone thinks.

One of the reasons that we finally started buying Japanese high-mileage cars in this country was when the artificially-low gasoline prices were finally deregulated. The higher quality of the Japanese cars gave our moribund American auto industry a badly-needed boot in the rear end, too.

Subsidizing other energy prices is also a lousy idea. Whatever role corruption played in our California energy crisis--both private and government--the main screwup was deregulating producer prices while artificially holding down consumer prices. Even someone with the dimmest grasp of supply and demand should have seen where that was going. The middle man--the Californian power companies--took a bath big time, and shortages were inevitable.

Artificially holding down consumer energy prices from conventional sources also did nothing to encourage conservation or the use of energy alternatives.

Don't bet on the California power problem being "solved" either. A lot depends on what happens here this summer. Davis got his ass saved last year by a relatively cool summer.