Make gas cans great again!

Buck Throckmorton writes in the Ace of Spades blog,

If Donald Trump wants to ensure he recaptures the 2020 electoral votes in the Great Lakes states he won in 2016 - and possibly add Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Maine - there is one simple thing he could do that would make him a hero to every snow-blowing American - issue an executive order to restore functioning gas cans.

To be clear, this would also make him a hero to tens of millions of other Americans throughout the country who use lawn mowers, power tools, etc around their homes or in their jobs. In 2009 the EPA banned the sale of gas cans that functionally pour gas. To be specific, the scientifically illiterate bureaucrats at the EPA outlawed gas cans with vents, mandating that all new gas cans must have crazy contraptions that require three hands to operate. Unlike the old gas cans, the new ones spill gas all over the user and onto the ground. The result of the EPA’s incompetence is a new gas can that is much worse for the environment than the one it replaced. The incompetent regulators at the EPA are so scientifically illiterate that they honestly believed that the vents on gas cans were there to allow gas fumes to escape, rather than the actual purpose of allowing air to flow in to the can so that gas can be poured out. Having received their “science” education in Oppression Studies classes at Grievance State University, these morons making rules for how we gas up our power tools have likely never handled a tool more powerful than their own personal groomers.

The government-mandated non-functioning gas can may be the most unpopular government-imposed regulatory rule since the 55 mile per hour speed limit. If you don’t know someone who mocks and despises these stupid red canisters, then you are living a very sheltered urban or upscale lifestyle. Most all working-class and middle-class Americans deal with these awful containers, and they mock the government for imposing them on us. Even James Lileks, the gentle Minneapolis newspaper columnist who also writes for National Review, had this to say recently on his daily blog about his efforts to gas up his new snow blower:
"This was not as easy as it sounds, since the gas can had a special safety nozzle that prevented gas from escaping under any circumstances, including the time when you wanted to pour it out. Push in the green tab to unlock, press with your palm! Nothing. Did it again: nothing. Did it again: somehow gas came out of the part where I was pressing, not the nozzle. Augh. Go inside, clean it off, try to get the damned SAFETY ENHANCED CAN to release a few drops. Nothing. In the process the smell of gas filled the garage and the tunnel, and when my wife came home she was overcome by fumes."

While not an obnoxious #NeverTrump writer like much of the National Review staff, Mr. Lileks has been politely #NotTrump. Perhaps liberating him, and millions of other snow blowing Americans, from the tyranny of the government-designed gas can would be persuasive come November 2020.

Even if you put politics aside, and out of compassion for his fellow Americans, Mr. Trump just needs to issue an executive order to end this gas can idiocy. His recent comments mocking government toilet regulations indicate that he has an ear for the impact of idiotic government regulations. Congress never passed a law which outlawed the old gas cans. Instead, these abhorrent new gas cans were simply foisted on us by zealous government imbeciles who have never mowed a blade of grass or poured a drop of gas out of a gas can. With one stroke of his pen President Trump can fix this mess. One more thing - after restoring functioning gas cans, President Trump should assemble the EPA team and ask every executive and manager in the EPA if they personally support the current non-functioning gas cans. Any EPA employee who replies in the affirmative should be terminated on the spot - with insults, derision, and mockery. Someone please forward this article to President Trump.