Let’s chalk up yet another disappointment towards the Obama Administration
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090519/ap_on_bi_ge/us_autos_fleet_of_the_future
35 miles to the gallon on average?!? Place pickup trucks outside the price range of most Americans? Personal freedom?
Thoughts…
No, let’s chalk up another instance of conservatives flying off the handle in response to anything Obama does.
It’s like clockwork, ain’t it?
The best thing about it is that the rules are nationalized. I’m a states-rights supporter as a general rule, but for something capital intensive like auto production having a patchwork of regulations around the country makes little sense.
The 35 mpg limit is for the fleet average. It doesn’t preclude the sale of pickup trucks.
More importantly, your personal freedom ends where the freedom of thousands of Americans to not die from particulate air pollution (or the freedom of Bangladeshis to not be underwater) begins.
A gas tax is a better policy solution, but Republican tax demagoguery has killed that idea deader than Eisenhower.
It was already nationalized. California chose to raise levels above the national level.
From the article
The author of that piece really doesn’t have a clue do he?
::: sigh::: It really is taking longer than we thought.
Well thanks for the political heads up. I don’t know about Eisenhower but the Geitner Democrats of the world seem to have problems locating their collective wallets when the bugle call for sacrifice goes out.
I’m not saying taxes are exactly popular with anybody. But they weren’t always the anathema they are now. The reason a gas tax specifically is outside the realm of possibility is that Republicans have run millions of dollars in ads scaremongering about exactly that policy in both 2000 and 2004. Not to mention the general posture of “taxes are theft” that many in the GOP have adopted.
Seems to me it’s about time.
The EU’s fuel economy standards are at about 40-45 MPG, Japan’s are just above 45 MPG, Canada’s and Australia’s are somewhere around 30 MPG, and we’re at 25 now, only going to reach 35.5 in 2016?
(http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/Fuel%20Economy%20and%20GHG%20Standards_010605_110719.pdf - Pew PDF Report comparing auto milage standards)
I think this is highly overdue. The U.S. hasn’t been pulling its weight in the fight against petrodictatorship and global climate change. For some reason, whenever the call goes out to save rather than buy a gallon of gasoline, conservative commentators on the radio are against it!
I don’t think this is wrong. Many (most?) european small cars nowadays have electric steering assist. I guess having an electric motor that works only when needed is better than having an extra pulley and a hydraulic pump working all the time.
Plus it is much easier and cheaper to integrate variable assist and city mode.
I thought Rick was saying that those things are usually run on electricity now.
And the multitude of liberals on these forums didn’t fly off the handle over everything Bush did?
I think it’d be an interesting change if both liberals and conservatives on these forums actually addressed the criticisms made instead of reflexively attributing them to ideology and dismissing any merit of the criticism.
I thought it was bad form to dismiss every criticism of Bush as “liberal stupidity” and think it is bad form to do the same with every criticism of Obama. Only a mindless ideologue would actually argue that the President, any President, is beyond genuine, merited criticism.
As for the thrust of this thread, I think these fuel emissions standards generate some unique concerns. Firstly, we the taxpayer are going to be paying GM and Chrysler to implement and design these new vehicles, of that you can rest assured. I guess Ford is going to have to do it by themselves, meaning we’re essentially giving huge government support to two failed auto makers and making the sole standing U.S. auto maker that hasn’t had to become a government entity less competitive versus its domestic competition.
I think there are strong signs that GM, Chrysler and Ford lack the expertise to manufacture, market, and sell these small fuel efficient cars at a profit. Before anyone opens up the obvious argument that other automakers do just this very well, I’ll point out that different institutions have different competencies and this is not one of the competencies of American automakers. It may eventually become a competency, but the automakers will not be able to develop it while generating profit, meaning government subsidies will be necessary.
Finally Americans won’t buy these cars unless gas prices are consistently high, meaning we will by necessity have to see a fuel tax on the Federal level that keeps gas prices artificially high enough to price a good portion of the American public out of the market for larger vehicles.
Hopefully any such fuel tax will have exemptions for commercial entities, because high gas prices mean low income consumers who don’t even drive at all may be unable to afford groceries or any other products that are carried to them over the highways.
Maybe all of this is worth it, but I do think it is in the interests of the American public to know what these new fuel standards mean: billions of taxpayer dollars spent in further subsidizing failed auto companies, and drastic increases in fuel prices due to Federal fuel taxes. The only other alternative I can see is Detroit making a bunch of cars people don’t buy and sliding ever further into insolvency which leads to another round of problems all its own.
Actually, no. And Bush damn sure did a lot more stupid shit per month than Obama.
It would also be nice if conservatives stopped making stupid criticisms with no merit.
I think the intellectual dishonesty of this right here is absolutely sickening. You’re actually going to claim that for the past 8 years these forums weren’t filled on a regular basis with Bush bashing of virtually every public act the man made?
I’m a Republican who voted for him twice with no regrets and I think there was a lot of valid criticism, but I also think anyone who genuinely believes there weren’t people here on these forums who scanned the internet for hours each day looking for new topics with which to bash Bush is living in a dream world and is not someone who is looking to have a serious conversation.
Are you actually ever going to be interested in having any sort of discussion on the decisions Obama makes as President or are you simply content to wave away any comments made about the President as “conservatives flying off the handle?” If the latter, at least let us know so we can be sure to disregard anything you have to say on politics for the next four years at the very least. I see little reason to discuss politics if someone isn’t willing to discuss it with the other side, there is little fun for me in one-sided debating or argument. There’s a reason I continue to post on these boards–it’s because it’s not exactly entertaining for me to go to a board full of conservatives who collectively bash liberals with no opposition voice.
So instead of trying to actually move the dialogue forward you decide to go to the low road of childishly saying the exact opposite of what I’ve said? Even though I conceded in the very post of mine in which you were quoting that there are certainly stupid criticisms being made. That doesn’t mean we need to go around reflexively dismissing every criticism in the second post of a thread; why even have threads at all in your world? I will admit the OP’s thread was sparse and peppered with some scare-language but it is a topical thread that opens up legitimate debate.
If the majority of cars the manufacturers are producing are more fuel efficient, and the majority of americans do not want these cars, then the price of larger vehicles will increase as demand outstrips supply. I don’t think a fuel tax will be necessary to price many people out of the larger vehicle market.
I think some studies have shown that as gas price decreases, gas use increases. If this is the case then we are stuck with cars we don’t want and no net effect on greenhouse gas emissions.
How many more americans will die as a result of having accidents in lighter cars? Are their lives worth any less?
People really have no clue. Lady, your current car is way, way overpowered for the few loads of iron you haul around. Do you have any idea how strong a modern car is? And the costs of driving under this new legisaltion will be lower.
People. always an easy target for advertising induced-fear of numbers.
Do you have enough horsepower on your car? Enoug megapixel on your camera? Enough inches on your penis? Enough carats in that engagement ring? :rolleyes:
Quite frankly, yes. Most of his acts were, because he did bad things, but quite a few weren’t.
And that right there tells me all I fucking need to know.
That’s a kind way of saying “jtgain opened this thread to snipe at Obama without any argument”.
A pity you offered mostly concern trolling about business concerns.
Large cars are far less safe than small cars. Also, nice scaremongering.