Right after taking control of the House of Representatives, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi formed a panel to look into global warming. Now she's locked in a battle with House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell over proposed CAFE standards, seeking to preserve a rapid rise in the new requirements. Domestic automakers haven't hidden their opposition to Pelosi's plan. Cerberus' Stephen Feinberg claims her approach would raise Chrysler's vehicle prices by $7K apiece. GM Car Czar Maximum Bob Lutz estimates it would cost GM $8K per vehicle. They're all predicting that drastic increases in CAFE would cripple or kill the U.S. auto industry. The result: cutbacks, layoffs and bankruptcies throughout industry. Thousands of industrial workers would lose their jobs. People who belong to labor unions. Labor unions that contributed to Nancy Pelosi's election fund, to the tune of $63K in 2006. In fact, according to Freedom Works, Pelosi ranks ninth overall in contributions from Big Labor AND her largest single contributor was Occidental Petroleum, another industrial enterprise that relies on the auto industry for income. The Nance better watch that whole environmental zealousness shtick– she's biting the hand that feeds.
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Part of the long slow death spiral of labor unions has been brought on by their total failure to effectively lobby and influence politicians due to their total inability to separate themselves from self identifying as Democrats.
This is simply a repeat of 1992 when in what was then a close election in which the balance of power was truly at stake in which the union leaders could not bring themselves to actually hold the Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton accountable for being pro NAFTA.
By simply becoming a defacto arm of the Democratic party instead of being an independent self identified political group, unions have become politically irrelevant.
It is an automatic that they support the Democrats and oppose the Republicans. But what if they had simply held out and refused to support any candidate that supported NAFTA and and agreed to support any candidate that supported the unions outlook on NAFTA.
The result would have been Clinton would have been narrowly defeated by George H Bush, due to the union vote going to a union endorsed and backed Perot.
The result would be both parties would see the advantages of currying favor with the union. However, the union leadership has become too self identified with the Democratic party for that to ever happen.
Pelosi will do whatever she wishes and the UAW may not support her but other unions will and the UAW will continue to give to the Democratic party which will dispense funds as it sees fit and they will give funds to some very anti Detroit politicians
Love that picture of Pelosi. I guess you can still look surprised with Botox.
Damn she is freaky looking!
Occidental was owned by Stalin’s man in the USA Armand Hammer (Arm and Hammer – Soviet Labor anyone?) who was bestest friends with the Al Gore’s daddy… Funny, huh?
I don’t know why UAW thought the Dems would help them. They are overtly anti-automobile. The UAW giving Dems money is like handing someone your rope that they are going to use to hang you with.
Bill Clinton burned the UAW by signing NAFTA after taking millions in campaign money from them. Suck when you buy a politician and he doesn’t stay bought.
Not to belabor the obvious, but this would all be academic if CAFE didn’t exist, and the U.S. was moving towards it goals of reducing pollution and gasoline consumption by simply raising the federal gas tax. If the tax went up every year, consumers would migrate to smaller (or alternative-energy) vehicles, and the car companies, knowing small, fuel-efficient vehicles would therefore always be popular, would offer many more of them to sell.
You could always offset the increase in the gas tax with a decrease in the income tax to make the whole thing tax-neutral. Such a trade would still accomplish the goal of moving people to more fuel-efficient vehicles.
I’ve always though CAFE to be sublimely idiotic – it is a shame that there is not the political will to do the thing that is both easier and more effective in changing consumers’ vehicle buying preferences; that is, simply raising the gas tax every year until you reach whatever the goal is in terms of less pollution and less gasoline consumption.
B Moore – Autosavant.net
Talk about bogus accounting. If GM or Chrysler/Evil-Dog Co. think that they can regain competitiveness by ignoring fuel consumption in their planning and instead rely on sales of gas-guzzling SUVs & trucks to keep them afloat then they need to stick their head out of the nearest corporate window and look at the prices posted on the closest filling station. Improved mileage isn’t optional, guys, it’s necessary to even stay in the game. If you don’t spend that money, Fed rules or not, you’ll all become extinct as Europe and Japan continue to lead the charge in recognising that oil prices are on a one-way street. (Hint: it’s not a downhill grade.)
Quit the whining; get with the programme.
And great photo by the way. Did Bill Clinton just sneak up behind her?
In the pursuit of truth, isn’t it true that Toyota and some other foreign automakers were opposed to the CAFE increase as well? Does anyone have a complete list of wich automakers opposed this?
All auto companies are against it. Even the Jetta or Accord diesel will have a hard time getting 35 MPG highway and meet Tier 2 Bin 5. Reducing NOx is a fuel mileage killer…Not to mention higher crash safety.
I think they took that picture of Pelosi just after she read the first page of a book on Thermodynamics…Maybe just the first sentence.
This is all about profit. Toyota sells clean Diesel engines in UK, Canada and Asia. For example, I have a Rav4 that gets 21 MPG, the same model in the UK gets 39 MPG with the D4D diesel with more torque. Toyota also sells a minivan called the Inova with a diesel that gets close to 40 as well.
The US and UAW are dumb, they don’t remember the gas shortages of the 70’s, when US car makers put out such notable cars such as the Gremlin, Vega and Pinto while Japan took advantage by selling corrola’s, datsun b-210’s and 510’s(for those to young, Nissan’s previous name). Toyota doesn’t want higher Cafe #’s because that would force US car makers now to build more efficient cars. Toyota is ready for the worst case scenario and would gobble up even more market share when gas goes to over $4 per gallon.
I am not a Green Nut by any means. First off, I am an American that sees higher MPG cars as a patriotic necessity! Do you want your money in petro $$ going to Saudi Arabia, Iran or Venezuela?
I don’t get the far right on this topic. Let’s have our gas guzzling SUV’s and cars, just drill in Alaska or the Gulf and that will solve everything. Don’t you think if you combined oil exploration and improved technology with an aggressive increase in the CAFE standards we would be less dependent on foreign oil sooner?
We are one good storm away from $5 gasoline and US made car sales will collapse further. Private use light trucks will make nice planters.
CAFE = mental chicken choking.
Gosh, I wish I knew the answer on this one but I don’t. I’m glad others do, though. That means we stand a chance of getting this situation righted. It could happen!
Another political football that will get tossed around until it deflates; such Draconian measures are designed to generate news (and to state a “strong” Democratic position) but reality will creep in (eventually) and more moderate CAFE standards will result.
Charlie the UK spec Rav4 diesel won’t/is legal in America since it doesn’t meet the emissions regs. also it only gets 42.8UK mpg or 35.6 US mpg. thirdly the UK spec diesel is far better than the stuff you can buy in America
Brendan and I are on the same wavelength on this issue. Scrap CAFE and raise gas taxes. Make the increase revenue neutral with personal tax reductions heavily weighted to lower income earners who will be hardest hit by higher gas prices.
Further, reduce spending on highway infrastructure and invest in light rail transit in urban areas. Give people alternatives to their cars. Recognize that people will probably still want a car, and that expensive public transit is a huge disincentive to potential transit users. Make transit free, or at least cheap. (This is a personal pet peeve, as our local transit authority is increasing fares again. Given that I still need my car for weekends and ferrying dogs around, why would I pay $7.50 per day for round-trip bus fare to work when it costs me about $3 in gas, even at $1.20 per litre?)
I don’t see it happening any time soon, however. Higher CAFE standards will piss off 10 million voters, while higher gas prices will piss off 200 million.