They want your vote, but they drive you crazy. More specifically, passionate posting pistonheads don’t seem well pleased with America’s current crop of presidential aspirants. Part One of this series examined four presidential candidates’ websites to winkle out their auto-related policies on issues ranging from Corporate Average Fuel Economy to E85 to “oil addiction” and, uh, back. Judging from your comments on Hillary, Barack, Rudy and Mitt’s plans, you were about as impressed as pyromaniacs at a swim meet. So, in that spirit of world-weary cynical analysis, let’s have a look at what Fred, Mike, John and Bill have to say about all things automotive.
Fred Thompson is the son of what he calls a “little educated” used car dealer. If that doesn’t raise any alarm bells, Fred’s also an attorney, Red October hunter, fictional prosecutor and former US Senator (for real) from the great state of Tennessee.
An “Issues” page on Thompson’s site includes an “Energy Security” section. Within, Thompson declares that our “dependence on foreign sources of oil threatens our national security and puts our economic prosperity at risk.” He offers the usual list of tasks required to overcome our “oil addiction:” increase domestic oil supplies, invest in alt. fuels, etc.
In an August press release titled “The Gas Tax,” Senator Thompson mentions the tragic highway bridge collapse in Minneapolis MN and adds: “Whoa now. Let’s hold our horses and think about calls for new [federal] tax increases to fix our infrastructure problems…we can’t let it [the bridge collapse] be used to compound other problems— which is what will happen if we’re scared into raising gas taxes.”
Senator Thompson says local governments, not the feds, should deal with such issues. “Why can’t we leave infrastructure issues to the people closest to where the rubber literally hits the road?” (Geddit?) Policy stands regarding cars, US automakers or specifics on energy issues? No comment.
The former Governor of Arkansas known as Mike Huckabee also has an Issues page. In his “Energy Independence” sub-page, the Gov says “The first thing I will do as President is send Congress my comprehensive plan for energy independence. We will achieve energy independence by the end of my second term.” Two terms and we’re free! How’s that then?
“We have to explore, we have to conserve, and we have to pursue all avenues of alternative energy: nuclear, wind, solar, hydrogen, clean coal, biodiesel, and biomass (ethanol subsidies are go).” Huckabee will “set aside a federal research and development budget” that would be “matched by the private sector” to find new energy such as alternative fuels. And then… “Our free market will sort out what makes the most sense economically and will reward consumer preferences.”
John Edwards is the infamously mansion-dwelling former US Senator from North Carolina. His “Issues – A New Energy Economy” page sings a familiar tune: “Our generation must be the one that says 'yes' to alternative, renewable fuels and ends forever our dependence on foreign oil.”
Senator Edwards would create a “New Energy Economy Fund” to support R&D, invest in efficient automobile technology and help Americans conserve. He’d also “repeal subsidies to big oil companies and require oil companies to install biofuel pumps at 25 percent of their gas stations.” Senator Edwards would require all new cars sold after 2010 to be ‘flex fuel’ cars.
While in Iowa, Senator Edwards praised “biofuels innovators” and announced he’d “accelerate the use of biofuels on America’s roads and highways…” That’s cause he “believes that everyone should be able to drive the car, truck or SUV of their choice and still enjoy high fuel economy.” To that end, Edwards would raise federal fuel economy standards to 40 mpg by 2016.
Bill Richardson is a former Congressman, US Ambassador to the United Nations (under Bill Clinton) and the current Governor of New Mexico. His Issues / Energy page calls for a “New American Revolution– an energy and climate revolution.” His vision would see oil imports reduced “from around 65 percent to 10 or 15 percent.”
Governor Richardson says “getting the 100 mile per gallon (mpg) car into the marketplace” is key, and hey, why not double current Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards to “50 mpg by 2020?"
While he’s at it, Richardson would also like to see renewable energy resources increase to 50 percent by 2040: “This is aggressive, but necessary as we start using more electricity for automobiles.” To help pay the bills, he’d raise “some revenue from the sales of carbon permits” and “get out the ‘green scissors’ to cut back on wrongly-placed tax subsidies.”
Richardson would like to see the US become “energy independent and combat global warming” because— yes, you guessed it– our “national security and our planet depend on it.” Seems like a theme, or, if you prefer, just another par-for-the-course sop to environmentalists and consumers fearing higher gas prices and foreign entanglements.
Talk about pie-in-the-sky promises or pandering to what people want to hear!
Where’s Harry Truman when you need him? I’d really like someone to speak his/her mind regardless of the fallout. Of course, “give ’em hell” Harry could never be elected in today’s world of 30-second sound bites, poll-driven politics, and flaps over nothing (like $400 haircuts).
And speaking of cars, do any of the presidential candidates have something to say about reducing the number of Americans killed every year on the highways? We’ve been stalled at over 40K per year (100+ per day) for over a decade, yet no one has a plan for dealing with this? Shouldn’t this be in the top five priorities along with such things as the Iraq war, nuclear ambitions of rogue nations and the terrorists they fund, and our out-of-control national debt?
Okay… I’ve got to keep saying, “I’m not gonna get political… I’m not gonnna get politicial…” Take a deep breath… count to three… damn!
The first thing we should really do is reduce the federal budget so that we can get it balanced. ‘Pie in the sky’ government initiatives are very hazardous to the health of a country that is in perpetual deficits. Like many professional panderers in Washington, these presidential hopefuls appear oblivious to that fact and a few thousand others.
Another thing. Why do I get the feeling when I read their ‘position papers’ that these folks are nothing more than hired hands for a select number of special interest lobbyists? Does anyone even remotely believe that these candidates will indeed do anything more than offer cheerleading and government pork to those who deserve it least?
Anyone who says that energy independence can be achieved in two terms, or that we can ‘declare’ our way to fuel efficiency is genuinely delusional. I have tremendous respect for the Toyota’s, Honda’s and GE’s of the world who put efficiency at the front of their agenda because they realize ‘their customer demands it’. A substantial portion of their profits are dependent on their core competencies in increasing fuel and energy efficiency. In layman’s terms, they offer products (not promises) that the customers demand. Government can have some influence in that process. But to say we’ll achieve a complete victory by a specific date, or that we’ll get to x level of efficiency by y date, is an empty pandering promise.
Without going political, I’ve read several articles recently, most notably in The Economist, that point out that biofuels generally do more harm than good. Midwestern ethanol is inefficient and pushes food prices higher, and many other fuels come from virgin forests in South-East Asia, such as indonesia. Cutting trees there releases large amounts of carbon in the atmosphere, and is obviously also a threat for local eco-systems.
So far, the only really efficient ethanol is Brazilian sugar cane.
The first thing we should really do is reduce the federal budget so that we can get it balanced.
Balancing the budget certainly is a good idea. just want to mention that it can also be achieved through higher taxes.
My fellow Americans. As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball, but tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward, upward not forward,
and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!
I’m leaning towards Fred right now.
After reading Edwards, I started to wonder…did he say that before or after jumping in his private jet to fly to some North Eastern University to give a speach on Poverty for $400,000? If he gets elected, I’m moving.
210delray: And speaking of cars, do any of the presidential candidates have something to say about reducing the number of Americans killed every year on the highways?
Looking at the reports of fatal accidents in the local paper, it seems as though most fatalities are the result of failure to wear a safety belt or drunk driving (and there are a fair number where both factors are present). And then there are the accidents where survival was impossible (i.e., tractor trailer creams Chevy Aveo).
We’ve already lowered the blood alcohol content level (BAC) at which point one is considered legally intoxicated to .08, and states have passed mandatory seat belt laws (although not all treat it as a primary offense – but then Pennsylvania doesn’t treat it as a primary offense, and our rate of safety belt usage is higher than some states that do).
At this point, I don’t know what more can be done.
A thought occurs on reading this article. If we stop buying all the OPEC oil, won’t the Chinese, Indians, and other countries just step up and buy it? Will they use it more or less efficiently? Will they use modern ULEV vehicles, or something akin to a weed blower with no controls whatsoever? If our polluting with oil is bad for the environment, what will their’s be like?
AKM,
Most of the people I know have family incomes of over 200k. They are people who create jobs for people who make less, train those people to one day fill their shoes, pay almost all the taxes the government collects, and even the most liberal among them have started making the inevitable high tax choice to work less.
It can’t be good for our country when people with PhD’s, MD’s, and all sorts of other specialties just decide it’s not worth it to make that extra dollar any more. Only the poor can be forced to work more by raising taxes. The progressiveness of our tax code, and it’s discrimination against married couples, has made the tax rate extremely elastic.
We raise taxes at your our peril.
Well, what do you expect politicians to say about cars?
“Hillary for Turbos”?
“Giuliani for G-force”?
Of course, it’s all about the nasty side-effects of automobiles: fighting wars for oil, running out of oil, dependence on unsavory foreign countries, pollution, global warming and traffic safety.
The list of nastiness is pretty long.
I expect politicians to so something about it and that will influence my vote.
But remember Landcrusher, if we stop buying OPEC, then we’ve reduced our dependance on foriegn oil. The thing is, nobody who says that really knows what it means, but its a nice catchy little sound bite.
I personally find no reason to reduce our dependence on oil at all, but that is another argument for another time. For the sake of the discussion at hand, however…
Before we reduce our dependence on foriegn oil, we need to reduce our dependence on oil, period.
EJ: First candidate I see in a TT Viper or 1200+rwhp Supra gets my vote! Elsewise, its most likely gonna be another write in for Da Nuge.
AKM,
Most of the people I know have family incomes of over 200k. They are people who create jobs for people who make less, train those people to one day fill their shoes, pay almost all the taxes the government collects, and even the most liberal among them have started making the inevitable high tax choice to work less.
It can’t be good for our country when people with PhD’s, MD’s, and all sorts of other specialties just decide it’s not worth it to make that extra dollar any more. Only the poor can be forced to work more by raising taxes. The progressiveness of our tax code, and it’s discrimination against married couples, has made the tax rate extremely elastic.
We raise taxes at your our peril.
I’m not going to go into a whole tax argument here, and I lean on both sides of the argument. I just wanted to point out that taxes are not necessarily bad. I don’t buy for a single second the argument that taxing high incomes more income tax reduces the output of the country. See scandinavian countries for examples of that. They have a higher productivity per capita than the U.S., yet have much higher taxes.
Furthermore, given that the Bush administration actually reduced taxes on higher incomes, I really don’t see why all those smart wealthy people start working less just when taxes on their incremental income decreased.
Interesting article in a recent issue of the NYT pointed out that the 35 mpg standard will not actually reduce US consumption, because, in the words of the article, there will be more drivers. Yes, and where will those more drivers come from? More than 2/3s from mass immigration, the rest from native increase. So why aren’t the candidates talking about stabilizing the population??? (Hint: because someone will get offended, i.e. immigrant advocacy groups and the vatican.)
guyincognito
Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.
David Holzman, stop bringing up logical, reasonable points, please. This IS a discussion about presidential politics, after all.
Sorry, can’t help the cynic I’ve become. With all due respect, does it really matter what their “positions” are in regard to these issues? Does anybody believe any of these yahoos possess the will or ability to follow up these empty promises with any workable solutions that do not create create new, more difficult problems. Sorry. Our system and our culture preclude the possibility. And it doesn’t matter what they say now. The winner (whoever it is) will only do what is politically expedient for them to do.
The fact that none of them are anything close to an engineer tell the tale. Far easier to promise that actually deliver on these ideas. But simply telling us they are going to drill more and pump more is seen as a wrong answer, despite the fact it is the easiest, cheapest, and quickest way to solve the problem with 100 dollar a barrel oil.
Windmill powered cars and solar toasters sound good on paper but that is where the end up staying. The windmill project in Mass was abandoned because it would cost too much, and people were not willing to pay 4 times a much for electricity./
Virtual,
But why reduce our dependance on oil if it’s not for environmental reasons. I am asking if our reducing our dependence of oil might not have negative consequences. If we stopped buying oil, the price would drop to the point that less developed countries would start using more of it. Even if we went 100% solar, the net effect could possibly be more pollution overall for the planet. Has anyone even thought of this unintended consequence? The stuff is going to get burned. Are we to buy it all up and store it? Use the military to keep it from being used? What?
AKM,
If you don’t want a whole tax argument then don’t try to bring up so called successful european socialist countries. It’s a whole bag of worms, but there has never been a socialist country that could defend itself that didn’t become a police state. Euro socialism is sustainable solely due to the benevolent American military.
“Save Socialism, Keep America Armed,” should be their rallying cry.
But why reduce our dependance on oil if it’s not for environmental reasons. I am asking if our reducing our dependence of oil might not have negative consequences. If we stopped buying oil, the price would drop to the point that less developed countries would start using more of it. Even if we went 100% solar, the net effect could possibly be more pollution overall for the planet. Has anyone even thought of this unintended consequence? The stuff is going to get burned. Are we to buy it all up and store it? Use the military to keep it from being used? What?
Because some day, perhaps sooner than we think, it is going to run out. A finite resource is a finite recource and if your car gets 12mpg or 100mpg, you are still 100% dependant on it. It is widely known that OPEC has been over reporting their estimated oil reserves, they are some of the biggest investors in alternative energy because they know the party is going to be over soon. Better to be wheened off it now than to quit cold turkey when it’s too late to come up with alternatives because the economy is paralysed. Long before it actually runs out however we are going to see increased conflict, regional squabbles and all out wars on the remaining supplies. Wouldn’t you rather be driving a FCX Clarity that runs on hydrogen generated domestically by that time?
I am going to vote for the candidate that will promise a Porsche in every garage.
“Save Socialism, Keep America Armed,” should be their rallying cry”
Corollarily, “Get our military out of the business of keeping Europe safe for socialism” should be ours.
My guess is those Euros will smarten up quickly if left to their own devices. And if not…… we can always get our Benzes and Bimmers from Alabama or somewhere.
Tankdog,
There is some good logic in what you are saying, but I am sure we will see the end of oil coming a good ways off. It’s easy to see some apocalypse brought on by a dwindling oil supply if you don’t look at the most likely scenarios.
First the price starts going up, way up. Then the government starts to ration it. Hopefully, they ration it for use in nuclear power plant construction. Everything goes electric, and we deal with it.
I think your argument is best used for proposing government subsidized research for alternatives, so that we have them when we need them. Not eliminating use of oil before we even reach peak oil. If you are really worried, then you argue to build muke plants now, as well as perhaps to build and mothball plants to refine bio fuels.
An analogy might be that you have a great argument for building a bomb shelter, but not a good one for living in one.
Screw hybrids, diesels, and E85. Give me my flying car! I was promised a flying car by now. Dammit, I want my flying car!
And I want it to run on Mr. Fusion.
(ahh 80’s movies, is there nothing their wisdom can’t teach us).
jschaef481 :
December 7th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Sorry, can’t help the cynic I’ve become. With all due respect, does it really matter what their “positions” are in regard to these issues? Does anybody believe any of these yahoos possess the will or ability to follow up these empty promises with any workable solutions that do not create create new, more difficult problems.
For me anyway, that is the whole point of all of these excerpts from the candidates position papers. None of them seems to have a grasp on reality. All of them seem to think that declaring something so makes it so. They all need to grow up and become leaders. Stomping your feet and saying I want 100 mpg vehicles won’t make it so. Saying I want 25% of all fuel sold to be “biofuels” won’t make it possible. The fact is we consume a lot of petroleum in this country. The question is where do we want it to come from. Other countries? Our own country? Or, do we want to reduce consumption through the use of alternative energy sources like nuclear power plants (gasp of horror!). It sounds like only Guilliani was even willing to pay lip service to these questions. The others seem to choose to ignore the issue or just declare an end to the “problem” with no real method of getting there that would seem reasonable to any honest economist or engineer.
Wouldn’t you rather be driving a FCX Clarity that runs on hydrogen generated domestically by that time?
Generated how? Primarily through the burning of fossil fuels to drive turbines to produce electricity that is used to produce hydrogen that then produces less energy than the fossil fuel that was originally burned. Bio-fuels: I doubt there is enough land in the world to generate enough biomass to meet our fuel demands, and I know there isn’t enough water (that’s the field I work in, doemstic water supply treatment and distribution). As a side benefit, our water is already becoming more polluted from increased fertilizer usage and we can’t even meet the current requirement of a 10% ethanol blend.
Generated how? Primarily through the burning of fossil fuels to drive turbines to produce electricity that is used to produce hydrogen that then produces less energy than the fossil fuel that was originally burned. Bio-fuels: I doubt there is enough land in the world to generate enough biomass to meet our fuel demands, and I know there isn’t enough water (that’s the field I work in, doemstic water supply treatment and distribution). As a side benefit, our water is already becoming more polluted from increased fertilizer usage and we can’t even meet the current requirement of a 10% ethanol blend.
Uh, obviously not generated by fossil fuels, that’s the whole point of what we are talking about here. With a combination of nuclear, solar, biomass, wind, hydro and geo-thermal, the world could be off oil TODAY if it made financial sense.
“Save Socialism, Keep America Armed,” should be their rallying cry”
Corollarily, “Get our military out of the business of keeping Europe safe for socialism” should be ours.
My guess is those Euros will smarten up quickly if left to their own devices. And if not…… we can always get our Benzes and Bimmers from Alabama or somewhere.
Is Germany still on the march? Russia? did I miss something?
Landcrusher: My fear is that what we have here is the classic boiling frog experiment. The price of a barrel of oil now 6 times what it was in the year I was born and that’s adjusting for inflation. This is not because there is a shortage of oil in the ground but because of a lack of excess production capacity. At some point, someone is going to bring more capacity on line and oil prices are going to fall or at least level out, people will relax again, we’ll all stop talking about the oil running out….and then it will.
When it comes to issues such as “energy independence”, the best solutions come from the free market, not more government intervention. In fact, federal regulations, subsidies, and last but not least our monetary and foreign policy have gotten us where we are today.
Ron Paul is the man who will get things back on track. If you want to elect a principled, honest politician (I swear, I never would have belived it either until I heard found out about Ron Paul) who will get the federal government out of your life and out of your wallet, take a close look at this guy.
Tankdog,
Yes, you missed something.
On oil, you can relax about your boiling frog. One of the largest oil supplies in the world is the Alberta oil sands. They cost a lot to extract. IMO, oil cannot fall below $50 for long before they stop collecting it. There are other oil shale deposits we can go after also. It’s just harder to get.
The price of oil WILL go drastically higher before we are near depletion. Usage will slow drastically in response, not counting hoarding. We aren’t in a Titanic scenario. The oil companies are acting like $60 oil could be here again tomorrow. They have learned a lot from the boom and bust cycles over the last few decades.
That sort of proves my point, I was thinking $110 a barrel oil in 5 years would be cheap, not going back down to $60 which will never happen. If someone had said to me 5 years ago that oil would go that high in 10 years and we could still function normally in the western world I would have laughed at them. If fact we’ll probably still be buying 30mpg cars when it hits $150 as long as the price creeps up slowly enough.
I do not believe I or anyone is necessarily Oil “dependent”. I am “reliant” on oil. I rely not depend on oil. “Depend” I think sounds to much like a victim statement. I think its usually used as such when I hear it.
As oil prices vary, what do I need to do to be happy to the best of my ability? Worry? usually not. Life is a challenge and also an adventure. I need to continue progressing to accept that I cannot control life or others as I understand them to be. I cannot control the future and I’m better doing what I think I can do for the time being to prepare for what I believe may be possible outcomes. Also try not to figure everything out ie. have faith.