Detroit’s movers and shakers have a chip on their shoulder larger than the Rock of Gibraltar. They feel besieged, besmirched and belittled by the feds and liberal elites. Of course, that was BEFORE the Beltway Boys lavished bailout bucks on Motown’s moaners to retool their factories to build better cars than their competitors. Detroit’s playing kissy-face with their former antagonists now, right? Wong. “Clearly, now that Washington is loaning Detroit auto makers $25 billion to begin repenting their evil ways, legislators will try to turn the fuel-economy screws tighter so they can limit the number of unhealthy vehicle choices General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are able to sell weak-willed consumers.” Well, duh! What part of CAFE doesn’t WardsAuto scribe Drew Winter not understand (other than, you know, the actual regulations)? The part where everyone does the same thing, apparently. “When I see pictures of them [Chevy Volt, Toyota Prius], I can’t tell them apart. It reminds me of Soviet-era central planning. Yes, all these cars further The State’s goals of reducing carbon emissions and consumption of foreign oil, but comrade, they look boring and not everyone can drive one… Forgive us for our decadent and unhealthy choices, oh wise members of the new Washington Automotive Politburo. Fast red convertibles and big utility vehicles are the opiate (or tobacco) of the people. But this still is America, where people should be allowed to buy what they want and auto makers should be allowed to make a few dollars off our human weakness. Pretend the profits are from something politicians like, such as casino gambling. This still is a capitalist society after all. At least, it still was at press time.” Wow.
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In the People’s Republic of NJ, Her Eminence Former Dear Leader Christie Whitman once proposed banning all cars over 10 years old, as a way to force cars with poor / non-existant pollution controls off the roads. It was hard to hear the reason the plan was shelved between the belly laughter of used car dealers in PA/DE and the howls for Whitman-blood coming from south of Toms River.
We’re Americans, we’ll drive what we want, when we want.
No you won’t!
Oh lordy, everything is always capitalist this communist that. Life isn’t that simple.
American made what many people think are its best cars in the 1950s, shortly after the New Deal was implemented and when the top income tax rate was over 90% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States).
After Nixon replaced Johnson the US started making really bad cars, and the US didn’t start making good cars again until the Clinton era.
The cars made by relatively capitalist (US and UK) and relatively communist (USSR) countries are both inferior compared to the cars made by socialist countries (Germany and Japan).
CAFE isn’t bad because it’s communist. CAFE isn’t even socialist (those countries use high gas taxes). It’s simply the imperfect public policy of a capitalist country trying to address foreign oil and environmental issues without taxes. While most true economists prefer gas taxes they have a lot of problems also.
With nuclear power and the right batteries or hydrogen infrastructure there will be no limit to how powerful cars can be, but we’ll never get there without Priuses and Volts. The market is not very good at investing in long term R&D without prodding. It’s the electronic fuel injection and engine management technology that came out of the original CAFE requirements that allow current cars to have the performance that they do.
“We’re Americans, we’ll drive what we want, when we want.”
And we’ll get the ground-level ozone, respiratory distress, hanging clouds of brown smog, and increased rates of of leukemia, blood disorders, childhood athsma and pneumonia, cystic fibrosis, and environmental damage we don’t want, when we don’t want it, as a result.
Your right to drive some old shitheap stops where my nose begins. That’s how libertarianism works, bud; freedom is limited when it encroaches on other people’s rights. Or did your conception of freedom stop evolving at age 7, when “it’s a free country, I can do what I want” actually made sense to you?
Same to the idiot quoted in the article. Sorry, folks, once your age hits double digits you’re expected to display some consideration for society. The world got complicated when you weren’t looking. Wise up, act like a goddamn adult, and stop bitching; this petulant “communist” whining just sounds like a sniveling brat’s insistence that he really is the center of the universe.
I hate to agree with Phil Gramm on ANYTHING, but we are a bunch of whiners. The reason we have CAFE is because the better way of doing it, higher fuel taxes (with compensation for lower income people), would be met with deafening whining and the turfing out of our representative representatives. If we did that, people could drive anything they wanted, provided it was available. Somehow I think the prospect of selling a hog SUV in triple digits might dissuade manufacturers from making such things. But freedom would ring.
“higher fuel taxes (with compensation for lower income people), would be met with deafening whining”
Yeah, every time you start talking about making people pay for the costs they fob off on everybody else, they start whining. Society as a whole subsidizes these little wannabe free-marketeers, and when society says, “maybe you should pay the externalized costs too” it’s like taking a lollipop away from a baby. But that’s what the honorable and sensible tradition of fiscal conservatism has fallen to in this county: socialize the costs, privatize the profits. Which is my real beef with the bailout, not some petty “communist” whingeing.
no_slushbox:
American made what many people think are its best cars in the 1950s, shortly after the New Deal was implemented and when the top income tax rate was over 90%
Most people I know think the best American cars are being made today in places like Marysville (OH), Lincoln (AL), San Antonio (TX), and Smyrna (TN). And we’re all very thankful for the Bush tax cuts…
“But this still is America, where people should be allowed to buy what they want and auto makers should be allowed to make a few dollars off our human weakness.” Substitute “should not be” buyers and makers. Consumers, the People, forefited their option with debt including onerous car installment debt. Detroit makers built their products without considering future market demands despite clear actions of their competitors. Managed free market capitalism died 3 October 2008. RIP. Free market capitalism for the consumer meant long term best interest decisions. Failure. The People were unable to deal with the relatively easy gasoline “crisis”, lets see how they handle a Depression.
America needs to take its cartoonishly simple ideologies out behind the barn, and dispatch them. Hope that’s folksy enough for you (all).
It’s time to rebuild the middle class, sever the unholy alliances between politicians and businesses, and prioritize your domestic and foreign agendas.
I have mentioned it before, but it bears repeating, Americans today appear as ideologized today as they imagined the Soviets to be in the 1980’s. It’s really not productive.
Yeah, every time you start talking about making people pay for the costs they fob off on everybody else, they start whining.
Why pay our own way when we can sell our grandchildren into indentured servitude to the Chinese instead. It’s the American Way!
Drew Winter’s article is pretty foolish, for many reasons. But mainly as any social security recipient can tell you, when you accept government money you have to accept some restrictions. Thats par for the course.
to Chris Inns
Social Security is not Government money. If you check your pay stubs, you’ll find a deduction for Social Security. You are contributing to the security of our society. At either 62 or 65 you can get your contributions back in the form of a monthly check. Without this program we would have hundreds of thousands of Americans with no savings and no income in their later years. Call it Communism of Gubmint Money, but it is forced savings. Now if we could get the Government to leave our contributions alone, we would all be fine.
That is funny! Forced savings? The government has saved nothing for SS. They have been very imaginative in finding ways to spend it. There is nothing there for the huge Baby Boomer bulge of the population that will soon be looking for their money. SS is a pay as you go scheme.
The people that build the antiquated falling apart road system legistlate all the nanny state rules that the auto companies must follow. Just think of the fuel savings if the roads were upgraded from their 1930’s technology and they weren’t all busted up and broke down.
Or did your conception of freedom stop evolving at age 7, when “it’s a free country, I can do what I want” actually made sense to you?
Actually comrade, yes it does.
Why does the state of NJ have the power to tell me that I cannot cut down a tree on my own land? Literally, I am not legally allowed to cut down a tree on my lot because the state Pinelands commision says no.
Why does the state of NJ have the power to tell me I am unable to defend myself with a handgun? I am not a criminal, I pay my taxes, I bother no one. But if I use a handgun to defend myself with non-lethal force from home intrusions (which do happen here despite liberal insistences to the contrary), I go the jail and perp goes free. Ironically I’m better off killing a perp so that it’s a dead man’s word against mine.
Why does the state of NJ find it necessary to pay scumbags in Section 8 to live near me with my tax dollars, while they destroy my property values. I have lived next door (literally) to various Section 8 assholes for 20 of my 31 years on Earth (One of whom actually killed my dog). Apparently the free market only applies to people that pay their taxes and work like myself, wheras everyone else is allowed live off my sweat.
ChartreuseGoose: And we’ll get the ground-level ozone, respiratory distress, hanging clouds of brown smog, and increased rates of of leukemia, blood disorders, childhood athsma and pneumonia, cystic fibrosis, and environmental damage we don’t want, when we don’t want it, as a result.
And the belief in junk science is alive and well in 2008.
You forgot the heartbreak of psoriasis and erectile dysfunction…
“And the belief in junk science is alive and well in 2008.”
Don’t make your ignorance my problem. These are well-established facts, backed by plenty of evidence from public health research. Or do you expect me to believe that air pollution has no negative health effects, despite the 103,000 journal articles I just found detailing the morbidity and mortality associated with air pollution?
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&q=air+pollution+mortality&btnG=Search
It’s only Junk Science when it doesn’t agree with your ideology. Thankfully, partisan idiots like you have very little effect on policy….and I, an atmospheric chemist, do.
“Why does the state of NJ have the power to tell me that I cannot cut down a tree on my own land?”
Because you live in a national biosphere reserve designed to protect biodiversity. Don’t like it? Quit bitching and move. Or, learn about where you live and why it’s protected; you might begin to appreciate why it’s protected.
“Why does the state of NJ have the power to tell me I am unable to defend myself with a handgun?”
Somehow, I doubt it’s as you describe. Source?
“Why does the state of NJ find it necessary to pay scumbags in Section 8 to live near me with my tax dollars”
I grew up in subsidized housing, actually. So I doubt they’re all scumbags, or criminals; just the ones you choose to notice.
no_slushbox:
“American made what many people think are its best cars in the 1950s, shortly after the New Deal was implemented and when the top income tax rate was over 90%”
In the 1950’s, despite the 90% top rate (which NO ONE actually paid) the average middle/upper middle income household paid 5% of their income to the federal government. Today it’s around 25%. The New Deal was already running out of steam by then (until it morphed into the “Great Socety” of the 1960’s) but it had little influence on the average Americans ability to pay for stuff. As for the cars I don’t know if they were the best or not. They were pretty much the only thing you could buy since there were no mass market foreign alternatives.
ChartreuseGoose:
“We’re Americans, we’ll drive what we want, when we want.”
“And we’ll get the ground-level ozone, respiratory distress, hanging clouds of brown smog, and increased rates of of leukemia, blood disorders, childhood athsma and pneumonia, cystic fibrosis, and environmental damage we don’t want, when we don’t want it, as a result.
“Your right to drive some old shitheap stops where my nose begins.”
We’re not talking about the right to drive old dilapidated cars. We’re talking about the right to drive a new SUV, truck or bicycle if we want to. And these pollute a lot less than old VW Beetles. Today we have twice as many cars on the road as we had in the 60’s and 70’s and auto pollution has been cut in half. Somebody better at math than me can figure out the true percentage reduction.
forraymond:
“Social Security is not Government money. If you check your pay stubs, you’ll find a deduction for Social Security. You are contributing to the security of our society. At either 62 or 65 you can get your contributions back in the form of a monthly check.”
True enough, you do get your contributions back. Trouble is you also get my contributions back too, because there is not enough money that you put in to cover all the payments you will recieve. That’s why SS is a Ponzi scheme. The first generations to dip into the till will get theirs but the whole thing will collapse before the later generations will get any. More young people today believe in UFO’s than believe there will be any SS money for them when they retire.
“Without this program we would have hundreds of thousands of Americans with no savings and no income in their later years. Call it Communism of Gubmint Money, but it is forced savings.”
What these people should have done is saved money for their own retirement. At least then it would grow. The return on SS is about 1% if that. If SS were a Wall Street managed retirement fund, they would be brought up on charges for fleecing their customers.
“Now if we could get the Government to leave our contributions alone, we would all be fine.”
A better idea would be to let the government invest our money for ourselves so we could all retire as millionares. And there are plenty of safe investments that are better than SS if you are afraid of the stock market (which has made money 97% of time when measured in incremental slices of 5 years). Geez maybe we could buy T-bills so we wouldn’t be so indebted to the Chinese.
“We’re not talking about the right to drive old dilapidated cars. We’re talking about the right to drive a new SUV, truck or bicycle if we want to. And these pollute a lot less than old VW Beetles.”
I’m sorry, was that right infringed? Come to think of it, was that right ever actually a right?
The downsides to using too much gas too quickly have become apparent to all but the totally insane or comatose in the past few months. Buy what you want, to the extent that you don’t create unnecessary problems for me, and everyone else, at the same time.
I was responding to the whining about the proposal to take old cars without adequate emissions controls off the road, in any case.
OK, so back to the article. Labeling every regulation or expenditure of tax dollars that you don’t agree with as “Communist” is as simplistic and childish as calling your 5th grade principle “Hitler” because he told you to stop running in the hallway. It’s like a variation of Godwin’s law.
Drew Winter is a ninny.
Seriously, the guy whines every issue about .. something .. that he claims is anti-Detroit 3. If he was any more a shill for the Detroit 3 his email address would include “rencen”.
Can everyone stop screaming “commie” this and “comrade” that, please?
My grandmother’s in the other room, and you’re scaring her. She’s skittish about this sort of thing, since that…you know…war.
Thanks! -JM