Cars are so clean now that perhaps it’s time to say “enough already”. Or at least ask “at what cost a cleaner car”. What good does it do if it makes new cars so expensive that it makes a lot of people fix up their old beaters instead of trading in for a newer car?
Not to editorialize but laws need to be reasonable and supported by the majority of the population, not just special interest groups
I hate to interrupt your beliefs with FACTS…But the vast majority want vehicles to be as clean as possible…not some special interest group.
Define “possible”. If you set the standard so high that you price the working class out of driving, that driving a car becomes as unaffordable as flying an airplane, I think you’ll see the support of the vast majority fade.
Define when is enough enough? The latest from Denmark is that they want to tax all red meat to eliminate it from people’s diets. The reason? Cow flatulence is attributing to global warming. They are dead serious and as we know its only a matter of time before it spreads. You don’t need a socialist policy as long as laws and regulations control every human behavior and money is collected from it. Its been a slippery slope. No, its been a cliff.
I like the latest PETA bit: they are going to campaign to “release all cats and dogs from captivity”. Without thinking about where they would go… and eat …
Release a chihuahua dog into the wild and you will quickly see natural selection at work.
I did see that in a news story a few days ago, part of another article. But it does seem pretty unrealistic.
Sounds like the newscasters got it wrong, the only thing I found on the PETA site was them criticizing folks who let their cats be ‘outdoor cats’.
Car related - kind of like the newscasters that got bamboozled by car mpg scammers, the news report was like an advertisement for the scammer.
Mike, I disagree with you. The majority of us want some common sense and reason used. Most regulatory agencies, the EPA especially, are to most of us out of control.
I didn’t read Barky’s entire list, but I’ve long been convinced that there are numerous regulatory and “special interest groups” gorging at the public trough that should be disbanded and/or cut off from public funds. Winding them down is a massive challenge, but a book could be written just listing all the agencies and groups feeding on out tax dollars.
Also, once an agency is created, it’s job becomes to perpetuate its existence and we have agencies that exist to collect revenue and collect revenue to exist.
I was surprised that the Ministry of Silly Walks wasn’t on that list.
Yup.
Regulatory agencies are the method by which the executive branch executes its constitutionally-mandated responsibility to enforce the laws that congress passes. They’re headed by appointed politicians, and most politicians’ sole purpose in life is to gain as much power as possible. That’s done by building the agency from its original budget and size to many multiples of its original budget and size. And the beat goes on.
I need to replace some fencing. I think I’ll anoint one of the posts a “cabinet post” and see now big it grows over time. 
The list seems to go on and on about various auto-related problems. The funny thing is that my new Mirage seems to get better than the EPA rating.
How about the GM ignition switch issues? They never said a word about this even when they knew it was a problem and killing people.
How about various problematic models that the maker blames on consumer neglect. The Chrysler 2.7L comes to mind but I know there have been others. How about cam phasers and plugs being launched from the head in the Ford 5.4?
How about Toyota and the acceleration issues a few years back? They weren’t exactly the most transparent during that time period.
How about Ford and the Firestone tires mess? I place more blame on Ford about that than the stupid tires. If the tires had been inflated to normal pressures, they wouldn’t have failed. They may not have been great tires but leaving them low led to the perfect storm. I place more blame on Ford than Firestone to be honest.
How about the Chevy Aveo and other GM Daewoo products? The timing sets on many of these were barely able to hold together and when they let go before the scheduled replacement interval, the owners were left with scrap metal.
War industries are one of the bad ones as suggested. They WANT to have a war so that demand for their products is guaranteed.
Many companies do this, not just car companies. They do this crap and then companies like GE pa ZERO taxes! How about food companies that knowingly sell a product contaminated with bacteria? The list goes on and on.
TSM - While you may rail about government regulation at least we, the people, get to vote on who represents us in government. Corporations care about nothing but the bottom dollar since most are beholden to shareholders, not customers. If Ford could make more firebomb cars like the Pinto for less money and get away with it, they would. If they could make cars cheaper without safety features and then make more profit on them, they would. The long and short of it is that regulatory agencies are there to make sure that corporations don’t run roughshod over consumers and the environment. How well they do that is another matter but their absence would promote egregious corporate behavior. Mitsubishi’s behavior here, as well as VW’s and others that have been caught cheating, is a grand example of how corporations don’t care about anyone but themselves and their shareholders.
In a way, we also vote on what corporations produce for our consumption. Everyone who buys a 600 hp muscle car instead of a Prius has voted for 600 hp muscle cars. Yes, corporations can lobby for our dollar votes through advertising however even a multi million dollar advertising campaign could not convince the public to vote for the Edsel with their dollars.
So, if you lament the fact that there is not much in the way of 50 mpg economy cars, face it, those cars lost the election and massive SUVs won. Nobody put a gun to their heads and forced them to buy massive SUVs.
@B.L.E. - Talk to me when gas prices are $5 a gallon. When gas prices spiked last time there was a waiting list in Prius’s (Prii?) and Geo Metros were selling online for obscene amounts of money. The government has to sometimes act like a responsible parent. “No Johnny you can’t have cake for breakfast. It’s not healthy”. Johnny - “Why not? I don’t care if I get fat!” Parent - “You’ll understand one day.” You see how that works? While we drive our gas guzzling, emissions spewing cars that make the world a worse place for future generations we need somebody to take a longer view. When it comes to cars we are all kids in a candy store making decisions based on instant gratification and rarely thinking about what will happen to the world our kids our grandchildren will live in. Personally I bought a sedan that gets 40mpg on the highway because I felt saving fuel was an important civic duty. How many people think that way when gas is less than two bucks a gallon?
Which is why the government is remiss in not increasing the gasoline tax. If gas were $10 per gallon, then we all know what would happen, cars would become smaller and more efficient.
Of course that would not happen overnight, but that should be the trend. Instead we have seen gas prices dropping.
Years ago Consumer Reports tried to find out what exactly the Texas Railroad Commission did. They asked it to get a ruling on transporting yak fat (unobtainable in the US) to be transported from Chicago to New Orleans.
They received a thick report with rules and data.
Today, if I buy cookies in Spokane, Washington, it often has a “Pennsylvania Dept of Agriculture” approval ruling on it!
I did not know this department was the final arbiter of whether cookies we safe to eat!
If the cookies were made in PA, that would make the PA Dept of Agriculture approval germane.
It’s to allow them to be sold in PA.