by Vin Suprinowicz
It's wonderful what the government can accomplish with a little gentle arm-twisting, especially after it's set an example by seizing control of General Motors and turning over part ownership to the unions, as their reward for driving the car-maker to the brink of bankruptcy in the first place.
On Aug. 28, for instance, the Obama administration announced a final "agreement" with auto makers which by 2025 will increase the cost of an average new car by $3,000 to $4,800.
Even better, the flimsier, lighter-weight cars that manufacturers just "agreed" to build (at a time when their biggest profits come from pickups) will result in thousands of additional highway deaths per year, and tens of thousands more serious injuries.
Actually, correcting for inflation, gasoline costs less now than it did in the 1960s. It's about as likely that we can impact the earth's climate by throwing salt over our left shoulders as by choosing which cars to build and buy. And we could also "create new jobs" by drafting 10 million Americans to dig ditches and another 10 million to fill them in - a plan that reportedly came in second, but is still under consideration.
Meantime, "Media discussions of the administration's new mileage rules have covered about everything except how many people they will kill," notes J.R. Dunn, consulting editor of American Thinker, at http://tinyurl.com/8kyx2rv
Like most Green initiatives, manipulating fuel efficiency standards "is essentially ritualistic," Mr. Dunn notes. It is "intended to instill a sense of virtue ... while at the same time acting as a punitive measure against those opposed to Green ideology. As is true of many environmentalist programs, it has the unintended side-effect of killing large numbers of unknowing individuals."
No comments:
Post a Comment