As a journalist
I understand completely why so many people rightly loathe the media. It is
because the media no longer understand – or just doesn’t give a damn – about
the difference between conveying facts and attempting to force-feed its
opinions to you – these opinions presented with the most insolent certainty,
formed in such a way as to make it clear that anyone reading who harbors a
secret doubt is not merely a doubter but a denier; i.e., a malicious and vile
person who must be dealt with.
It’s the sort
of thing which leads to fists and worse.
Well, here we
go again.
Bloomberg – the
organ of billionaire leftist Michael Bloomberg – is practically signing death
warrants (and probably would, if it had the power) in its “coverage” of the
Trump administration’s apparent intention to dial back an Obama-era increase (a
near-doubling) of the federal fuel economy mandate, which is lately being
conflated with the most despicable dishonesty as an “emissions” (of “greenhouse
gasses”) mandate – which is an outright lie.
The mandates
are Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) mandates and you’ll note there is
nothing in that term even hinting at “emissions” – of any sort. CAFE dates back
to the 1970s and the Energy Policy Conservation Act – italicized to
emphasize the emphasis on energy and its conservation rather than emissions.
It decrees that
every car company’s combined fleet of cars must achieve a “corporate average”
of X miles-per-gallon, that number constantly going up, along with heavy fines
for “non-compliance” (the writ-large version of the “shared responsibility”
fines which the Obamacare recalcitrant – including this writer – are being hit
with).
One of the
Obama regime’s final acts of regulatory thuggery – after all, no one voted on
this – was to unilaterally decree that the corporate average MPG mandate ascend
to 50-something MPGs by the 2025 model year.
This was a
vicious decree because, in the first place, who are these people to be
dictating the mileage of our cars – the ones we pay for? This includes the gas
which goes in their tanks.
What gives them
– the bureaucrats nesting in DC – the moral right?
If buyers want
ultra-efficient cars, won’t the car companies build them? In fact, they do
build them. Some cars are very fuel efficient; those who want them are free to
buy them. If you want a 50-MPG-capable Prius hybrid or even an electric car
that gets infinite MPGs, they are available.
This
obviousness is lost on the government bureaucrats – and the screechers at
Bloomberg, et al.
Of course, the
problem is that most buyers prefer larger or more powerful or more capable cars
– and trucks and SUVs. Not hybrids and electric cars.
Damn them –
literally.
Obama’s
regulatory ayatollahs sought to countermand buyer preferences, freely
expressed, by decreeing an increase in CAFE to 50-something MPG and then
styling it as an environmental mandate – in order to attempt to force everyone
into a hybrid or an electric car, by stigmatizing any criticism of this putsch
as the equivalent of pouring used motor oil down a storm sewer.
Bloomberg – and
it’s not just Bloomberg – have joined this unctuous chorus:
“The proposal,
expecte to be released this week, amounts to a frontal assault on one of
President Obama’s signature regulatory programs to curb emissions that
contribute to climate change.”
Italics added.
This is
excerpted from a news story.
First – it’s
not “Obama’s signature regulatory program.” It is a federal regulatory program
that dates back to the Carter presidency. Obama was in middle school at the
time, so he can’t take credit for it or be given credit for it.
Second, CAFE –
the “regulatory program” being discussed – was never written to nor amended to
address “climate change,” a term which didn’t even exist when CAFE came into
currency some 40 years ago.
CAFE is about
gas mileage. It is not about “greenhouse gasses” or any other “emissions.”
There are other regs which cover those.
But they – the
media – either do not understand these distinctions, in which case they are
incompetent. Or they do understand these distinctions and deliberately lie – in
which case they are despicable.
I think they
know – instinctively – that the only way to get a car-buying public that likes
bigger, more powerful cars and trucks and SUVs more than it likes gas mileage
is to shame the public.
To smear any
opposition to a near doubling of the CAFE mandate to 50-something MPG –
which no currently available cars except hybrid cars and electric cars are
capable of achieving and which therefore would mean the extinction by
regulation of almost every car other than a hybrid or electric car – as
opposition to “clean air” and “denying” of “climate change.”
And the writers
of this stuff wonder why the people being lectured to despise them so.
. . .
Got a question
about cars – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in!
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