Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

The arrogance of these creatures:

A group of Senate Democrats is warning the Trump administration not to roll back the fuel economy standards that were set under the Obama administration.

The Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for cars and light trucks at an average of 36 miles a gallon by the model year 2025 after originally proposing 54.5 miles per gallon. The auto industry has been pushing for a reduction in the fuel economy standards and the Trump administration will reportedly announce changes soon.

“These laws are what has unleashed the Elon Musk revolution – all of these companies being forced to now invest in new technology. They always said it was difficult to do, which is why they did not improve the standards for decades but once the law passed they found ways to be able to achieve that. We’re not talking about rocket science. We’re talking about auto mechanics,” Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said on a conference call with other Democratic senators on Tuesday.

Markey called the Obama-era CAFE standards the “largest step” America has ever taken to reduce carbon pollution, adding that the “benefits far outweigh the costs” for consumers.

“Those standards will reduce our carbon pollution by 5 to 6 billion tons over the course of the program, but Donald Trump is waging a war on the environment and he wants EPA Administrator Pruitt to make strong fuel economy emissions standards his newest victim,” he said. “We cannot let him.”
Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member Tom Carper (D-Del.) said the federal government has a “responsibility to encourage people to buy these energy efficient cars.”
“We don’t want them just to sit on the sales lot, you know, going un-purchased. We want to make sure people are buying them,” he said. “We need to use less oil from OPEC, so this is sort of a win-win – so at the end of the day, our auto companies continue to make money and that’s important too and we think they can.”

This is rank tyranny. The federal government has a responsibility to keep its damn nose out of the transactions between the consumers and producers, the buyers and and sellers, of this country. 


Markey acknowledges that CAFE standards make cars more expensive than they would be otherwise, as does some goose-stepping jackboot named Dan Becker, but not to worry, they have a long-term-savings plan all worked out for the cattle-masses:

Dan Becker, the director of the Safe Climate Campaign, agreed with Markey’s assessment.

“The technology that saves gas costs less than the gas it saves. And so consumers will pay a little bit more for the vehicle, but will more than make up for it at the gas pump. And if you lease your vehicle, as UCS studies have shown, you start saving money the minute you drive off the lot,” he said on the call. 

And Markey - by the way, it would be interesting to know if he has ever worked on the shop floor of any plant anywhere up or down the automotive supply chain - shows what he really thinks of the companies that actually produce the vehicles that allow us to get quickly, safely and affordably from Point A to Point B:

“The auto industry is crying crocodile tears about their inability to meet these standards,” the senator said. “It has nothing to do with their ability to meet these standards. They can meet them. They know they can meet them.”

These totalitarians must be kept sidelined in perpetuity. They bring nothing but ruin when they are in power.