Heck, Mr. President - Why don't we see if we can make things worse...

I am aware that California had its own car standards for a long time.

I wanted to write more but it's late and I have to go for a loooong drive
tomorrow, starting early. And it's snowed. And nobody has winter tyres in
southern England, me included...

DAS

To send an e-mail directly replace "spam" with "schmetterling"
---

Dori A Schmetterling wrote:
> I am aware that California had its own car standards for a long time.
>
> I wanted to write more but it's late and I have to go for a loooong drive
> tomorrow, starting early. And it's snowed. And nobody has winter tyres in
> southern England, me included...
>
> DAS
>
> To send an e-mail directly replace "spam" with "schmetterling"
> ---

And for us, the Superbowl is starting.

--
Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

"Bill Putney" > wrote in message
...
> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>> I don't accept that an entire harvest of whatever vegetable it was has
>>> to be destroyed (they refused to allow it to be used for anything -
>>> bureaucrats had to make a point). Aren't there at least some starving
>>> people somewhere that could have used them. Besides - if I wanted to
>>> buy some smallish samples of whatever it was, I should have the right to
>>> do so. I find this kind of crap more than grossly absurd.
>>>
>>
>> I'd assume they could have used it as animal feed - or does the EU have
>> specs on that too?
>
> You missed where I said "(they refused to allow it to be used for
> anything - bureaucrats had to make a point)". The news story I heard
> specifically mentioned that they would not allow it to be diverted even to
> animal feed.

Hmmm... The US has been doing something like this since 1971 at least:

http://www.avocadosource.com/Journal...3-305_1971.pdf

"...When fruit are found that fail to meet these requirements the receiver
has the
option to recondition the fruit so that it does meet requirements or the
fruit is destroyed..."

> Not that it couldn't have from a practical point. The point of that was
> that they had to send the message that they were in charge, not that any
> real good would come of that spec. That's what bureaucrats do - operate
> to exercise their power for the sake of that power. Acting for the common
> good is not in the equation.
>
>>> Not to worry, Dori. It is clear that the U.S. is now on an accelerated
>>> schedule to the same fate as Europe.
>>>
>>
>> Dori, Bill doesen't have any excuse for this and should know better, but
>> you
>> are perhaps unaware that ever since the 60's that CA has had differing
>> emissions
>> requirements for automobiles than the rest of the United States. In
>> short, if you
>> wanted to sell cars in the US you either built your entire model to be
>> California
>> -compliant, or you did what most manufacturers did, and made a special CA
>> version of your model for sale in CA.
>
> And Californians paid for that in higher costs - like they do with
> everything.
>
> My philosophy would be that if California elected legislators that exacted
> their own standards on cars that California then deserved what it got in
> the form of paying more for their cars. Pure and simple.

Well keep in mind that CA got this special consideration because they
started emissions regulations BEFORE the federal government did. Is your
position that there should be no emissions regulations whatsoever, federal
or otherwise?

CA is somewhat of a special case, though. When you can land in LAX and
get off the plane and look straight up and the sky is orange, as I have
done,
you realize what real air pollution is.

> Californian's have a way of shooting themselves in their collective foot
> and then blaming everyone else.
>
> There are too many examples of that to list them all, but I remember I
> think it was in the early or mid 90's, California passed some ridiculous
> restrictions on auto insurance companies - things that would make staying
> in business impossible.
>

Your thinking prop 103 that regulated insurance rates and cut all of them
20%

> All of the insurance companies immediately pulled their business out of
> California.

That never happened. Many large insurance companies experienced
losses for a few years after that - but CA then passed prop 213 which
prohibited uninsured drivers from suing for medical, etc. as a result of
accidents - this greatly encouraged the purchase of auto insurance, which
put those companies back in the black.

> Then California bitched about that. Imagine that - people refusing to be
> forced to do business in a state where it would be impossible to not go
> broke - oh those ******* insurance companies!!
>
> And the answer to your future response to that is: Then let some wise
> businessman start a new insurance company to operate in California under
> those regs. There's a reason that no businessman - wise or otherwise
> would have done so.
>

None of this happened and your story is a rediculous distortion of what
actually happened.

The current fight nowadays is over offering quake insurance - insurance
companies all over the country are dropping this coverage in states that
have fault lines. Some of this is due to regulations that prohibit them
from
discriminating against brick and mortar buildings or buildings built before
1960.

>> So the idea that the American economy is a large single market has never
>> been
>> true for automobiles. And the fact is that although a lot of car guys
>> sneered at
>> GM for making exactly the same vehicle and badging some of them Chevy and
>> some Buick, selling the different badges in different geographical
>> markets, this
>> is a strategy that worked - and it is further evidence that the American
>> market
>> isn't homogeneous.
>>
>> What is going on now in the US is that as more and more states adopt the
>> CA emissions requirements, automakers will be forced to eventually adopt
>> those as the standard for ALL models sold in ALL states, even if that
>> state had not adopted the standard.
>
> You're suggesting that those states *require* vehicles be made special to
> looser standards, and therefore their people pay *more* for specially
> built cars? Why would they do that. But they are *free* (key word) to do
> that if they so desired as California was free to do so for what it
> wanted, and its people ended up paying for it in the price of things in
> many areas.
>

The economies of scale dictate that if enough states vote this in that the
incremental cost of adding the emissions controls will be very very small -
because all vehicles will be doing it.

Also, there are health costs the society has to bear as a result of
increased
air pollution. Sure, auto owners may save a few bucks if the auto companies
are allowed to produce more polluting vehicles - they end up paying far
more than they save years later in medical bills and increased medical
insurance
premiums as a result of dealing with more problems as a result of increased
pollution.

You also forget how elastic the car market really is. If new vehicle costs
are
increased as a result of more emissions regulations, then fewer will be
sold,
as a result used vehicle resale prices will go up since fewer newer vehicles
will
be passing into the used market - and as a result used vehicles will be more
likely
to be repaired to get more years of use out of them, rather than being
scrapped.

I've been in and out of wrecking yards enough to see that the vast, vast
majority of
vehicles are scrapped due to engine or transmission problems, NOT due to
crashes or worn out bodies. If fewer new cars are put into the pipeline,
then
in order to maintain the same population of cars on the road, then fewer
used
cars can be scrapped out - and ultimately the ones in the
pipeline will need to be kept on the road longer. This results in increased
economic
activity among repair businesses and decreased economic activity among the
new car automakers, so the net result is merely that your shifting jobs from
one
segment of the market to another.

The only downside is your making vehicles more expensive to all segments of
the population - so the very poorest people in the population are ultimately
unable to afford a car. However, from a public policy viewpoint this is a
good thing - because the poorest car owners are least likely to purchase
vehicle insurance, which causes all of the rest of us to pay for them when
they
get into accidents as a result of increases in our own insurance premiums.

Ted

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
>>> ...
>>>> I don't accept that an entire harvest of whatever vegetable it was has
>>>> to be destroyed (they refused to allow it to be used for anything -
>>>> bureaucrats had to make a point). Aren't there at least some starving
>>>> people somewhere that could have used them. Besides - if I wanted to
>>>> buy some smallish samples of whatever it was, I should have the right to
>>>> do so. I find this kind of crap more than grossly absurd.
>>>>
>>> I'd assume they could have used it as animal feed - or does the EU have
>>> specs on that too?
>> You missed where I said "(they refused to allow it to be used for
>> anything - bureaucrats had to make a point)". The news story I heard
>> specifically mentioned that they would not allow it to be diverted even to
>> animal feed.
>
> Hmmm... The US has been doing something like this since 1971 at least:
>
> http://www.avocadosource.com/Journal...3-305_1971.pdf
>
> "...When fruit are found that fail to meet these requirements the receiver
> has the
> option to recondition the fruit so that it does meet requirements or the
> fruit is destroyed..."
>
>> Not that it couldn't have from a practical point. The point of that was
>> that they had to send the message that they were in charge, not that any
>> real good would come of that spec. That's what bureaucrats do - operate
>> to exercise their power for the sake of that power. Acting for the common
>> good is not in the equation.
>>
>>>> Not to worry, Dori. It is clear that the U.S. is now on an accelerated
>>>> schedule to the same fate as Europe.
>>>>
>>> Dori, Bill doesen't have any excuse for this and should know better, but
>>> you
>>> are perhaps unaware that ever since the 60's that CA has had differing
>>> emissions
>>> requirements for automobiles than the rest of the United States. In
>>> short, if you
>>> wanted to sell cars in the US you either built your entire model to be
>>> California
>>> -compliant, or you did what most manufacturers did, and made a special CA
>>> version of your model for sale in CA.
>> And Californians paid for that in higher costs - like they do with
>> everything.
>>
>> My philosophy would be that if California elected legislators that exacted
>> their own standards on cars that California then deserved what it got in
>> the form of paying more for their cars. Pure and simple.
>
> Well keep in mind that CA got this special consideration because they
> started emissions regulations BEFORE the federal government did. Is your
> position that there should be no emissions regulations whatsoever, federal
> or otherwise?

No - I already said that they should be allowed, by states rights to
impose whatever requirements they want, but that they should be prepared
to bear the costs as well as the benefits of whatever peculiar
legislation they impose on themselves.

> CA is somewhat of a special case, though. When you can land in LAX and
> get off the plane and look straight up and the sky is orange, as I have
> done,
> you realize what real air pollution is.

Yep - that is an argument against one-size-fits-all legislation.

>> Californian's have a way of shooting themselves in their collective foot
>> and then blaming everyone else.
>>
>> There are too many examples of that to list them all, but I remember I
>> think it was in the early or mid 90's, California passed some ridiculous
>> restrictions on auto insurance companies - things that would make staying
>> in business impossible.
>>
>
> Your thinking prop 103 that regulated insurance rates and cut all of them
> 20%
>
>> All of the insurance companies immediately pulled their business out of
>> California.
>
> That never happened.

Yes it did. We may be talking about two separate events. For a short
while, CA was in a crisis because people could not get insurance.

> None of this happened and your story is a rediculous distortion of what
> actually happened.
>
> The current fight nowadays is over offering quake insurance - insurance
> companies all over the country are dropping this coverage in states that
> have fault lines. Some of this is due to regulations that prohibit them
> from
> discriminating against brick and mortar buildings or buildings built before
> 1960.

>>> So the idea that the American economy is a large single market has never
>>> been
>>> true for automobiles. And the fact is that although a lot of car guys
>>> sneered at
>>> GM for making exactly the same vehicle and badging some of them Chevy and
>>> some Buick, selling the different badges in different geographical
>>> markets, this
>>> is a strategy that worked - and it is further evidence that the American
>>> market
>>> isn't homogeneous.
>>>
>>> What is going on now in the US is that as more and more states adopt the
>>> CA emissions requirements, automakers will be forced to eventually adopt
>>> those as the standard for ALL models sold in ALL states, even if that
>>> state had not adopted the standard.
>> You're suggesting that those states *require* vehicles be made special to
>> looser standards, and therefore their people pay *more* for specially
>> built cars? Why would they do that. But they are *free* (key word) to do
>> that if they so desired as California was free to do so for what it
>> wanted, and its people ended up paying for it in the price of things in
>> many areas.
>>
>
> The economies of scale dictate that if enough states vote this in that the
> incremental cost of adding the emissions controls will be very very small -
> because all vehicles will be doing it.

No argument from me - I'm an engineer. But again - if individual states
want to put additional requirements on themselves, that is between their
citizens and their elected legislators.

> Also, there are health costs the society has to bear as a result of
> increased
> air pollution. Sure, auto owners may save a few bucks if the auto companies
> are allowed to produce more polluting vehicles - they end up paying far
> more than they save years later in medical bills and increased medical
> insurance
> premiums as a result of dealing with more problems as a result of increased
> pollution.

Yep.

> You also forget how elastic the car market really is.

Oh really? I think more than a few people would disagree with you on that.

> If new vehicle costs
> are
> increased as a result of more emissions regulations, then fewer will be
> sold,
> as a result used vehicle resale prices will go up since fewer newer vehicles
> will
> be passing into the used market - and as a result used vehicles will be more
> likely
> to be repaired to get more years of use out of them, rather than being
> scrapped.
>
> I've been in and out of wrecking yards enough to see that the vast, vast
> majority of
> vehicles are scrapped due to engine or transmission problems, NOT due to
> crashes or worn out bodies. If fewer new cars are put into the pipeline,
> then
> in order to maintain the same population of cars on the road, then fewer
> used
> cars can be scrapped out - and ultimately the ones in the
> pipeline will need to be kept on the road longer. This results in increased
> economic
> activity among repair businesses and decreased economic activity among the
> new car automakers, so the net result is merely that your shifting jobs from
> one
> segment of the market to another.

But the greenies are conflicted on that. They want to get older cars
off the road. Just as they oppose windmills because they kill birds.

See http://www.summitracing.com/streetandstrip/news.asp

> The only downside is your making vehicles more expensive to all segments of
> the population - so the very poorest people in the population are ultimately
> unable to afford a car. However, from a public policy viewpoint this is a
> good thing - because the poorest car owners are least likely to purchase
> vehicle insurance, which causes all of the rest of us to pay for them when
> they get into accidents as a result of increases in our own insurance premiums.

As long as a new transfer of wealth scheme is not cooked up to "fix" the
problem.

--
Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

"Bill Putney" > wrote in message
...
> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>>> "Bill Putney" > wrote in message
>>>> ...
>>>>> I don't accept that an entire harvest of whatever vegetable it was has
>>>>> to be destroyed (they refused to allow it to be used for anything -
>>>>> bureaucrats had to make a point). Aren't there at least some starving
>>>>> people somewhere that could have used them. Besides - if I wanted to
>>>>> buy some smallish samples of whatever it was, I should have the right
>>>>> to do so. I find this kind of crap more than grossly absurd.
>>>>>
>>>> I'd assume they could have used it as animal feed - or does the EU have
>>>> specs on that too?
>>> You missed where I said "(they refused to allow it to be used for
>>> anything - bureaucrats had to make a point)". The news story I heard
>>> specifically mentioned that they would not allow it to be diverted even
>>> to animal feed.
>>
>> Hmmm... The US has been doing something like this since 1971 at least:
>>
>> http://www.avocadosource.com/Journal...3-305_1971.pdf
>>
>> "...When fruit are found that fail to meet these requirements the
>> receiver has the
>> option to recondition the fruit so that it does meet requirements or the
>> fruit is destroyed..."
>>
>>> Not that it couldn't have from a practical point. The point of that was
>>> that they had to send the message that they were in charge, not that any
>>> real good would come of that spec. That's what bureaucrats do - operate
>>> to exercise their power for the sake of that power. Acting for the
>>> common good is not in the equation.
>>>
>>>>> Not to worry, Dori. It is clear that the U.S. is now on an
>>>>> accelerated schedule to the same fate as Europe.
>>>>>
>>>> Dori, Bill doesen't have any excuse for this and should know better,
>>>> but you
>>>> are perhaps unaware that ever since the 60's that CA has had differing
>>>> emissions
>>>> requirements for automobiles than the rest of the United States. In
>>>> short, if you
>>>> wanted to sell cars in the US you either built your entire model to be
>>>> California
>>>> -compliant, or you did what most manufacturers did, and made a special
>>>> CA
>>>> version of your model for sale in CA.
>>> And Californians paid for that in higher costs - like they do with
>>> everything.
>>>
>>> My philosophy would be that if California elected legislators that
>>> exacted their own standards on cars that California then deserved what
>>> it got in the form of paying more for their cars. Pure and simple.
>>
>> Well keep in mind that CA got this special consideration because they
>> started emissions regulations BEFORE the federal government did. Is your
>> position that there should be no emissions regulations whatsoever,
>> federal
>> or otherwise?
>
> No - I already said that they should be allowed, by states rights to
> impose whatever requirements they want, but that they should be prepared
> to bear the costs as well as the benefits of whatever peculiar legislation
> they impose on themselves.
>
>> CA is somewhat of a special case, though. When you can land in LAX and
>> get off the plane and look straight up and the sky is orange, as I have
>> done,
>> you realize what real air pollution is.
>
> Yep - that is an argument against one-size-fits-all legislation.
>
>>> Californian's have a way of shooting themselves in their collective foot
>>> and then blaming everyone else.
>>>
>>> There are too many examples of that to list them all, but I remember I
>>> think it was in the early or mid 90's, California passed some ridiculous
>>> restrictions on auto insurance companies - things that would make
>>> staying in business impossible.
>>>
>>
>> Your thinking prop 103 that regulated insurance rates and cut all of them
>> 20%
>>
>>> All of the insurance companies immediately pulled their business out of
>>> California.
>>
>> That never happened.
>
> Yes it did. We may be talking about two separate events. For a short
> while, CA was in a crisis because people could not get insurance.
>
>> None of this happened and your story is a rediculous distortion of what
>> actually happened.
>>
>> The current fight nowadays is over offering quake insurance - insurance
>> companies all over the country are dropping this coverage in states that
>> have fault lines. Some of this is due to regulations that prohibit them
>> from
>> discriminating against brick and mortar buildings or buildings built
>> before
>> 1960.
>
>>>> So the idea that the American economy is a large single market has
>>>> never been
>>>> true for automobiles. And the fact is that although a lot of car guys
>>>> sneered at
>>>> GM for making exactly the same vehicle and badging some of them Chevy
>>>> and
>>>> some Buick, selling the different badges in different geographical
>>>> markets, this
>>>> is a strategy that worked - and it is further evidence that the
>>>> American market
>>>> isn't homogeneous.
>>>>
>>>> What is going on now in the US is that as more and more states adopt
>>>> the
>>>> CA emissions requirements, automakers will be forced to eventually
>>>> adopt
>>>> those as the standard for ALL models sold in ALL states, even if that
>>>> state had not adopted the standard.
>>> You're suggesting that those states *require* vehicles be made special
>>> to looser standards, and therefore their people pay *more* for specially
>>> built cars? Why would they do that. But they are *free* (key word) to
>>> do that if they so desired as California was free to do so for what it
>>> wanted, and its people ended up paying for it in the price of things in
>>> many areas.
>>>
>>
>> The economies of scale dictate that if enough states vote this in that
>> the
>> incremental cost of adding the emissions controls will be very very
>> small -
>> because all vehicles will be doing it.
>
> No argument from me - I'm an engineer. But again - if individual states
> want to put additional requirements on themselves, that is between their
> citizens and their elected legislators.
>
>> Also, there are health costs the society has to bear as a result of
>> increased
>> air pollution. Sure, auto owners may save a few bucks if the auto
>> companies
>> are allowed to produce more polluting vehicles - they end up paying far
>> more than they save years later in medical bills and increased medical
>> insurance
>> premiums as a result of dealing with more problems as a result of
>> increased
>> pollution.
>
> Yep.
>
>> You also forget how elastic the car market really is.
>
> Oh really? I think more than a few people would disagree with you on
> that.
>

Heh. There's many people with a vested interest in seeing large numbers of
car
sales who claim the market is inelastic. They have nothing to say in the
face of all
the automakers having the worst sales years in history. Even Lloyd fell
flat when
he claimed last week that Toyota stock was a good investment since it paid
dividends
(Toyota declared a loss and is not paying dividends now)

There are also many fools who claimed a few years ago that you would have to
pry their SUV from their cold dead fingers. Those have nothing to say as
well as
they tool around town in their econobox rice grinders and their SUV is
sitting with
500 of it's brethern on the local used car lot.

>> If new vehicle costs are
>> increased as a result of more emissions regulations, then fewer will be
>> sold,
>> as a result used vehicle resale prices will go up since fewer newer
>> vehicles will
>> be passing into the used market - and as a result used vehicles will be
>> more likely
>> to be repaired to get more years of use out of them, rather than being
>> scrapped.
>>
>> I've been in and out of wrecking yards enough to see that the vast, vast
>> majority of
>> vehicles are scrapped due to engine or transmission problems, NOT due to
>> crashes or worn out bodies. If fewer new cars are put into the pipeline,
>> then
>> in order to maintain the same population of cars on the road, then fewer
>> used
>> cars can be scrapped out - and ultimately the ones in the
>> pipeline will need to be kept on the road longer. This results in
>> increased economic
>> activity among repair businesses and decreased economic activity among
>> the
>> new car automakers, so the net result is merely that your shifting jobs
>> from one
>> segment of the market to another.
>
> But the greenies are conflicted on that. They want to get older cars off
> the road. Just as they oppose windmills because they kill birds.
>
> See http://www.summitracing.com/streetandstrip/news.asp
>

This actually started up under your old friend George Bush.

George Bush Senior, that is. In the early 90's. See he

http://www.newsweek.com/id/125471

You have to keep in mind
what is really going on with the stimulus package. Both the House and
Senate
members are basically tailoring the package into 2 completely different
bills,
by tacking all manner of pork on to the bill. This allows a congressman to
go back to their constituents and claim that they voted for a
special-interest
project that is dear to the constituents hearts. However, as you know only
a
unified bill may be sent to the President for signature. When congress
passes
differing versions of a bill the two versions are sent to a joint conference
committee
that works out a unified text. In the case of the stimulus package they
will simply
strip away everything that isn't in the other house's version.

The cash for clunkers package wasn't included in the House version of the
bill
so even if it does make it in to the Senate version, the committe will
simply
strip it out of the package sent to the President for signature. That
allows whatever
congressman that proposed this to go back to their constituents and claim
that
they voted for the clunker idea, so they must be a green congressman. In
the
meantime pay no attention to the fact that it was never passed - the
congressman
has his talking point that can be used in advertising, etc.

Obviously, anyone who is serious about the environment understands that the
emissions savings by retiring a SUV early and replacing it with an economy
car
does not make up for the emissions caused by manufacturing a new car. But,
your average dumb bunny doesen't, and so would probably believe the hype
that this program helps the environment.

I liked what the Sierra Club had to say about that.

As for the windmill thing, it is true that older wind farms kill some birds.
But
we are talking really old designs here. Todays mega-windmills (the 1.5mW
designs, particularly) have huge blades that turn slow (they couldn't turn
fast)
and are geared up to turn the generator fast. Any bird can fly around
these.
The older windmills had small blades that didn't have much gearing on the
generator
and those turned fast.

Ted