Not Much to Say

It's been a surprisingly quiet news day, no more great revelations of Republican miscreancy, no foot-in-mouth moments from the Obfusticator in Chief. There was bloviation in both houses of Government, the Senate said to those of us demanding better oversight of our lawmakers, "suck it", there were more distortions and false claims on immigration and there was another revelation that the Warmonger in Chief's decision to go to war was made long before advertised. Just another routine day in the shining beacon of democracy and freedom - the interests of the people were, once again, ignored.

I filled the tank on my '97 Taurus while hearing that the Bush Administration had made a bold stroke against oil dependence and carbon emissions by upping the required fuel economy for SUVs by, ready for this, less than two miles per gallon. They had the gall to crow about the billions of barrels of oil this would save using math so transparent - they simply extended the number of years the savings would have to be realized to get a really big number! You can get a Prius whose actual mileage is in the mid to high forties or a Hummer H3 with an actual fuel economy, not the made-up number on the sticker, in the low teens. Here's the kicker about the whole thing: The required mileage is based on length. Remember that SUVs are excepted from CAFE standard economies because they're trucks. It was this exception that led to the pickup and the SUV becoming larger and larger and more powerful and more powerful family vehicles instead of the working vehicles they were in the '80s. Now we have a rule that says longer vehicles can get lower mileages. Anyone want to guess where that's going?

I wouldn't plan on having to navigate around a number of over-long, over-powered vehicles because the market itself is limiting them. Ford, GM and Chrysler are all having their problems due to the higher cost of gas and the lower willingness of the public to pay for it. Fewer SUV sales mean by default fewer sales of U. S. made vehicles - the Big Three just didn't anticipate that people would want smaller, more efficent vehicles. Even those that attempted to implement hybrid technology implemented it to increase vehicle power instead of optimizing efficiency. This has led to another interesting Washington impasse: Republicans now refuse to pass pension reform legislation including tougher contribution standards for companies in financial difficulty because it would hurt our auto makers. How it could hurt them more than their own decisions is beyond me but it would. We can delay legislation because it could hurt companies crippled by bad decision making run by men making millions to screw them up further.

While we are stuck at around $27,000 per year and have been for years. I guess I did have something to say today after all. Apparently, not even a slow day in the news is good for our friends on the right side of the aisle.