Obama's New Rules

DETROIT (AP) - Some soccer moms will have to give up hulking SUVs. Carpenters will still haul materials around in pickup trucks, but they will cost more. Nearly everybody else will drive smaller cars, and more of them will run on electricity. The higher mileage and emissions standards set by the Obama administration on Tuesday, which begin to take effect in 2012 and are to be achieved by 2016, will transform the American car and truck fleet.

Obama is a classic example of those with the mindset that things will improve if you just make new rules. Has he assumed that by demanding less pollution and more gas mileage, new technology will magically appear to produce the breakthroughs and inventions necessary to satisfy his new requirements?

Have these new carburetors and engines already been developed and the patents for them bought out by the oil companies - to be buried forever? We've all heard such stories, but it is beyond logic and common sense to believe such a thing has happened to the point that 100% of the world's auto makers cannot improve their product.

It appears that auto makers are at the leading edge of development and have discovered that to make an SUV like a Chevy Suburban get 50MPG is impossible. There is only so much energy in a gallon of gas. New rules, or a thousand new rules as mandated by the magical wand-waving lightbringer, will not change that reality.

So, all we will get is smaller, more expensive and more dangerous vehicles to drive.

The Obama administration says the changes mean the average vehicle would cost about $1,300 more, although some private analysts say the increase will be much heftier. The administration says gas savings will make up the difference in about three years.

Smaller, less for your money, slower, very cramped, possibly fatal in high winds or unexpected wind gusts. That's progress?

Note they say nothing about smaller and less safe.


Do you want to drive something like the above on a family vacation? On a highway loaded with thousands of 18-wheelers roaring past you at 70 or 80 MPH? Do you really believe that an electric go-cart will get you from Chicago to Seattle in a safe, cost-effective and timely manner? Wanting a cross-country trip in something like that could be an indication of suicidal tendencies.

A plastic shelled grocery cart with a lawn mower engine. Zero to 30MPH in only two minutes. Energy-efficient enough (meaning super light) to get blown over - or squashed - by any one of those 18-wheelers. They may be OK for short solo hops around town, but avoid the highways, where real vehicles are found.

We are not Europe, where a long drive to the next city is five miles, and you can get there in ten minutes. Most of us travel ten times that distance just to get to work everyday.

These is no doubt in my mind that Obama and his ilk think that far fewer cars on our highways would be a good thing. Assuming they are not truly stupid, it seems reasonable that - instead of trying to improve the family car - they are intending to legislate it out of existence and let us all use public transportation, provided by the guv'ment.

Problem is, I don't see any new and massive public transportation programs intended to handle the huge increase of riders that could no longer afford their cars.

One other thing... Reasonable estimates are that we will need three times the number of electrical power plants to provide the energy we will need to charge up those go-carts. To get that additional energy from solar and wind is impossible with today's technology, and new rules just won't make the required technology magically appear.

No government on the planet has enough money to pay for such an incredibly massive project... like that 96-square-mile solar farm that an actress on TV keeps telling us about (I say solar farm so Ted won't soil his britches again). Electric or thermal, the physical requirements of such a project are beyond us today.

Go* Obama.

*By "Go", I really mean "Go away". What we need are real solutions to our problems. Obama is offering none.