Posted on 08/29/2012 6:46:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
While all eyes were on the Republican National Convention in Tampa and Hurricane Isaac on the Gulf Coast, the White House was quietly jacking up the price of automobiles and putting future drivers at risk.
Yes, the same cast of fable-tellers who falsely accused Mitt Romney of murdering a steelworkers cancer-stricken wife is now directly imposing a draconian environmental regulation that will cost untold American lives.
On Tuesday, the administration announced that it had finalized historic new fuel-efficiency standards. (Everythings historic with these narcissists, isnt it?) President Obama took a break from his historic fundraising drive to proclaim that by the middle of the next decade, our cars will get nearly 55 miles per gallon, almost double what they get today. Itll strengthen our nations energy security, its good for middle-class families, and it will help create an economy built to last.
Jon Carson, director of Obamas Office of Public Engagement, took to Twitter to hype how auto companies support the higher fuel-efficiency standards and how the rules crafted behind closed doors will save consumers $8,000 per vehicle. His source for these claims? The New York Times, Americas Fishwrap of Record, which has acknowledged it allows the Obama campaign to have veto power over reporters quotes from campaign officials.
And whom did the Times cite for the claim that the rules will save consumers $8,000? Why, the administration, of course! The administration estimated that the new standards would save Americans $1.7 trillion in fuel costs, the Times dutifully regurgitated, resulting in an average savings of more than $8,000 a vehicle by 2025.
The Obama administration touts the support of the government-bailed-out auto industry for these reckless, expensive regs. What it wants us to forget is that the negotiations (read: bullying) with White House environmental radicals date back to the tenure of former Obama green czar Carol Browner when she infamously told auto-industry execs to put nothing in writing, ever, regarding their secret Corporate Auto-Fuel Economy (CAFE) talks.
Obamas number massagers cite phony-baloney cost savings that rely on developing future fuel-saving technology. Given this crony governments abysmal track record in investing in new technologies (cough Solyndra cough), we can safely dismiss that fantasy math. What is real for consumers is the $2,000-per-vehicle added cost that the new fuel standards will impose now. That figure comes from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
War on middle-class consumers, anyone?
Beyond the media-lapdog echo chamber, the economic and public-safety objections to these sweeping rules are deeply grounded and well founded.
For years, free-market analysts and government statisticians have warned of the deadly effect of increasing CAFE standards. Sam Kazman at the Competitive Enterprise Institute explained a decade ago: The evidence on this issue comes from no less a body than the National Academy of Sciences, which issued a report last August finding that CAFE contributes to between 1,300 and 2,600 traffic deaths per year. Given that this program has been in effect for more than two decades, its cumulative toll is staggering.
H. Sterling Burnett of the National Center for Policy Analysis adds that NHTSA data indicate that 322 additional deaths per year occur as a direct result of reducing just 100 pounds from already downsized small cars, with half of the deaths attributed to small car collisions with light trucks/sport utility vehicles. USA Today further calculated that the size and weight reductions of passenger vehicles undertaken to meet current CAFE standards had resulted in more than 46,000 deaths.
These lethal regulations should be wrapped in yellow police CAUTION tape. The tradeoffs are stark and simple: CAFE fuel standards clamp down on the production of larger, more crashworthy cars. Analysts from Harvard to the Brookings Institution to the federal government itself have arrived at the same conclusion: CAFE kills. Welcome to the bloody intersection between the Obama jobs death toll and the Obama green death toll.
Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies.
I cracked up when I heard the numbers. Over 50 MPG? HAHAHA! As if they can merely regulate it into existence.
And the argument is that it will really save people money and prevent greenhouse gasses.
Gee, why not make it 150?! Think of the savings!
Morons.
The first thing our next conservative president should do is erase all of obamas declarations and executive orders. Then he should slap ole ears in jail for treason on any given level for trying to single handedly destroy this country
The new CAFE standards are intended to get us out of internal combustion automobiles. That is there entire purpose. They are the creation of the environmental lobby, which has a death grip on the Democratic Party.
Same thing can be said from artificially limiting housing in urban areas. It drives the cost up and drives people out to the fringes of the city, increasing commute time and increasing hiway death rates correspondingly.
I heard on the storm coverage that 3% of Cubans have automobiles.
That seems like a reasonable goal for the US under the Baraqqi regime.
No Thanks, I want my 15 passenger Ford E-350 van. (Try to fit a hockey team in a Fiat 500, you'll be wasting more fuel!!)
What is it?? looks like a ‘LITTLE TYKES’ Coupe... :)
Highway, NO!!!
It’s a Messerschmidt. It was featured in the movie “Brazil”.
I drive a 425 horsepower gas hog. By my computation I only use $2857 of gas TOTAL. How’s Obummer gonna save me $8000 ? Pay me to drive it ?
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