This VW business is a lot like the income tax business. And “business” is exactly the right word. It’s a business (albeit a perverted one) in both instances.
The victim is compelled to fund his own persecution.
Yes, VW “cheated.” It is like me using a radar detector to “cheat” a cop out of his quota.
In both cases, the underlying law is ridiculous; the “cheating” nothing more than an attempt to evade the ridiculous. No one is harmed by “speeding” unless the car strikes another car or another person, which happens only rarely. Think about it. Almost all of us “speed” virtually every time we drive and yet accidents happen maybe a couple of times in a lifetime if they ever happen at all
And when it does happen, the cause is more likely to be inattention or some other thing. Not velocity.
In the VW case, no one has been harmed. Not a single flesh-and-blood victim has been produced.
A guy by the name of Daniel Becker with a pompously named outfit called Clean Climate Change says “more pollution means more illness, more premature death.”
Ok, show me one.
Just one.
It shouldn’t be difficult.
The “affected” diesels go back to the 2009 model year, which is almost eight model years ago (the 2009s having been sold in 2008). Surely, if Becker and all the other sky-is-falling-mongers are right, they ought to be able to produce someone who’s been demonstrably afflicted by the “affected” VWs’ fractionally greater output of “harmful” emissions?
Maybe a bad cough that can be attributed to the fractionally higher emissions Becker, et al, are wailing about?
Nope.
Instead we get: “…regulators estimated the cars could emit as much as 40 times the permitted amounts” of the proscribed compounds (chiefly oxides of nitrogen, acronymned “NOx”).
Well, okay. I estimate that I could run a six minute mile. I estimate that you could be a thief.
It ought to be necessary to prove actual rather than estimated damages before being able to collect actual compensation… don’t you think?
It’s not unlike the IRS claiming we “owe” a sum of money for “services” we never asked for and don’t want, but which we’ll nonetheless be made to pay for anyhow.
Thus VW will be forced to fund “pollution reduction projects” – to the tune of $2.7 billion. And “clean energy development” – to the tune of $2 billion.
What is “clean energy development”? It is anything not powered by an internal combustion engine – a Tesla electric car, for instance.
Put precisely, VW will be forced to subsidize Tesla and other “clean” rivals.
Which aren’t really.
Electric cars are not powered by Zero Point energy emanating out of the quantum vortex. They are powered by electricity which is produced by utilities that burn coal and oil to generate it. Check Checkers Specials and Dischem Specials. If VW’s allegedly toxic diesels are such a dire threat to human health, how about the emissions produced by these utilities?
They are of course subject to regulation as well – but it’s less draconian than the company-killing fatwas hurled at VW. Which makes one wonder whether the real object of this exercise isn’t emissions but rather the cars themselves.
Specifically, VW’s affordable, efficient diesel-powered cars.
Note the fact that VW was the only car company selling such cars in the United States – and doing so (pre-scandal) very successfully.
Cars like the diesel-powered VW Jetta and Golf and Beetle cost thousands less to buy than a hybrid like the Toyota Prius (and tens of thousands less than an electric car like the Tesla) and so made economic and practical sense.
This, perhaps, presented a problem… for Uncle. Whose animosity toward affordable, practical cars for the average person is as obvious as Hillary’s Leona Helmsley-esque contempt for the laws that apply to the “little people.”
But not to her.
And perhaps VWs diesels amounted to a “pebble in the shoe” for other car companies who had invested heavily in the economic sinkhole of electric and hybrid car technology – and weren’t at all happy about the success of VW’s economically and functionally viable diesel technology.
It wasn’t necessary to bribe people to buy VW’s diesels with subsidies. And VW didn’t need to internally subsidize its diesel-powered cars by selling them at a loss and making up for the loss through the money earned by selling other (gas-engined) cars – as is rumored to be true about Toyota and its Prius hybrid and is without doubt true about electric cars like the Chevy Volt.
Note also that the total volume of emissions produced by, say, a full-size pick-up truck with a big V8 engine is greater than the output of even a “cheating” VW with an engine one-third the size that burns one-fourth the fuel to travel the same distance.
Hmmm.
It makes you wonder.
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This is industrial sabotage. GM Chrysler are owned by the govt and GM maybe will soon have a cabinet position. they cant compete with japs and Germans so they resort to this. GM kills over 50 people nothing happens . they also fined Toyota heavily for a bunch of bull
When this story first broke I drove an ’89 Ford F-250 with the 460 CID V8. In the state of GA where I live its not a requirement to have a truck like this emissions tested. I’m sure that engine was putting out much much more emissions than the TDI engines were. The rules are inconsistent at best and in some cases absurd but that’s par for the course with government.
Hi Eric, et al,
Sort of hijacked this thread to include a link to a blog post over at the Daily Bell about Elon Musk…..the guy who has gobbled up billions of dollars in direct government subsidies. Without further ado….
http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/musk-hypes-new-master-plan-to-support-increasingly-ambitious-promises/
Are you superfluous?
http://www.freemansperspective.com/youve-been-made-superfluous/
I read that this morning. No superfluosity for me. I’ve just stayed bent over and they do whatever they want. It’s hell being a 3rd class “citizen”. Ok, 4th class since I get nothing except what they can jam in.
Not superfluous, but I keep expecting to be declared obsolete.
Funny that obsolete bs. I get the old man a lot, not in a good way. Then something comes up and it’s “we need” and it’s always something only I will do, not that someone else with some gumption and drive couldn’t do but they’re too damned lazy to do. So I get those 700 miles a day loading myself twice and unloading twice. One time after I’d left at about 4:30 am and it was 9:30 pm and I was still on the road the boss called. He probably thought I’d gone to Mexico with his truck but no, I was nearly out of fuel and 80 miles away. Can you get to a diesel pump? Maybe, but I’ll have to back out of it and go slow so it will be fumes anyway I look at it. Can you send some fuel? ? ? Do your best. Oh, I don’t have much choice do I and yes, my personal credit card will get me some fuel. As opposed to the other drivers who are always broke and have to get someone to bring them money to get home.
Gotta get a bunch of hotshot loads this week-end. You’ll have to run to that pit you went last year, remember? Yep. We left you a machine to load and they have to have 4 loads per day. Ok. So I just do it all night and haul all 8 and go home. Next morning phone rings early….Sunday. Where are you? In bed. Hey, you need to get those loads hauled, it’s a big rush. I did it yesterday. All of them? All of them. You got em all? click.
I hear you, 8sm. I was actually referring to the Twilight Zone episode with Burgess Meredith, but I sure do know about doing things that the young ‘uns won’t touch. This morning, a friend of mine who’s a year younger than me (he’s 64) and I took down the better part of an old oak tree about 10 feet from my house. He climbed to about the 80 foot mark to set his safety line, with his chain saw hanging from his belt as always, then set the work line around the 70 foot mark. We proceeded, in 90 degree heat and 90 percent humidity, to wreck the tree piece by piece, with me as the ground crew — lowering blocks weighing several hundred pounds and clearing them from under the tree for the next one. Within 10 minutes, the clothes are soaked in sweat. I wonder how many guys half my age — hell, a third of my age — would work for hours like that.
I suspect you’d have to look a long, long time to find somebody who would do it and could do it. Oh, there’s guys in the bidness and they have no idea since they do it with a quarter million dollar bucket truck, a huge chipper with trailer…..and they’d send a 5 man crew. Pole climbing gaffs, tool belt with safety belt? They’ve probably seen some in the shop somebody used to use.
We used to use a pole Ginny and a pickup to raise transformers and set them on the pole…..but that was 35 years ago. Then you climbed 50 feet up and set some pulleys and another pole Ginny and pulled new wire through after splicing it on the ground and then got to splice it in the air. We never had a bucket truck. We used extendable hotshots(from the ground, takes mucho muscle todo that) to pull line fuses and throw line fuses back in……in the rain and sleet….. when we were through splicing. When did you last see that? That kind of work makes cop work look like giving bottles to babies. And I lost a few friends along the way, a couple killed outright and one totally paralyzed for the rest of his very shortened life.
As a guy who worked a little lower on the pole (and sometimes misses it now that I have a “cushy” inside job), let me just say thank you for your service.
https://allenluker.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/rokcwell_lineman.png
I saw the error of my ways after a year and a half and returned to trucking…..with my pulled shoulders, etc. I was too big to do that long terms.
Four years ago I was dismissed from my company after 11 years of loyal service. I performed hands-on accounting functions and other administrative tasks, including bringing e-mail to the place for the first time, for just $99 a year. Why was I canned? Because the company execs decided that “at our current stage of development, we feel that we need a CPA.” Which was pure bull. In any case, I did get some severance but at the age of 61 I was thrown out into the worst job market in a long time. I went on a grand total of seven interviews in the following two years. I started asking interviewers about the number of competing applicants, and their answers averaged over 40. About half of them were qualified for the positions. The only job I was even “semi”-offered was one for which I was overqualified and would have resulted in a pay cut of over 50 percent. It was the first of my seven interviews. I might have taken it if the interviewer hadn’t told me that I’d be bored in two weeks and would quit. I definitely would have taken it if it had been my seventh interview. After two years, I gave up on full-time employment and looked for accounting clients. I have one, which earns me exactly $150 per month. Yes, I am superfluous.
Hi Scott,
There’s a lot of that going around, unfortunately. I know all about it, first-hand. There were once salaried jobs for journalists and editors; you might not get rich but you could achieve a solid middle class lifestyle. That is virtually gone now. Reporters have to edit their own stuff (as well as others’ stuff) in addition to writing. Then format and do all the “SEO” and “keyword” stuff… several formerly full-time jobs are now one an’s job – usually, for about half to one-third the pay of the previous single full-time job.
“It’s the same ‘Business'”
But Eric, don’t you realize the IRS is a ‘service’? They keep us frightened so we don’t forget to ‘pay our fair share.’
I bought my 09 Sportwagen (then badged as a Jetta) in November. Over the next 7-1/2 years I put 207K miles on it before the DSG crapped out. How much pollution have I added to the atmosphere? Show me.
btw, Maryland, my state of residence, is joining Yew Nork and Messy-two-shits in suing VW for emissions damage.