Now Harley’s being nailed to the cross.
For “cheating” Uncle’s emissions rigmarole, like VW was accused of doing (and admited to doing).
This being like “cheating” speed traps by using a radar detector.
In each case, there being no evidence of tangible harm caused to anyone. Except, of course, an aggrieved Uncle. And he’s not even real, just shorthand for the collection of apparatchiks who, collectively, comprise this entity called the government.
But if they can’t produce a victim, what’s the evidence of harm? And if there’s no evidence of harm caused, how can there be a crime?
Harley’s “crime” – despite the lack of a victim – is that it sold kits over the counter that owners could use to tune their bikes for better performance and mileage. As in the VW case, the adjustments are claimed to have – and probably did – slightly increase exhaust emissions.
Emphasis on slightly.
In the VW case, fractionally higher (less than 1 percent of the “affected” car’s total exhaust output) emissions of a compound called oxides of nitrogen (NOx) for the sake of significantly better fuel economy and performance (as well as lower vehicle cost to the buyer) resulted in a spittle-spewing concatenation of EPA outrage that will probably destroy VW eventually ($50-plus billion in estimated total liabilities tends to accomplish that, even for a company as large as VW).
In Harley’s case, it’s even more absurd.
First, we are talking about motorcycles. Most of them are used for pleasure – that is, occasionally. Probably not one out of ten of them are “daily drivers.”
Second, there are not many of them. Motorcycles are a tiny percentage of the “vehicles” on the road – about 3 percent, according to Uncle’s own data.They constitute 0.7 percent of all vehicle miles traveled (VMT).
This is all motorcycles – not just Harleys.
Isolate the Harleys – and then whittle it down to the ones modified with the jet/tuning kit that has EPA’s knickers all bunched up and it amounts to … nothing, as far as any tangible harm caused.
“This settlement immediately stops the sale of illegal aftermarket defeat devices used on public roads that threaten the air we breathe,” hyperventilates a creature named Cynthia Giles, who is head of enforcement at the EPA.
Please.
Take an Ambien, maybe.
But the $15 million fine EPA socked Harley with is very tangible. This is a bunch of money, even for a company like Harley. Which isn’t anywhere near the size of a company like VW.
Where will the money come from?
Why, from you!
If you own Harley stock, your dividends will likely be diminished. If you work for Harley, there goes your raise. Maybe your job. If want to buy a Harley, expect to pay more for it.
The money’s got to come from somewhere.
It will come from productive people and productive work to pay for unproductive make-work. To wit:
$3 million of the $15 million will be spent – that is, wasted – on “mitigating” the air pollution alleged to have been caused by Harley’s tune kits. Note once again that no actual evidence of a tangible harm caused by the installation of these kits was put forward.
It was enough to prove that the kits “affected” the modified bikes’ exhaust.
How much (how little) it “affected” air quality or people’s health being immaterial.
Also immaterial, the fact that the kits were sold with explicit caveats that they were intended for “off road use” only – i.e., for competition vehicles and so on. Granted, that’s a dodge – one that’s been used by everyone selling aftermarket parts for bikes and cars for as long as I can remember (and I can remember glorious infamies like the catalytic converter “test pipe,” which was also sold with a sticker advising that it was “not for use on public roads.”)
Still, Harley didn’t install the kits. It merely sold them.
Owners installed the kits.
But Harley is being held responsible.
This is particularly outrageous, fairness-wise.
In the VW case, the government could (and did) claim that buyers were duped; that they bought cars they believed to be in full compliance with every EPA fatwa. They – the owners – didn’t “cheat.”
VW did.
But how did Harley “cheat”?
It sold fully emissions-compliant bikes that owners subsequently modified with kits that clearly stated “for off road use only.” Of course everyone knew this “off road use only” stuff was a scam (the good kind, the kind that helps us peons occasionally end-run Uncle) but the fact remains: Harley didn’t mislead anyone or sell anyone a non-compliant bike. People bought kits and made their bikes non-compliant.
So why is Harley on the hook?
What’s scary about this is that a precedent has been set. Not just for bikes, either.
Take a look at the aftermarket parts available for cars. Many of them have the same “for off road use only” label on the side of the box.
Wink, wink.
Will the manufacturers of these parts be next in EPA’s gunsights?
I wouldn’t be surprised.
Neither should you.
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Hey Eric, New Topic needed. Harley Clovers. Fist I want to clarify that I try to give as much latitude as possible to fellow motorcycle riders. Today, however, was just excruciating. Put any HD riders on a long 55 mph 2-lane highway, and they turn green, Clover green. 35-40 mph on any curve, and 50 tops on any length straightaway. Today I had to take a fridge to my daughter in Paint Bank, in the 92 Astro Van; slow, cumbersome, laboring minivan, right? it was all I could do not to fall asleep at the wheel while traffic crept along at 20 mph under the speed limit, because of me, no. 1 HD Bagger with 2 fat-asses farting along uphill and downhill for 45 minutes, while a string of cars piles up behind it. The trip back just as intoxicatingly exasperating. 4 HDs pooping along making loud farting noises but never exceeding 50 mph, and never pulling off to let the 1/4 mile backup of traffic get by. Most self-respecting riders would be down the road and out of sight of any cagers, without breaking a sweat. Not an HD rider……… poop, blaatt, ppbbbbb blatt blatt pbbbbb. for another 45 minutes. They ride like they are tethered together in one long, unbreakable chain. These are Sunday drivers you can’t even pass safely without endangering their lives, let alone your own. It’s no wonder so many cagers hate the sight of any motorcycle. At times I nearly dozed off just trying to go slow enough to keep a safe distance behind the last rider. They even ride their brakes approaching a curve uphill. Finally the road ends at a light where they break left to stop in the turn lane. As I go by in the right turn lane I can hear them all going woohoo to each other, like that was a really long haul for them. Well, in all fairness, when your purposely turn a 25 mile ride into a 50 minute ordeal on an overweight pig of a motorcycle, I guess it is cause to celebrate, for a Clover, that is.
Here’s one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SorBWXCdMY
One of the funniest “harley” things I ever saw was on Weeds when the lawyer got divorced and bought a Harley. He rode around Ca. in his very inept way. He was a real weenie so it was that much funnier when he came up on this biker gang in the mountains. The leader of the pack so to speak motioned for him to join them and then got him up in front beside him smiling and laughing and making him feel like one of the guys. They come up on this tight curve with a hard drop on the outside and the leader kicks the lawyer’s bike so he goes off the road and crashes down the mountain. He’s broken up so bad he can’t move and stays there a couple days. Every now and then they’d cut back to him when some animal would come around and piss on him. Since he couldn’t move he’d only be able take it. He was finally found and ended up in a full body cast with all sorts of problems. He only got a break from poison ivy because of all the piss on his face. Hilarious.
unbelievable,I remember back around 1987,my friend received a call from the EPA.He had purchased a “stage 3 “Hypertech chip for his Grand National.This chip required the removal of the catalytic converter and said for off road use only.Can you imagine what a fuckin waste of taxpayer money to investigate this??? It’s just absurd and things have gotten much worse since then
My new Cherokee (a replacement for my TDI) has a 9 speed transmission. Four(!) of the gears are overdrive ratios. It also has a way to display the current gear on the dash. So far I have not seen the vehicle shift into 9th speed, and just judging by the engine RPM speed in 8th gear I doubt I ever will. I’ll wager that if I were to take it to an emissions testing station in Denver it will go right up to 9th no problem. Of course I’m sure there’s a way to get it into 9th gear, maybe driving in Florida at 50 MPH or something, so technically no cheating.
My wife rented a Chrysler 200 and I drove it 50 miles or so. If you had your speed up and dropped off a steep hill and let it coast it would get to 9nth up till you got back into the throttle.
I’ll give that a try. Sounds like 9th is the same as freewheeling.
It might can get into 9nth under a much lower speed but I was driving 75-80.
yay! i’m logged in as gtc on my dinosaur Mac. I want all my 2-stroke steet bike back, too. just to sit and run on my property and let the oil-smoke exhaust permate the public airspace, lol! Just wait…..in 10 years we will all be wearing methane filters on our asses!
Keep in mind that Harly lobbyists paid this monster in the early 1980’s in order to kill the Japanese competition. It was their money that fed this regulatory beast to do their will when it suited them! Why was there no outcry when all 2-strokes were mandated to have catalytic converters for street use? 2-stroke off-road use is ten times what street use was, and is still untouched. Does any atmosphere stay put? It’s all about what can be seen vs. what goes unseen by the general driving populace, who are mostly ignorant of everything not squarely thrown in their faces. I can’t shed a tear for HD, especially when they had a big hand in creating this monster.
Graves!
Glad you’ve joined us… and yeah, you’re right about kettle-black, etc.
Still, this is not an attack on just Harley (as you know). This sets a precedent (another one) that will affect us all.
I’m sure our own lovely Commonwealth will be glad to lead the way in “parenting” us on this new crusade as well. It already forces drivers of 3-wheeled-enclosed cars to wear a helmet, just so DMV doesn’t have to deal with a new category of motor vehicle to catalog and register. Edwin just told me that in order to register his own car (that he bought in AZ and has registered on base in Texas), Va DMV is demanding VA sales tax from him just to register in his home state. He has decided to sell the car and ride his Silverwing there in Texas full-time.
You’re right Graves. And really old and stupid laws like the chicken tax keep out Aussie El Camino’s and that makes NO SENSE. So why is it even there? Most of what’s taxed out from Australia is GM and Ford products anyway.
If the Japanese were indeed “dumping” on the American market (selling at or below market cost), then Harley had every right to prod the government into action. It’s absurd to allow foreign government subsidies to their own businesses to crush our domestic companies.
“If the Japanese were indeed ‘dumping’” – but who says they were? Harley was just not competitive. On the other hand, who says ‘our’ gunvermin has any right, ever, to interfere in the market, even to supposedly right a wrong done by some other gunvermin? They are benefitting Amerikan consumers at the expense of their own taxpayers.
The price of Japanese bikes stemmed from much lower costs for them in production and the huge difference between Japanese and American money. The Japanese manufacturers were making plenty of money, the American buyer got a great deal for his money and Harley’s were quit literally…..junk….and they were the only bike made in this country unfortunately.
I grew up at a time when Harley’s were common, very common, and people would buy a cheap Japanese bike and blow them into the weeds. At quitting time I’d jump on my Zuk and fire it up and leave toot sweet while the Harley crowd went through their list of incantations and rituals of getting one to fire and continue to run. I doubt a one of them ever considered draining that 50W-20 oil they had to run in the summer so it wouldn’t seize for something not quite so gearlubish for winter temps. I once worked with a guy who rode a bobber and he had a line of gearlube up his back……and his head.
I often wondered if a new magneto and spark plugs wires wouldn’t have fixed most of that.
It’s hard to say just how well Harley might have sold in Japan, considering the mercantilist, protectionist Japanese who wouldn’t know free trade if it smacked them alongside the head.
Funny how people don’t realize how effectively mercantilism can beggar another country that doesn’t practice self-defense. We’re better off now having saved Harley than we would be otherwise; it’s unclear whether Indian or Polaris would’ve started its own motorcycle line if it saw that it could be buried by government-subsidized foreign industries.
“We’re better off now having saved Harley”
In what way? Any time you ask the gunvermin to intervene you are feeding it, helping it to grow stronger (and more arrogant). Harley, at the time, did not deserve to survive because it was not doing a good job of serving customers.
Hi Ross,
It hasn’t worked out that well for Japan, either! Or at least, for the average Japanese.
Also: Bikes over 750 cc are very tough to afford over there. Most Harleys have at least 1,000 cc engines and that automatically renders them virtually unsaleable in Japan.
eric, it’s a fairly tough sell for bikes over 900 cc’s or whatever that mark is where insurance goes way up. You should know as well as anyone those big cube bikes have a hickey that happens from one cc to the next…..idiocy……immoral and no verifiable reason to impose a arbitrary “fine” on an identical machine with one cc more than another. Just more insurance rip-off. This time the gander leading the crowd is the ins. company and the govt is the ducks just following their leader……baby what he say
Hi Eight,
Yup.
But you can end-run this by Going Old.
My ’76 Kaw 900 (1015 now, with the big bore kit) costs just $75 per year to insure.
Even my much newer (but still old) ’03 Kaw (a 1200) is manageable.
But if I were to buy a new 1,000 cc sport bike… forget about it.
eric, like yourself, if I can’t wrench it I don’t want it. Some people would call me and my relationship with mechanical things, anal. Be that as it may, Every time I remove a fastener, it gets some nickel anti-seize and most get a torque wrench too. If I need to remove a manifold, intake or exhaust, I’ll stick it back on whatever I removed it from with some machinist die and when it goes back together it’ll be a smooth run from one port to the other including the gasket. Have die grinder, will use it. If I have to remove a head both sides get hogged out per instruction. If I can be criticized it will be because I don’t have the tools to adjust static valve spring pressure but I normally pay somebody who has those tools. If I have a set of rods and pistons you can bet I’ll stress relieve the rods, install aftermarket studs and nuts and break out the O’Haus’ and make sure every one of them is within a 10th of a gram using the weight of the lightest one after they’ve been relieved and bead blasted. honing off a slight angle on main bearing seats ensures they’ve not tighter on the outside than the rest of it.
eric, like yourself, if I can’t wrench it I don’t want it. Some people would call me and my relationship with mechanical things, anal. Be that as it may, Every time I remove a fastener, it gets some nickel anti-seize and most get a torque wrench too. If I need to remove a manifold, intake or exhaust, I’ll stick it back on whatever I removed it from with some machinist die and when it goes back together it’ll be a smooth run from one port to the other including the gasket. Have die grinder, will use it. If I have to remove a head both sides get hogged out per instruction. If I can be criticized it will be because I don’t have the tools to adjust static valve spring pressure but I normally pay somebody who has those tools. If I have a set of rods and pistons you can bet I’ll stress relieve the rods, install aftermarket studs and nuts and break out the O’Haus’ and make sure every one of them is within a 10th of a gram using the weight of the lightest one after they’ve been relieved and bead blasted. honing off a slight angle on main bearing seats ensures they’re not tighter on the outside than the rest of it.
Remember a few months ago when the government got caught slipping in a provision that made it illegal to modify the emissions systems of vehicles used exclusively off road? Slipped it in where nobody would be reading for regs on passenger cars? Then it was found and big stink was created the government backed off saying it wasn’t meant to stop people from building race cars from road going cars and so on? I think this proves they meant it all along only backed off because they got caught and couldn’t pick people off one by one.
Yeah, SEMA caught it and raised hell. The EPA (sort of) backed off and removed the language from the regs. Although they did still remind us that tampering with the pollution control system of street going cars can be a $37k fine or some such bullshit.
They’ll be coming after our collector cars soon enough.
The French are a bunch of Reds. As in Red Pills.
When they lose at one of the idiot “competitions” like they usually do. They lose face and accept their defeat stoically. Then get on with their original plans.
Go ahead and invade and conquer if you must. Just don’t expect them to notice or change their behavior.
Rather than dwell on barnyard battle losses. They’ll go down to the cellar, grab one of their best bottles of wine. And head over to a friends or mistress and get on with their real lives under the new regime of the day.
Winning these fake collective contests makes you the Alpha Cuck. It siphons your vital fluids and leaves you drained. Being a superpower is a dubious cognitive dissonant accomplishment that brings more misery than honor in the long run.
Keep your buttons and levers private from others. If you are too open, it becomes too easy to push them and make you a militarized drone that thinks you’re fighting an important battle, when really you’re serving their agenda is all.
What are you talking about, Willis?
Sie sind ein verdammter Trottel, Herr Drummond
I think it’s time any remaining 2-stroke bike owners gather together for a nice long protest ride to show the EPA what we think of them in one big plume of defiant smoke.
I have to wonder though, is there some kind of hidden agenda with the EPA? It’s very obvious to anyone who can add, that vehicles don’t really produce any pollution now (CO2 is not a pollutant), so what is the point in trying to crack down on negligible issues like this? Creating a problem and then pretending to solve it?
Hi AJ,
All bureaucracies seek to justify their budgets (and power). The “work” is never done. Even when it becomes necessary to invent it.
By the way – thank Nixon (a Republican) for EPA. And for HMOs, too.
Reminds me of a quote in the film “Jose Wales” when the red-legs Captain told everyone that “doin right ain’t got no end”. That’s the Govt motto nowadays. And my motto nowadays also comes from the same film. “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining”
“Those men were well-treated, well-fed and well-killed”.
If the taxpayers in this country knew how much it costs them, the War on Some Drugs would vanish quickly. But they’re stupid and assume that’s just the way it is.
More like they don’t care.
I begin to think we should care FOR them….
It’s in our interest to drag them along – since they don’t care, why care about them?
But since we can’t get out of the shit, we just need to make the shit go away…
I actually think the EPA started out well and can appreciate the need for a regulatory agency like it because I’ve been to mainland China before (so strange to see brand new cars and trucks with no catalyst and a carburetor), and also myself having a few old motorcycles know how fast you can smoke yourself out of your open garage…but all good things lie in balance, and that balance has gone the other way now and you know that’s the case when agencies begin adding extra letters and words to their terms to make them sound important.
LEV, ULEV, SULEV, PZEV…etc. At what point does will this crap be labelled what it should be? R-I-D-C-U-L-O-U-S.
Empiricism, that’s what’s lacking in today’s society, and when people have no empirical data interpretation skills, everyone loses.
No, the EPA started out of the starting gate doing a hatchet job on DDT based on faulty data, junk science, and outright lies. Third-world countries took the EPA at its word and as a result millions died painful, lingering deaths from malaria.
The EPA has bad roots and is rotten to the core; another murderous arm of the federal mafia.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/15583-ddt-breeds-death
https://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/DDT.html
We’re watching The Men Who Stare at Goats. I had a flash of when troops arrived in Baghdad and civilians cheered and got the troops to use a tank and pull down a statue of Hussein. They cheered and I was thinking how I’d seen that play out before in my lifetime. Vietnamese thought having somebody run off the commies(actually, just their version of politicians)and bring them all sorts of food they didn’t have was a great thing. No doubt, many of them knew better but no news story every showed those hanging back and seeing another new tyrant in town.
And Reagan doing the dirty work for Wall Street and the NYC banksters with the chokehold on international trading. Little Billy C and his old lady using the lackeys belonging to NATO to kill off peaceful people for unpeaceful people. And the beat goes on.
Actually a very large part of the Vietnamese knew exactly what was going on. It was (for what I gather in the U.S. history I’ve read) the propaganda being spread by the U.S. that made it seem as if they were doing a good thing. I hear this from a lot of the North and Central Vietnamese (mainland Vietnamese) I’ve talked to in Vietnam.
The Southerners, who are quite a bit slower (I hate to equate it to blacks in the U.S., but the dark skinned people in Vietnam are a lot easier to influence by buying them off) are generally the ones who pushed the brainwashing propaganda of U.S. colonialism.
Either way I have some more reading to do. Lots of public education in my head I need to fact check still.
Certainly there was a reason more and more of them sided with the communists and not because they were expecting to get rich. It’s like Goering said of civilians and war, nobody wants war. The best thing they can hope for is to survive, hopefully as unscathed as possible.
In the beginning some people started polluting. The government sided with the polluters because they had the money and influence. They did this by by-passing property rights and their duty to manage the commons and insisted people prove that the sludge which leached on to their land or whatever caused a problem. Not the basic principle of keep your sludge off my land or managing the commons by not allowing dumping into the drinking water…
So eventually technology and data allow people to prove that gee, that toxic looking sludge is toxic. People start getting angry. The EPA is created. A typical government solution (expand their power and size) to solve a government created problem.
And people are blind of their own hypocrisy. I often dissed Bush for all the horrible things he brought upon this nation. My died in the wool Republican college friends would attack me in force. Hey, get over it, Bush isn’t there now, he’s gone.
Oh hell, I don’t know what I was thinking since he’s “gone”, none of the horrible shit he did remains, it’s all on a muslim nigger now that’s the problem. Then in the very next e they’d raise hell and say every bad thing about Lincoln as they could. Look what he did to the country, etc. etc.
No guys, it’s not his fault, he’s gone, forget him, Lincoln’s been dead 150 years. None of what he did lives on…..get over it.
They tried to make out as if I liked Obama since I hated Georgy boy. It’s one side of the coin or the other for them, just can’t realize the bad things every president has done are almost still totally affecting us. Very little bad legislation gets reversed, it generally gets modified and becomes even worse. And speaking of hypocrisy, some of them rail against some of the drugs in that War, some of the very ones they used to use. I’ve just gotten to the point I rarely e them. One of the older guys tries to reason with them. I just let him take the mantle and remain an onlooker.
” It’s one side of the coin or the other for them”
Nope, it’s a mobius loop – only one side.
No, it’s pure hypocrisy. Every thing any democrat does is evil and everything a republican does is the righteous way. Even though some said they voted Libertarian the last election, they give themselves away as anything but Libertarian in every way and they can’t reread what they wrote and see it……and quit doing it.
I can wrap myself in a Libertarian flag but support the bad policies of one party or another and it’s obvious my views are not remotely Libertarian. Everything bad in this country right now is because of that black N word Muslim in the WH and that’s just it, the end. Nothing is ever said bad about Bush but they still harp on Clinton and ignore the shrub’s daddy too.
So now I can’t wait to see if Trump gets the seat, how they’re gonna spin that one. Come votin day, the fishing calendar looks pretty good.
Probably everyone can understand how I finally don’t want to play anymore.
Ha! Brother, I go through the same thing. Amen!
All presidents are puppets. I’m waiting to see the spin as well.
What did Col John Boyd say about the DoD’s main mission? …to increase next year’s budget.
Hi Frenchy,
Yup. That goes for “private” busybody entities, too. See, for example Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Which has become quite the business.
To such an extent that its founder has publicly criticized it.
Cynthias is a Berkeley Law Babe and EJW (environmental justice warrior)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiHZR-HcdFs
https://www.law.berkeley.edu/article/cynthia-giles-78-tackles-busy-agenda-in-high-ranking-epa-post/
Caitlyn Jenner is more feminine…
She’s certainly less dangerous.
Another great piece that will be ignored by the slack jawed, drooling, amorphous blob of Idiot AmeriKa.
If Boobus gave a shit about his honor OR freedom, there would be riots in the street by now.
Thanks, AF…
Unfortunately, I agree with you. It’s ironic that so many Americans deride the French for their lack of balls (that is, their lack of interest in “fighting for freedom”… i.e., being cannon fodder for the corporate-government nexus) yet the French would riot over something like this.
eric, like I said, this is what rufies were invented for. As we watch everything swirl down the toilet it’s easier to handle….unconscious. And it’s the truth that people in any country I can think of, maybe even Mexico, would riot over the shit we’re being fed…..Cartman style. I spoke with a cashier at Wally a couple days ago, a woman about my age, maybe a bit older and she agreed credit cards and trying to kill off cash is just another way to keep us in planet prison. This SHIT is not lost on older people. They have seen it coming and remember a freedom unknown in this day and age.
The problem in this country though is the huge militarization of police and the uh, well, military we can’t count on, the already stupid crowd. So many of those fucked up in the middle east still don’t see the hypocrisy and it’s those they give a gun. The ones, the ones that greatly outnumber the gungwhores, are denied guns. Sumpin bad’s about to happen. Well,something worse than what’s already happened anyway.
Morning, Eight!
Agreed. I have such chats with people, too. Same thing. Many people know perfectly well that things are bad and getting worse. But what to do?
It is paralyzing. And so, demoralizing.
I have tremendous empathy for the people in Hitler’s-on-his-way-Germany and other such places in time and space, who knew what was coming and nonetheless stayed put.
If I were 20 again, I’d leave.
Today.
eric, I’d already have the bar open and waiting for you. I wonder how long a white guy who kept a low profile might last in somewhere like Thailand?…..with no papers? I’m probably not up to many of the Hangover ll type things but I like the idea of nothing other than theft or physical damage being a nonplus sort of thing.
Listening again to the Louvin Bros. last night I kept having to compare loafing on the street here and there. It may be a crime in T-land too but I’d bet there aren’t near as many cops looking for it.
I don’t think there’s as many cops anywhere on earth as there are here…..and of all types too. I’ve about had it with working my ass off, not hurting a soul or breaking a law but getting raided just on a criminals lie and a corrupt DA. Shit does get old.
Precedent of a sort already existed.
In 2005–2010 the feds seized loads of illegal custom headlamps and taillamps and busted the chops of several aftermarket companies offering them. These were the HID “upgrades” to existing headlamps and the replacement taillamps that were all clear and used red bulbs. States also began enforcing laws against these mods when cars with them hit the roads.
Now you have the feds busting a vehicle manufacturer over parts marked as “off-road only”. Now the sky’s the limit.
Where’s SEMA, by the way? The EPA action here is ominous and will certainly be used next against aftermarket suppliers.
“Government” has found new sources of income – shake down businesses via ginned-up “regulations”. They did it to Microsoft years ago via an “antitrust” suit Government blowhards in Congress – “Microsoft, you’re making too much money and putting other competitors out of business”. Microsoft high-ups answering Government blowhards accusations – “We designed, built, and marketed a product to the masses that, it seems, everyone wants, thus we are successful and made money”.
Bad, Bad Microsoft.
Then years later, the “Europeeing Union” – which is Hitlers dream become manifest via a unified Europe – jumps on Microsofts case. Microsoft settles for Billions.
Wait a sec……………isn’t what the Italian, Irish, and all the other ethnic mobs used to do? Shakedown individuals and companies???
Seems to me that the U.S. Government and the mobs are one in the same – criminal organizations.
The first thing that came to mind when I saw this was how it is was just their way to get to what they are really after: the aftermarket performance auto parts industry. Its long been a goal of the EPA to stop people having fun with cars…..this is just a shot across the bow.
No question about it. Remember the bullshit earlier this year about the EPA and race cars? It had no chance, but it was clear that it was a trial balloon.
Besides, the EPA can go fuck themselves. All the pollution from all the ‘modified’ Harleys is still just a tiny fraction of what the mendacious bureaucrats did at the Gold King Mine.
We need to starve the beast. It’s the only way this shit will stop.
It takes 3 hours to die of hypothermia / exposure, in normal conditions (EG, Titanic was a little faster.)
It takes 3 days to die from dehydration, from no water.
3 months to die of no food.
But the beast is still eating; it even eats itself and prints more “food” which we are force-fed.
This is why I’m so adamant that we must use less-than-polite means.
To quote Franklin, “Revolution is always illegal in the third person: THEIR revolution. But always legal in the first: OUR revolution.”
We need to take such things to heart. Ultimately, we are unable to talk about anything FedGov doesn’t like, because, “treason.”
As it stands, we can’t even vote meaningfully, and that’s BEFORE we talk their rigging elections, and rigging the candidate pools….
How do you ‘mitigate’ pollution that has already occurred? Plant a tree? But wait, trees need CO2. And the EPA is trying to get rid of that too. Fish heads are too good.
Lead is better.