I think its not an irrational position to suggest that increasing fuel efficiency standards in our automobiles and trucks will have a number of salutory effects, from reducing emissions, to improving our national security by, among other things, lowering our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Which explains why the effort to thwart the recently passed increases in such standards in the House is being thwarted in the Senate by Kit Bond (R-MO) and, of course, two Democrats from Michigan (Levin and Stabenow). Naturally, the Big Three auto-makers contend that they will be at a competitive disadvantage if they are obliged to improve fuel efficiency, damn the consequences to the rest of us.
Senators Levin and Stabenow would do better not to listen to the high priced lobbyists who buy them expensive meals and send them on nice vacations junkets fact-finding trips, and look at what Detroit’s real problems are: wildly out of control health and pension costs, in many cases, to former employees. A far, far better approach to solving Detroit’s woes than opposing measures that will improve our national health and national security is to ween GM and Ford and Chrysler of these problems… by moving us toward socialized medicine and more secure, livable national pensions– the same arrangements that our competitors (who are clobbering the Big Three, while also offering more fuel efficient vehicles!) in Japan and Europe have for their workers.
Plus, of course, such an agenda would be consistent with being Democrats, as opposed to be being corporate shills thinking about their next-fund-raiser, rather than the interests of most of their constituents (instead, of course, of the ones who who buy them expensive meals and send them on nice vacations junkets fact-finding trips.)
Of course, that’s just me.
tdog
Stop talking crazy! Constituents don’t get them re-elected, corporate contributions do. Silly dog…
Mixter
Yeah, the Big Three would be put at competitive disadvantage because they’d have to sell the _same_ cars they produce for European markets in the US. They sell a midsized SUV (the Opel Antara) that gets 27 mi/gal for the automatic. (http://www.opel.de/shop/cars/antara/product/specs/content.act)
and a minvan (the Astra caravan) that gets 33.5 mi/gal.
Note that these are not outliers. The sedans, et al, get even better mileage.
I will just point out that Stabenow voted for the Military COmmissions Act and Levin help draft the Detainee Treatment Act…
For some reason democrats want to cowtow to Levin like he is some brainy guy but he is about to screw things up again… because he is smarter than everyone else… he wants to set up new rules for new Combat Status Review Tribunals… and fuck over the detainees even more. It is about to be letter writing time again but now we will all have to focus our attention on one democratic senator who things he is smarter than everyone else…just like he was when he helped pass the dreaded detainee treatment act…
Rewriting the rules for the detainees is not the answer… restoring habeas corpus is the answer.