Senate use's China vehicles as examples of what American Auto Makers should
strive for.
The senator was vexed. The U.S. auto companies were resisting attempts by her and other Senate well-meaners to impose a radical rise in fuel efficiency by 2017. Why can't they be more like the Chinese, she complained. Or to quote Sen. Dianne Feinstein precisely: "What the China situation, or the other countries' situation, shows is that these automakers, in all of these countries, build the automobile that the requirements for mileage state. And they don't fight it, they just do it."
Guess she hasn't seen the latest crash test information on Chinese vehicles.
Yes. That is how things work in Communist Party dictatorships. It is odd to hold up China as a model of corporate-government relations. It is also poor salesmanship. Just a week after Feinstein made that statement, the Brilliance BS6 sedan -- "a car with which (China) wanted to conquer Europe's automobile market" -- failed a German crash test so miserably that it might be banned from Europe, reported the European news agency AFX News. "It was the second time in less than two years that a Chinese-made car has failed the test, following the spectacular failure of the Landwind sport-utility vehicle made by Jiangling Motors 18 months ago."
Guess a rise in deaths is easier to swallow as long as we get better gas mileage and cleaner air.
Look at the major provisions of the bill. First, a mandated 40 percent increase in fuel-efficiency standards for automobile companies. What's wrong with that? Apart from the safety issue, there is the issue of cost. Car prices will rise. That could in turn drive one or all of the Big Three U.S. auto companies, all reeling financially, into insolvency.
Or the dimise of companies that employee hundred's of thousands of AMERICANS.
That's the great attraction of ethanol, too. Another free lunch. The Senate bill mandates a quintupling of ethanol use by the year 2022. That might be a good idea; but it also has costs. With huge tracts of land now being turned over to grow corn for fuel, the price of corn already is rising, as is the price of other foods whose cropland has been taken over. The beauty of ethanol? It hides the price of purported energy efficiency in the most unlikely of places -- your Corn Flakes.
Or your grocery bills.
I have no objection to paying more to reduce our dependency on foreign energy. But it is hard to conceive of a more politically dishonest and economically inefficient way to do it than with mandates that make private industry do Congress' dirty work, hide the true cost of energy efficiency and perpetuate the fantasy of the tax-free lunch.
Congress is telling us to do as they say not as they do, because they never really feel the impact of their decisions.
But this time, unemploying thousands and thousands of Americans, Congress
just might feel the pain come election time.
Everyone remotely related to the Auto Industry is watching this bill very closely because it passage will effective their lives more than just a raise in vehicle prices.
The Dumocrats really need to start listening to the people they are "serving"
Posted by Quality Weenie at June 29, 2007 07:57 AM | TrackBack