Guest Post by Eric Peters
In 1861, eleven Southern states decided they no longer consented to be governed by Northern politicians – who had acquired de facto political control over the federal government – and thereby, over the entire country – by dint of the North’s greater numbers.
In an election, numbers matter.
But what happens when you’re not even allowed to vote for those who rule you?
California regulators have acquired de facto control over the cars you’re allowed to buy – even if you don’t live in California – by decreeing their own California-specific mileage and emissions standards. These end up having the force of national standards because the car industry – which wants to sell cars in California – can’t afford to build cars for just California and then another set of cars for the rest of the country.
So they build all their cars to meet California’s standards – which are even more corseting then federal (national) standards.
The cost of complying with them amounts to a “California Tax” levied on everyone – including those who don’t live in California.
It is literally taxation without representation – as well as legitimate justification.
And the state just raised taxes – again.
By issuing a fatwa that all new cars sold in California must average at least 50 miles-per-gallon by 2026. Several major car companies – including Ford, Honda, VW and BMW have already bent knee. 
The California fatwa was issued in response to President Trump’s effort to keep the current national fuel economy fatwa – the Corporate Average Fuel Economy – at the current 30-something miles-per-gallon.
Trump’s predecessor had decreed a near-doubling of the CAFE fatwa.
It is still on deck, but Trump did recently rescind a near-tripling of the “gas guzzler” fines that would have punished any car company that didn’t “comply” with the federal 50 MPG fatwa – effectively watering down the mechanism for enforcing compliance with the fatwa.
This did not sit well with California’s regulatory ayatollahs – which just decided to up the mandatory MPG minimums for all of us.
No matter what it costs us. Maybe not in terms of the federal fines – thanks to Orange Man – but in terms of choice.
There will be fewer vehicles available nationally that don’t meet California’s MPG fatwa because it be harder for the car companies to internally justify building them when they’re not able to sell them (without repercussions) in one of the country’s biggest markets.
But the rest of the country isn’t California – and can’t vote in California. Why should the rest of the country be subject to what California decrees?
Especially given that the original justification for the federal CAFE regs – energy scarcity, the wells running dry and most of them controlled by foreign governments – has become a non-justification.
New wells have been found; oil has proved to be abundant – and much of that abundance has turned out to be right here, in the United States.
As Trump has pointed out, there is no longer an energy-scarcity justification to punish Americans for driving other than subcompact hybrids – which are the only vehicles (other than outlawed diesel-powered cars) capable of averaging 50 miles-per-gallon.
The new justification – hugely popular in California – is that a car which averages 50 MPG “emits” less carbon dioxide, the bete noire of “climate change” – than a car which averages around 35 MPG because it burns less fuel per mile.
But this is a disingenuous alteration of the original legislative intent of the federal CAFE regs. The acronym itself says nothing about “emissions” – of carbon dioxide or any other thing.
Mileage and emissions regs used to be separate regs.
And both were federal regs.
Until California decided it wanted even stricter regs – which it began imposing on Californians several decades ago via something called CARB – the California Air Resources Board. This resulted – at first – in what were called “California” cars, those built to comply with the state’s more onerous regs – and cars for the rest of us, which only had to comply with the less onerous federal regs.
“California” cars cost more and sometimes weren’t available with manual transmissions – or only came with smaller engines. Etc.
But the car industry had to bear the expense – and hassle – of making (and marketing) cars tailored for what amounted to two different markets in the same country. It got worse as other states – not all, but several – adopted the “California” standards.
The car companies began building all their cars to meet California’s standards – because it was easier for them, even if it cost people who didn’t live in California (and the other states which adopted California emissions regs) more.
California has thus acquired de facto regulatory control over the entire country – and, effectively the power to tax American drivers in every state to pay for what the state of California decrees.
This taxation without representation is about to increase, despite the efforts of the Orange Man.
California’s fatwa that all cars sold in the state average 50 miles-per-gallon by 2026 will effectively mean that cars sold in every state must also average 50 miles-per-gallon, because the car companies will have to build them that way if they want to sell cars in California – which they do – and because they can’t afford to build them just for California (and the other states that have adopted California’s standards) and then another batch for everywhere else.
So we will all get California cars – and California costs.
Without having asked for them. Without having been given the chance to say yes – or no – to them.
So much for the consent of the governed.
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Hmmm, like the Kosher food tax we all pay…
Since the world is governed by USA banks and kowtows to USA pollution standards, it was inevitable that somebody would find a way to bring Americans to their knees. I mean, we are not a nation of little Hitlers even though we act that way by using up world resources at will. Somebody has to be the shot-caller, it might as well be Gavin Newsom, our future president.
This is a country where the poorest of the poor, the dumbest of the dumb, look down on foreigners and dismiss other cultures out of hand. A land where Joe Blow and his sister/wife feel entitled to tell people they don’t like to go back where they came from; Africa, Mexico or Minnesota. A land so totally dependent on cheap foreign goods and food that they would be extinct in a week if the ports shut down.
The fatted cows of Bashan only know to demand more and more. They vote – not for the least evil, as they claim – but for the most generous with tax dollars. Give us Barrabas’ ass, demand the faggotized voters. Seal the borders, trill the traumatized Trumpeteers. Back with the blacks, down with the browns; white power, wail the withered wives of weakened weenies.
Somewhere in a darkened room, Putin listens in on Alexa recordings of gay sex, bestiality, lone sex or heterosexual men begging their old lady to at least consider giving him a hand-job for his birthday, and laughs. This is going to be an easy victory without firing a shot. America, she is dead already.
Looks as though the real EL is showing up.
EC – you should write, and ask Admin to post, some articles. You have some seriously brilliant stuff in you, and with even a little bit of effort you could focus it into some great articles.
Yep, I’ve suggested that to him more than a few times also.
Thanks, actually I am writing here. But there is no more. It’s always a little pressure release and I’m done. I really don’t know why I wrote that. I drove home, it was hot, I was tired and waiting for dinner. All I could think of was that MadJack had brought the discourse to the lowest point very early in the discussion. It’s too easy to point fingers elsewhere and pretend that we are somehow perfect in our whiteness, blackness or what have you.
3:1 ratio down ?
I landed on the upside once again……a hit piece bullseye like that, and you call me Sicario ?
annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum-
I’ve ‘hollered Seal the border’ for about 18 yrs. now (since 911/threat levels……either they’re real or the gov. been lyin !)
I thought ‘trill’ was meant to be ‘troll’……till I considered the source and I learned:
Tril
Music
The trill is a musical ornament consisting of a rapid alternation between two adjacent notes, usually a semitone or tone apart, which can be identified with the context of the trill. It is sometimes referred to by the German Triller, the Italian trillo, the French trille or the Spanish trino. A cadential trill is a trill associated with each cadence. A trill provides rhythmic interest, melodic interest, and—through dissonance—harmonic interest. Sometimes it is expected that the trill will end with a turn, or some other variation. Such variations are often marked with a few appoggiaturas following the note that bears the trill indication.
trill
[tril]
NOUN
a quavering or vibratory sound, especially a rapid alternation of sung or played notes.
“the caged bird launched into a piercing trill” · [more]
synonyms:
trilling · song · birdsong · cry · warbling · chirp · chirping · chirrup · [more]
VERB
produce a quavering or warbling sound.
“a skylark was trilling overhead” · [more]
synonyms:
warble · sing · chirp · chirrup · tweet · twitter · cheep · peep
Just think of the market that opens up to a company that only markets to the rest of the company. They would be more reliable and cheaper. Just an idea
One of the last things Hickenlooper did as guv of Colo. was to issue an Executive Order mandating that all cars sold in the state starting in 2022 be compliant to the same standards as California cars. Legislature did not get a voice, citizen/illegal voters did not get a voice.
There has to be a way to design an engine that can limit its performance to stay within the highest efficiency band to operate within california, yet can with the flip of a switch run at optimal performance in the other states. Let california deal with cars that go 0-60 in 14 seconds while the rest of us can have 0-60 in 8 seconds.
I used to be in the diesel engine business and we were asked by a large trucking company if it would be possible to change the HP parameters of his trucks when they hit the continental divide (same displacement engine could be rated from 270 to 375 BHP). Tossed it to the engineers at the factory and they told us it would require a total reprogram of the ECM and that could not be done on the fly.
On the flip side, it is probably possible to take the exact same engine configuration and reprogram the ECM to make it CA certified or 49 state certified, but would have to be done at time of manufacture to meet EPA regs.
California has messed up a lot of products. Paint and varnish no longer resemble what they were 20 years ago. Much lower quality.
New wells have been found but these are wells that produce about 50K barrels on average over the course of their lifetime and cost a million to drill. And each year the best remaining shale formations get tapped, so the potential drops each year. Every year we’re spending more money to horizontally drill for longer distances requiring more and more fracking sand and fluid, for less and less total output from each well. All on the back of miles of red ink. Even with the absolute best shale deposits to start with, they couldn’t make any money. So how are they supposed to profit from tighter and tighter deposits? None of this suggests that oil is becoming more and more abundant. One can easily argue that without this sea of red ink subsidizing thousands of money losing wells, we would already be past peak oil. Just because it is theoretically possible to put off peak oil for a few years by spending 20 trillion dollars tearing up every parcel of the countryside, it doesnt mean you can throw physics out the window. The world consumes over a cubic mile of oil per day, and we are not discovering new cubic miles of oil anywhere near that fast, and have not for decades. When we’re 10 years post peak, there is still going to be thousands of cubic miles of oil in the ground, it will simply be too sparsely located to be pumped out at rates high enough to keep production rates rising. It is all about flow rates. Right now we are compensating for loss of flow rate by sticking more and more longer and longer straws in the ground, to a comical degree. Is this truly that difficult to understand?
Another reason why I’m keeping my older cars. Give ‘um a new look, tint the glass, replaced the fogged up headlamps, throw a bullbar on with some lights…add a nice 7-inch screen stereo…etc..etc… a whole new life.
Let them walk.