Tag: government regulations

The Environmental Costs of ASS

Guest Post by Eric Peters

ASS may save gas – but it’s not so good for the environment.

There is a warning to be found in some new car owner’s manuals – which will probably be redacted once the problem is discovered. Or rather, made public.

It reads –

To minimize the possibility of catalytic converter damage: Do not shut off the engine or interrupt the ignition when the transmission is in gear and the vehicle is in motion.

ASS – automated engine stop/start – ought to read the owner’s manual.

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Why Can’t I Have This?

Guest Post by Eric Peters

A reader asks me why he can’t have a Mahindra Roxor – which is basically a Jeep CJ/Wrangler 4×4 that costs half as much as a new Wrangler. One’s legal to drive on public roads, the other’s not.

So, you can have it . . . you just can’t drive it. Not on “public” roads, that is.

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Finally. A major victory for common sense

Guest Post by Simon Black

In a major victory for common sense, a group of cosmetologists defeated an insanely stupid regulation passed down by the state of Louisiana.

Louisiana, just like the other 49 states in the Land of the Free, governs licensing requirements for dozens… hundreds of professions… ranging from athletic trainers to tour guides to barbers and cosmetologists.

And most of the time the licensing requirements are just plain idiotic.

In Louisiana, for example, the State Board of Cosmetology had formerly required an unbelievable 750 hours of training (which costs thousands of dollars) simply to be able to thread eyebrows.

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Clovers’ Union

Guest Post by Eric Peters

The Clovers who style themselves Consumers Union – not having been elected to this status by any actual “consumers” – have decided they want the government to impose a new mandate on heavy-duty, 2500/3500 series pick-up trucks. They are demanding they be tested for fuel economy and that these figures be published.

Currently, these trucks – which have a gross vehicle weight of 8,500 lbs. or more – are not subject to government mileage tests and their manufacturers are not required to post mileage stats.

Perhaps they should post them – but shouldn’t that be up to actual consumers – that is, to buyers –  as opposed to the self-appointed “union”?

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Brock Yates, Phone Home

Guest Post by Eric Peters

The car press has become the propaganda ministry of entities and individuals who either know nothing about cars or who loathe cars.

Whichever it is, the end result is the same: The writing of serially dishonest stories (and that ancient journalistic term is most apt) that anyone who does know something about cars – even if he loathes them – would notice immediately.

Example:

“The cost to implement tough fuel efficiency standards for cars imposed by the Obama Administration for the first half of the decade could be up to 40 percent lower than previously estimated using existing conventional technologies, according to a report from a nonprofit group released on Wednesday.”

Note the italicized parts.

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A Tale of Two Cities. . .

Guest Post by Eric Peters

In Washington, President Trump announced that environmental regulations are “out of control” – and promised to get them back under control.

In Paris, Mayor Anne Hidalgo (which sounds about as French as fries) has issued a fatwa banning diesel-powered cars built before model year 2001 – and is hoping to ban them all the way through model year 2005.

That’s 32 million cars (14 percent of the vehicle fleet) rendered economically obsolete by legislative edict. Imagine if you owned one of those 32 million. Your car now worthless to you.

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When America Was Still The Land Of Opportunity

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Last week during a long overdue vacation, a close friend of mine recommended reading the autobiography of Rich DeVos called Simply Rich.

DeVos is a billionaire entrepreneur who started countless ventures during his nine decades on this earth.

Back in the 1946, for example, DeVos started an airline… virtually overnight.

He just bought an airplane and started flying people around. No rules. No regulations.

They didn’t even have an airport. The local airfield north of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where they were based, hadn’t been completed yet.

As DeVos recounts in his book, “We put pontoon floats on our plane and took off and landed on the Grand River, which ran along the airfield.”

His first office at the airfield was an old chicken coop that he found, washed in the river, and re-painted.

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CARRIER AND THE SLIPPERY SLOPE

“Companies are not going to leave the United States anymore without consequences.” – Donald Trump

The reaction to Trump’s deal to keep 1,100 Carrier jobs in Indiana has ranged from outrage to adoration. There are so many layers to this Shakespearean drama that all points of views have some level of credence. I’m torn between the positive and negative aspects of this deal. If you’ve read Bastiat’s The Law and Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson, you understand the fallacies involved when government interferes in the free market. Politicians and their fanboys always concentrate on the seen aspects of government intervention, but purposely ignore the unseen consequences.

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Trump vs. the Zampolits

Guest Post by Eric Peters

If the Clovers are in a panic, it is probably time to get happy. And they are very panicky, indeed. About (cue Emperor Palpatine voice) a great many things. One of which is the prospect that Darth Trump – as they view him – might actually dial back the regulatory apparat that has given us cars designed by federal bureaucrats who function very much as Soviet-era political officers did – looking over the shoulder of field commanders (engineers, in this case) and second-guessing if not dictating their every move.

Trump may be agreeable to the idea that cars ought to be designed by engineers – responding to the wants and needs of the people who buy them.

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CIVIL WAR II – FOURTH TURNING INTENSIFYING (PART 2)

In Part One of this article I laid out the case against the criminal establishment and how the regeneracy is being driven by the anti-establishment sentiment sweeping across the land. This atonement Fourth Turning will de-establish decade’s worth of delusional decisions. This election has destroyed the last vestiges of trust in this fraudulent system.

This dysfunctional rigged presidential election reflects the tearing of the civic fabric at points of maximum susceptibility. As a country we have neglected, denied, or delayed necessary action on a plethora of vital issues threatening our long term viability as a nation. The deferral of difficult painful decisions has been a ploy of the ruling class, allowing them to further siphon the wealth of a dying empire, while maintaining control over the masses through laws, regulations, taxes, surveillance, intimidation, technology bread and circuses, and mainstream media propaganda.

This is a country truly divided, much along the lines of the first Civil War. The divisions aren’t just along political party lines, but race, education, geography, gender, age, class, religion and ability to think critically. The presidential polls (IBD) reveal many of these divisions clearly:

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3 Simple Charts That Help Explain Why 9,000 Businesses Have Left California In Just 7 Years

Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Aug 5, 2016 10:00 PM

We recently came across some simple charts from the Tax Foundation that simply and effectively illustrate why businesses are fleeing states like California by the 1,000s.

In the first chart, the Tax Foundation presents data from The Bureau of Economic Analysis to compare purchasing power of $100 depending which state you live in.  Ironically, the map turned out to look eerily similar to recent electoral college maps of Presidential elections with the Democrat-leaning northeast and west coast areas getting less bang for their buck compared to the southeast and mid-west.  Could it be that rather than voting their desires to cling to “guns and religion,” to quote President Obama, that Americans in the southeast and mid-west are actually voting to preserve a higher standard of life that doesn’t require them to spend $2mm on an 800 square foot apartment?  But we digress.

Relative Value of Dollar

 

Ironically, the second chart which illustrates tax rates by state looks very similar to the first.  The highest taxed states (dark blue) are in the northeast and west coast with lower tax structures in the southeast and mid-west.

Taxes by State

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Regulation Run Amok—And How to Fight Back

Too many government regulations today are pointless and prevent us from doing our jobs as well as we could, writes Charles Murray. His modest proposal: Ignore them.

Guest Post by Charles Murray

America is no longer the land of the free. We are still free in the sense that Norwegians, Germans and Italians are free. But that’s not what Americans used to mean by freedom.

It was our boast that in America, unlike in any other country, you could live your life as you saw fit as long as you accorded the same liberty to everyone else. The “sum of good government,” as Thomas Jefferson put it in his first inaugural address, was one “which shall restrain men from injuring one another” and “shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement.” Americans were to live under a presumption of freedom.

The federal government remained remarkably true to that ideal—for white male Americans, at any rate—for the first 150 years of our history. Then, with FDR’s New Deal and the rise of the modern regulatory state, our founding principle was subordinated to other priorities and agendas. What made America unique first blurred, then faded, and today is almost gone.

We now live under a presumption of constraint. Put aside all the ways in which city and state governments require us to march to their drummers and consider just the federal government. The number of federal crimes you could commit as of 2007 (the last year they were tallied) was about 4,450, a 50% increase since just 1980. A comparative handful of those crimes are “malum in se”—bad in themselves. The rest are “malum prohibitum”—crimes because the government disapproves.

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