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Automotive News & Views Are automobiles a major cause of global warming?
6884 messages, Last post on Dec 01, 2009 at 2:38 PM
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Replying to: larsb (Jan 15, 2009 1:44 pm) This country was founded for INDIVIDUAL freedom; "people" are individuals. This country was not founded on the basis that any individual needs to do what 51% or 99% of their neighbors think the individual should do. Read some articles from John Adams, Thomas jefferson, and Ben Franklin. You and many other people think that because we have a democratically elected government that is selected by who gets a majority, that every other decision in life then becomes a matter of what the majority wants. That is not was ever intended in this country. The fact is that government has been grabbing power over the years and expanding (by passing laws) what they think they should be able to decide. They are infringing on what have historically been individual rights and freedoms. The government with the acquiescence of people like you, continues to gather power and control, all in the name of protecting the individual based on their view of "good", and that individuals should not be allowed to make decisions that may be detrimental to themselves.
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Replying to: kernick (Jan 16, 2009 5:33 am) While these fellows disagreed on many issues of their day. Individual freedom was the glue that held them together during the very difficult times following the Revolution. I have watched over the last 50 years how our state and Federal government have slowly eaten away at individual freedoms. They always get people to agree that it is good for this or good for that and justify the loss in that manner. The last major loss was eminent domain. What a tragedy for property rights in this country. 5100 people in Riviera Beach Florida tossed from their homes to build high rise condos and a Yacht club. All under the guise of the COMMON Good. Good for WHOM Now we are facing an even larger grab for power to take individual rights. It is called "Carbon Credits" or Cap n Trade. This will allow the misguided miscreants running states like CA to run over personal rights in ways we never dreamed possible. They have already started with mandating Alternative energy by 2012. I know SDG&E have run into roadblocks at every attempt to follow the mandate. Yet if it is not in place SDG&E will be saddled with big fines. NO, SDG&E will just raise our electric rates to compensate for their loss. The very liberal Prime Minister of Australia was all gungho for cutting GHG, until he found out it would raise utility bills 25% on average. Well he does want to get re-elected. Kernick is absolutely RIGHT! every new well meaning regulation Steals more of our personal freedom. And the libs worry about wire tapping, sheesh.... 
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Replying to: gagrice (Jan 16, 2009 6:38 am) Oh yeah? Name a few personal freedoms you have personally lost in the last 50 years. Harder yet, name a few that EVERY American has lost in the last 50 years. Then name the "reason" those changes are bad for the GENERAL PUBLIC. It's one thing to broadly declare, "WAAH WAAH WAAH "THEY" are taking my personal freedom away WAAH WAAH WAAH !!!!!!" and entirely another thing to spell out EXACTLY what those freedoms are. Remember: the "Collective good" is greater than the "individual good."
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Replying to: larsb (Jan 16, 2009 6:48 am) Well I guess given the example, if you are the lawyers and the developers, et al... whom stand to gain, it is... collectively good.  
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Replying to: larsb (Jan 16, 2009 6:48 am) Yes that was what Stalin preached as he killed 30 million people. Collectivism is only good for those in control. The USSR was a failed system that we have moved slowly toward over the last 75 years. You know what personal freedoms I have been deprived of. Owning a small diesel PU truck and land being manipulated causing me a loss of money. One day you will wake from your collective slumber and realize what has happened.
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Replying to: gagrice (Jan 16, 2009 7:03 am) But the small diesel PU issue I will not grant you. If the carmakers did not want to put the technology in the car to make it clean enough, it's not the guvmint's fault. The fault in that case lies with the automakers in part and with the fact that there was not enough market demand for such an item.
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Replying to: larsb (Jan 15, 2009 9:22 am) I disagree. While I used extreme examples to make my point the principle is the same. Zealots to a cause (in the original example, Global Warming) get into power and proceed to enact laws which are so single minded that they begin to infringe on individual rights. Over time more and more extreme laws are enacted "for the public good" until you are faced with a dictatorship. Do you think Hitler just started killing people the day he came to power? No, it was a gradual thing. Just as were the early environmental laws. Over time the laws have become more and more extreme in their scope with less and less accountability for the harm they do to people. |
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Replying to: larsb (Jan 16, 2009 7:06 am) You really need to get out of that cubicle more often. If I had held on another 20 years I may have gotten compensation for my loss. Then again the taxes probably would have been more than the gain in value. This kind of erosion of personal freedom is going on at different levels in many states. AZ and TX are not nearly as oppressive as the Coastal states. I don't know if you have ever owned property. It is very discouraging when laws are passed that take that property from you by regulating its value. Unnoticed amid the suspense of the Presidential race, on November 7 the voters of Oregon adopted a landmark law for the protection of the human right of private property ownership. Ballot Measure 7, entitled "landowner compensation", was a rebellion by Oregon voters against decades of expansion of governmental power to control the use of private land. Until the environmental revolution swept over Oregon (and Vermont) in the 1970s, the state and its subdivisions regulated land largely to prevent traditional nuisances. Local governments had used zoning since the practice was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1926, but it was usually not oppressive. The enviro-revolution changed all that. Numerous well-funded and aggressive national, state and local environmental organizations advanced the theory of "social property". This theory held that land is a valuable resource belonging to society, not a commodity to be owned, used, and exchanged by individuals. "Owners" merely "hold" land as "stewards" subject to such conditions and restrictions as "society" (that is, the government) sees fit to impose. This "social property" theory gave rise to a tidal wave of new land use regulations. In 1973 Oregon adopted a state land use plan, prohibiting land uses not approved by a state bureaucracy. Over the years that and other regulatory laws were ever more aggressively enforced. Oregon is full of outrageous examples of land regulations confiscating the rights of property owners and the value of their property. This year a group called Oregonians in Action petitioned Measure 7 onto the ballot.. It provides that whenever a governmental restriction "has the effect of reducing the value of a property... the property owner shall be paid just compensation equal to the reduction in the fair market value of the property." The compensation requirement does not apply to regulation that restricts "historically and commonly recognized nuisances". It does not apply to property that was already subject to regulation when acquired by new owners. A government can escape liability for payment by rolling back the offending regulation. The basic argument for Measure 7 is fairness. If society believes that a landowner's private property rights must be restricted in the name of some common good, then all of society ought to share in any resulting economic loss, not just the hapless landowner. The 18th century authors of our constitutions firmly believed this. In fact, Vermont's 1777 constitution is the first one in the world to explicitly declare that when property is taken for public use, the owner has a right to receive "the equivalent in money". The enviros grudgingly accept this "takings" rule when the government actually takes possession of the property, as in highway construction. They vocally oppose it when land use regulation "merely" destroys the value of someone's property, leaving the owner with what may be a huge economic loss. The Oregon enviros and their editorial page allies mounted a full bore attack on Measure 7. Every major editorial page in the state denounced it. The anti-Measure7 groups raised over a million dollars to defeat it, outspending its advocates 8 to 1. But on election day Oregon voters approved Measure 7 by a 55-45 margin. It was approved in 34 of the state's 36 counties, and is now part of the Oregon Constitution. http://www.ethanallen.org/commentary.php?commentary_id=122
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It appears to say in your posted editorial that "the good guys won." So what's the problem? Just like I said - if the guvmint was doing something "bad" then the citizens rose up and protested and got it changed. Just like guvmint is supposed to work.
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"U.S. EPA Administrator-designate Lisa Jackson promised today to take a new look at Califoria's controversial quest to set its own greenhouse gas emissions regulations for automobiles - a plan that 19 other states want to follow and that automakers vehemently oppose." EPA Nominee Pledges Agency Will Establish Federal Greenhouse Gas Regulations (and if anyone thinks we have have fewer freedoms today than in Jeffersonian times, you might want to pay close attention on 1/20).
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