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Opinion
May. 21, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: Banning the pickup truck

Barack Obama now running the automobile industry

The Tuesday headline was clear: "Obama's new rules will transform U.S. auto fleet."

The Associated Press picked it up from there: "Some soccer moms will have to give up hulking SUVs. Nearly everybody else will drive smaller cars, and more of them will run on electricity. The higher mileage and emissions standards set by the Obama administration on Tuesday, which begin to take effect in 2012 and are to be achieved by 2016, will transform the American car and truck fleet.

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    • "The new rules would bring new cars and trucks sold in the United States to an average of 35.5 miles per gallon, about 10 mpg more than today's standards. Passenger cars will be required to get 39 mpg, light trucks 30 mpg. That means cars and trucks on American roads will have to become smaller, lighter and more efficient."

    Eric Fedewa, vice president of global powertrain forecasting for an auto consulting firm, told The AP the changes will make pickup trucks so much more expensive that they'll be used almost exclusively for work.

    Oh, heavens. We're growing faint.

    The wise and powerful wizard Obama, having loaned taxpayer money to Detroit to "bail them out" -- thus avoiding simple bankruptcy, where the firms might have shed their overly costly union contracts and emerged to renewed profitability -- now simply decrees what kind of cars Detroit will make. He might as well just put Howard Waxman, Charlie Rangel and Barney Frank in the executive offices at the Big Three, in fedoras and double-breasted striped zoot suits like Ayn Rand's Wesley Mouch, Cuffy Meigs, and Emma Chalmers, and have done with it.

    Is this the same Barack Obama who said, late last month, with mock humility, "I don't want to run auto companies. ... I don't know how to create an affordable, well-designed plug-in hybrid"?

    The chutzpah here, the arrogance, is astounding. Does this man really believe he has the whole nation hypnotized -- that he can say one thing while doing just the opposite?

    Not everyone appears ready to gawk in awe as the naked emperor struts around in his new clothes. "Already on Tuesday, some drivers were skeptical," The AP reported. Dixie Bishop, who runs a plumbing business in San Antonio that uses vans, worried the new requirements will drive up her costs at a time when customers are cutting back on repairs.

    "Are they going to take my horsepower down?" she asked. "I have to be able to carry old water heaters and toilets. It's not beneficial for me to haul one water heater at a time. We need the power to pull these heavy items."

    It's possible a public dizzied by the pace of all this totalitarian "change" has only begun to respond. In fact, we might be willing to wager the average fuel economy of the vehicles on the American road will not be 35.5, any time soon.

    We might be willing to bet that Americans will start to hold onto their powerful "old" vehicles, spending more to fix them up rather than falling for "tax credit" gimmicks to trade them in for dangerous little golf carts into which Obama and his bi-coastal elite want to see us squeezed.

    Obama and congressional Democrats will fight any such resistance to their schemes by raising fuel taxes to artificially increase the price of gasoline. If that doesn't work, they'll try to outlaw the older, better performing vehicles, outright.

    Give it a try, Mr. Obama. Ban the pickup truck -- and see who's sitting in the White House, trying to keep all these new marionette strings from getting tangled, come 2013.

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    Robert M. Anderson wrote on July 06, 2009 11:03 AM: Your article is right on. The similarity between the characters from "Atlas Shrugged" and the clowns we have in Washington are frightening. My concern is, where can the productive"Men of the Mind" go to form their own society? Maybe we could send Al Gore on a speaking tour of Antarctica to melt the ice and make it inhabitable


    Braem wrote on June 04, 2009 12:39 AM: Looking for used truck parts ? Search our 30 000 second-hand used truck parts. Ask here for availability and our best prices.


    Stan wrote on May 31, 2009 06:55 AM: Yeah the Wiz except he's the one that should be singing "If I only had a brain!" I'll bet we can come up with some pertinent lyrics for OBwan if we try. Everybody get going!


    cowboy357 wrote on May 31, 2009 05:33 AM: Exactly right.

    The elite fly on jets that burn 10.5 gallons per second. Where is the millage standard for that?

    But whoa to the family who needs a truck to pull the horse trailer or a boat. Or the contractor who still has work.



    Health care , retirement. Those things used to be available when energy was low. People worked to build vehicles that the public wanted.



    Energy policy killed GM and will be the death of UAW jobs too. It's Animal Farm now. The workers give concessions to work for the masters in Washington.



    Don't worry we will be saving lot's of Energy in Michigan...pretty soon all the lights will be off.....


    Rob Boys wrote on May 30, 2009 06:04 PM: Who & when is the process to remove President Obama & the collection of idiots
    who work for him. They were elected to
    follow the direction of the electorate.
    That never happened! All we hear are lies
    and actions that prove that our president
    and "his camp followers" are on a course to destroy America, & remake it in manner
    they think it should be. Well, I think if
    we took a truly (impossible, B.O. would
    have ACCORN do it) accurate survey B.O.s popularity would be less than 30%. Leading that 30% would be those who consider themselves the elite, the newspaper people, the broadcast industry in other words the ones responsible for electing B.O. & company! I'm to old & over the hill, but someone should take the "bull" by
    the horns & do it!


    Nick wrote on May 29, 2009 02:44 AM: Obama refuses to address the real problem of overpopulation. We need strong tax incentives and perks for people who choose not to have children. By lowering the population just about every problem we have would be calmed.


    Duane wrote on May 28, 2009 10:46 PM: I have a Dodge Ram 4X4 I use as a work horse and for towing/pulling. It has a Diesel 6 that get's 25 MPG. What am I going to use to do the same amount of work if I have to replace this?? These new rules and this new Cap and Trade fiasco will cost us plenty. Do you have an additional $1500 each year for your electric bill? I don't.

    This scam is going to put our economy through a wringer! If, as Steven Choo, our current energy secretary who suggests that we coat our roofs white to reflect the heat from the sun saving enough electricity equivalent to taking ALL cars off the road for 11 years would really work, then why do we need Cap and Trade?? Because this is not about saving our environment or stopping global warming. It is totally about getting away with a great big power grab and fooling the people all at the same time!

    This is the same Barrack Obama who said that no one will have their taxes raised under his administration! Really? is this part of that "Change we can believe in" or part of that "my administration will be the most open one in history" rhetoric?

    All we can do is get the facts and let the people decide!


    James wrote on May 28, 2009 09:27 PM: This is amazing thank you obama for making this a communist country.


    Jimbo_in_Summerlin wrote on May 27, 2009 06:07 PM: I think our President is showing HIS bias towards us redneck pickup owners by promoting a ban on the F150. He just lives in a South Chicago urban world with an international school of Jakarta education and Hawaiian roots where people don't need big cars that run on gas. We can all live in houses in Hawaii with no heat and no airconditioning, or ride our bicycles to work, and take public transportation to the market.

    What will he go after next? Our guns?

    Then what? OUR BALLS?


    Andy wrote on May 22, 2009 10:18 AM: Id love to see Obama outlaw older vehicles. People with classic cars wont stand for it. He was doing so good now he is messing up bad!


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