Goodbye to Another Promise: Obama’s New $1,300 Car Tax Hits Low Income Families Hardest, New CAFE Standards Kill More People
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on May 19, 2009
By Vicki McClure Davidson * Frugal Café Blog Zone
Obama for the World... but not for Americans
Well, Obama supporters, kiss another campaign promise goodbye with your future car purchases. No matter what you earn. Low income families will be hit the hardest.
Obama has increased the CAFE (stands for Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards and will be raising car taxes. These expensive, crippling CAFE standards helped bring down the big American auto manufacturers, too. These CAFE standards are not applied (yet) to foreign cars.
Not only will all American-made cars be much more expensive, but in demanding that the cars be made smaller, whether Americans want smaller cars or not, will increase car crash fatalities, according to a 2002 Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) report.
From Associated Press:
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks will save billions of barrels of oil but are expected to cost consumers an extra $1,300 per vehicle by the time the plan is complete in 2016. Obama on Tuesday planned to announce the first-ever national emissions limits for vehicles, as well as require an overall or industry average fuel efficiency standard at 35.5 miles per gallon.
[...]
Obama’s proposed change in rules would for the first time combine pollution reduction from vehicle tailpipes with increased efficiency on the road. It would save 1.8 billion barrels of oil through 2016 and would be the environmental equivalent of taking 177 million cars off the road, said senior administration officials speaking anonymously, ahead of the announcement…
Administration officials said consumers were going to pay an extra $700, anyway, for mileage standards that had already been approved. The Obama plan adds another $600 to the price of a vehicle, a senior administration official said, bringing the total cost to $1,300 by 2016.
From Michelle Malkin, Obama’s $1,300 car tax:
Totally missing from today’s discussion of imposing stricter mileage standards: the potentially lethal impact. For years, free-market analysts and government statisticians have warned of the deadly effect of increasing corporate auto fuel economy standards.
Sam Kazman at CEI explained in 2002: “[T]he evidence on this issue comes from no less a body than the National Academy of Sciences, which issued a report last August finding that CAFE contributes to between 1,300 and 2,600 traffic deaths per year. Given that this program has been in effect for more than two decades, its cumulative toll is staggering. CAFE has this impact on safety because it restricts the production of large cars. Large cars are less fuel efficient than smaller, similarly equipped vehicles, but they are also more crashworthy in practically every type of accident. The first major analysis of this issue came in a 1989 report from researchers at Harvard and the Brookings Institution; since then, a number of other analyses, by government and private researchers, have confirmed the conclusion that CAFE kills.”
From the CEI report:
In January, Joan Claybrook appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee with a diatribe on how the CAFE-safety tradeoff was a myth propagated by industry. But in 1977 she appeared before that same committee and stated, “There are going to be tradeoffs.”
What happened? Back then, large cars were not politically incorrect. Today they are. For these people, the line all along has been: You want more safety? You need more government. But with CAFE it’s exactly the opposite — more regulation means less safety. Their response has been to choose the former over the latter.
There is not a single advocate of CAFE who admits that it kills anyone. For this reason, the CAFE debate is fundamentally dishonest. CAFE is often portrayed as a way to keep us out of “blood-for-oil” wars, but at least those wars have clear life-and-death risks. CAFE, on the other hand, is itself a blood-for-oil war, waged on American civilians by proponents who refuse to admit it carries any risks at all.
Cheeky wisdom from Greg Gutfeld, Big Hollywood: Daily Gut: Deadly Dreams in Tiny Cars
Who in God’s name would be criminal enough to be driving those larger, midsized vehicles?
Well besides evil parents who want to protect their families – try Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Yep, our fearless leaders Obama and Biden have the luxury of bullet-proof, tank-proof and smart-car proof transportation for themselves and their adorable offspring. Basically, if they hit us: they live, we die.
Unless, of course, we stick to buying the cars we want to buy, and not what the government wants. Which can only mean an inevitable punitive tax against evil people like us. Fact is, there is no huge demand for collapsible sippy-cup cars, because people prefer safety over economy. So the only way to get us into deadlier cars is to make it a financial burden to own the safe ones.
Related reading:
Beltway Snark: Obama To Raise Price Of Cars
Jeffrey Jena, Big Hollywood: Lies Obama Told Me
Gateway Pundit: Obama’s CAFE Standards Will Kill More Americans Than Iraq War
Stop the ACLU: Obama To Announce Plans To Drastically Increase Auto Costs
Hot Air: Obama raising car prices and killing people is just for starters
Josh Painter, RedState: It’s not your father’s Obamobile – It’s hope and change on wheels, citizen
David Harsanyi, Townhall.com: Coming to Your Garage: Le Car
Radio Vice Online: Obama administration using distractions to hide true mission
Finding Ponies in Piles of Poop: Auto Mileage and Cost Savings?
Pirate’s Cove: Obama To Announce Plans To Drastically Increase Auto Costs
The Other McCain: They Can Have My Gas Guzzler When They Pry It From My Cold Dead Fingers!
Tai-Chi Policy: Just The Stimulus Our Economy Needs Right Now
Peace and Freedom Promises: Obama CAFE Standard, Auto Company Bailouts “Great For Government and Auto Makers.” Consumers?
Obama Lies: Learn about the Lies of the Obama Administration
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