Obama administration say one thing do another – auto industry edition


We’ve heard it before. Last month, as the Federal Government was becoming an 8 percent owner of Chrysler and 50 percent owner of General Motors, President Obama feigned disinterest:

I don’t want to run auto companies. I’m not an auto engineer. I don’t know how to create an affordable, well-designed plug-in hybrid.

Moments later, Obama revealed his actual intent:

“But I know that, if the Japanese can design an affordable, well-designed hybrid, then, doggone it, the American people should be able to do the same,” he said. “So my job is to ask the auto industry: Why is it you guys can’t do this?”

So we shouldn’t be surprised when President Obama’s Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, goes to Iowa and says:

All cars made in America should be able to burn ethanol (E85).

Chu made the E85 statement yesterday, even though he has previously admitted that, corn is not the right crop for biofuels.”

Earlier this month, Secretary Chu said electric vehicles were “inevitable.”

Chu’s promotion of E85 capability seems to be driven by the low cost of making a standard internal combustion engine vehicle able to burn the biofuel:

I’ve been told it costs about $100 in gaskets and fuel lines to turn a car so that it can go all the way to E85. But a new car, it would only cost $100 out of $15,000. Wouldn’t it be nice to put in those fuel lines and gaskets so that we can use any ratio we wanted?

Of course Chu tried to obfuscate and stated the Obama administration is not yet ready to “mandate” any flex-fuel capability:

Chu said federal officials have discussed the idea with auto industry
executives but have stopped short of saying the Obama administration would
require the companies to build all vehicles as flex-fuel-ready.

Secretary Chu, like President Obama, knows little the costs of designing and building cars. A hundred dollars per car is a  huge manufacturing expense. An auto industry association spokesman said that to equip new cars with E85 capability would cost carmakers more than $1 billion. A fact that seems to mean little to Obama and Chu. After all, it is our money not theirs. The federal government has no business owning or running a car manufacturer.

It’s bad enough that there is nothing we can do as Obama throws billions and billions of dollars borrowed in our names in order to bailout of some of his union supporters. It is even worse that neither Obama or Chu seem to understand that when the entity that is paying to keep your auto company on life support, suggests something, like making new cars E85 capable, it has away of becoming a mandate. Or do they?


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Just remember, they know MORE than you do!

Next93 (Diary) Tuesday, June 23rd at 8:40PM EST (link)

It doesn’t matter if they have no idea what they’re talking about, the fact that they’re “progressives” makes them smarter than YOU. And they’ll be the first to tell you so.

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Obama was The One in 2008.
He’ll be a BIGGER one in 2012.

 

Eh.

drothgery Tuesday, June 23rd at 9:31PM EST (link)

Mandating that all new cars and light trucks sold in the US after a certain date be flex-fuel vehicles is actually one of the least brain-dead environmental regulations they could come up with (especially if they linked it to both ditching ethanol subsidies and the tarrif on imported ethanol). At least then if someone came up with a way to make ethanol that’s cheaper than gas, there’d be someone to sell it to.

give an inch

gonzo55 (Diary) Tuesday, June 23rd at 10:00PM EST (link)

get a mountain of bad energy policy crammed down your throat. If our side stands for one thing, it’s evidence-based policy. We betray this by cowtowing to the “global warming” alarmists who are just looking for an excuse to cram through their socialist agenda with their bulldozer of hope.

“Facts are stubborn things” — Ronald Wilson Reagan

 
 

"Foot and Mouth" only apply's to those who are not with us

Richard Mullins (Diary) Tuesday, June 23rd at 9:49PM EST (link)

Or so they say. There no ways to debate these people at all. It there right your wrong and if you find that there wrong, they will just say that there right anyway.

Richard Phillip Mullins BlogThe Squash Satire SiteNews on Happy Jet Airlines
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Joe Biden is like a Decrepit Park owner with a Meth lab that happens to not only be a dealer but a user.

Let’s Bankrupt the Democratic paty. Make spend all the money to defend thier candidates.

 

So we can have more accident with railroad transportation like the wreck last week that killed 1 in

bobojake (Diary) Tuesday, June 23rd at 10:11PM EST (link)

Rockfort Illinois.
Gasoline is shipped in piplines across the nation but because of the corrosive nature of ethanol all shipments have to be by specially designed and fitted(which cost more) railroad cars equipped to handle a fuel that has the energy of about 75% of gasoline and cost 30% more to make and handle not counting the human hazardous in its transportation across the United States.
Now don’t you think reid, peloski, schummmmmmmer, obama would of been smart enough to think this through before shoving their foney energy bill through Congress last time.
Now we are suppose to believe obama, reid, peloski, dodd, schummmmmmmm mmmmer, waxman, rambo the vulgar , axlehead, kennedy, kerry, and the rest of the bloomin incompetents as they try and shove National Heathcare and Craps and Shove energy TAX on the citizens and hardworking middle class taxpayers of this great Nation.
Tomorrow turn the ABC propaganda machine off and call your Senators and Congressman and remind them they are working for the Citizens/voters and not obama, rambo the vulgar or axlehead.
We will remember in the next election every Senator or Congressman that vote for either National Heathcare or the foney fraudulent CRAPS and SHOVE Carbon TAX that will destroy America.
We will target all Senators and Congressman when election time comes with T-Parties in their DISTRICTS REMINDING VOTERS HOW THEY didn’t give a darn if voters could buy gas to go to work, buy food to feed their families, buy clothes for their children, or pay their rent/mortage because of the CARBON TAX.
Everything will double in price obama how can you even begin to justify such destruction to our economic system. What about you reid? What about you schummmer? what about you peloski??? What about you dodd?? What about you frank??? what about you rangel????

 

How did the agriculture lobby ge to be so damn powerful

kyle8 (Diary) Wednesday, June 24th at 5:50AM EST (link)

Thanks for nothing Bob Dole! More evidence that we do not need any half assed non-conservatives in the Republican party! If you are not a fiscal conservative, get out!

“Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty”
Kyle

 

Nobody factors the retro-fit costs

Achance (Diary) Wednesday, June 24th at 6:24AM EST (link)

for vehicles not designed for ethanol. The stuff EATS hoses and gaskets that weren’t specifically designed for it. I even eats fuel tanks; some vehicles and lots of boats had fiberglass or plastic fuel tanks and there have been many instances of ethanol/gas eating the tanks.

Just the presence of ethanol is a real issue for boats because ethanol absorbs water; let the stuff sit in the tank for a while and it just absorbs water right out of the air and then your engine is trying to burn water. Most boaters are familiar with this in another form because most larger boats have alcohol cookstoves. If you don’t use them a lot, the denatured alcohol (ethanol) absorbs water and when you light your stove you get this sickly yellow, smokey flame. With a stove you can just dump the old alcohol and put in new. It is a lot harder when you have a 1-200 gallon tank of the stuff.

I really do believe though that this is the way that Comrade Obama will take our cars, boats, and even airplanes away. They’ll simply make useable fuel unavailable except at extraordinary expense. You already have to either rebuild the engine or make your own fuel, at great cost, to operate high performance cars from the ’60s and earlier. My boat would need all new fuel lines, fuel pumps and new or completely rebuilt carburetors to run ethanol fuels and I’d have to completely change the way I fuel it and how I keep fuel aboard. Changing out the carbs and fuel pumps would be somewhere between $1-2000 at today’s prices. Should such a change be mandated, the price would skyrocket. Since boats are about the only thing using carburetors anymore, a Holley or Rochester carburetor that was at most a couple of hundred bucks a few years ago, is now close to a thousand bucks new and $250- 300 or more rebuilt, usually badly.

In Vino Veritas

 

While I love

JHancock (Diary) Wednesday, June 24th at 10:17AM EST (link)

To criticize Obama given the chance, but encouraging flex fuel is probably good for national security (as is drilling here), both things will make our vehicle fleet less dependant on the Middle East. Also E85 from corn may have unintended healthcare benefits. Many naysayers claim corn ethanol will raise the price of cheap foodstuffs making the poor have a harder time. But as a medical student I have to wonder if all the government subsidized corn products in cheap foods aren’t contributing to the obesity and diabetes that is endemic in our lower social classes and if diverting subsidized corn to another industry where it won’t cause negative health impacts might not represent a net financial gain for the poorest among us through lower losses to disease and healthcare??

Not saying we actually should do this, just bringing up the point that no-one has even addressed or studied this possibility, or the possibility of not subsidizing corn at all and letting the food industry use corn products by a more natural supply/demand rather than because of subsidies lowering manufacturing costs for industries that use cheap corn products.