California has always been a destructive force in American politics. All too often the worst ideas from the farthest Euro-left spectrum have leaked out of the Golden State to blight the rest of America. Just one of those currently destructive ideas is the absurdly stringent fuel economy standards that California has foolishly enacted. Several western states have pegged their standards to California’s and many other states are attempting to do the same. The current effort in Illinois is one of those attempts.

Illinois H.B. 422 (see .pdf of legislation), sponsored by Karen May (D, Highland Park) creates the Illinois Clean Air Act establishing new motor vehicle emission standards based on California’s Low Emission Vehicle Program requirements.

Many in the business community in Illinois oppose this legislation for the unduly stringent requirements it would impose on the state, among other reasons. But a compelling one for me is the simple matter of Illinois allowing its laws to be crafted by Californians. What sense does it make for a state in the central part of the country to allow a state thousands of miles away, one that has vastly different environmental conditions, to write laws that will affect its own citizens? This idea alone is so unAmerican that it boggles the mind.

This country was built on the idea of the various states being controlled by its own citizens making laws and rules based on the peculiar needs of their own region. Georgians take care of Georgia, New Yorkers of New York, and Illinoisans do so for Illinois. Yet, here is Illinois proposing that its citizens should be constricted by laws written in California? To allow one’s rules and laws to be written by citizens of other states is a wholly unAmerican idea. That reason alone should be enough for Illinoisans to dispense with this bill.

But, that philosophical idea is nothing compared to the technical problems with this bill. The wildly stringent rules from California have been panned by nearly every auto manufacturer in the world, both domestic and foreign. Most of them have testified that the rules California enacted are technically impossible to satisfy with current technology.

And, as far as local needs are concerned, these standards will conflict with the long-time effort to encourage Illinois’ ethanol industry making rules already on the books for ethanol production null and void — and if not voided, then at least in direct conflict. In fact, of the 30 models of flex fuel vehicles available in the nation, California’s stringent standards forced auto manufacturers to exclude 11 of them from the California market allowing only 19 to be sold there. If Illinois adopts the California standards, then a large portion of those flex fuel vehicles will also be excluded from the Illinois market severely limiting consumer choice not to mention severely damaging the local ethanol industry that Illinois has spent so much effort to build up. This is one example of why rules written in California are a bad fit for Illinois.

Finally, is this the economic times to institute the sort of regulations that will so hurt car dealers and auto manufacturing

On top of all that, this law is still in the midst of court actions in California, so we aren’t even fully sure if the California LEV rules will stand. Yet, Illinois is surging forward to implement a law that has a dubious chance of even being legal? Why the rush? I have only scratched the surface of this debate, of course.

To learn more about the effort to stop this disastrous law from being imposed by unaccountable Californians on the people of Illinois visit :http://www.nocalevinil.com/.

In the old days, Illinois used to be called “the Sucker State” because of the ubiquitous sucker fish that populated its streams and rivers. Now, it appears that Illinoisans are suckers for a wholly different reason.