A VOLKS WAGEN FOR OUR TIME
I wonder how many people Obama killed yesterday.
Arguably, it was in the tens of thousands.
With one stroke of the presidential pen, surrounded by lackeys on short leashes, he designed the automobile of the future. No more will Detroit make cars according to people’s tastes, needs and market demand.
Now, we will have Obama cars.
And why not. Hitler designed cars, why should our Fuehrer be denied the pleasure?
Without congressional approval, without explaining it to the people, without trying to build public support, Caesar has declared that vehicles will get more gas mileage and give off less carbon dioxide. A man who’s never taken an engineering class has redesigned the American automobile.
And the near-daily assault on our system and liberties continues. The imperial presidency has given us not a king, but a pharaoh, a sun god whose every whim is our command.
But this isn’t about the arrogance of power, this is about how many of us will have to die because of this man’s arrogance of power.
To meet the dictator’s whim, American automobiles will have to be far smaller and lighter. Families accustomed to SUVs and mini-vans will have to crowd into light, compact sardine cans.
Which will spill them like so much produce onto the highway when they wreck.
See, American vehicles get the gas mileage they get because American vehicles are heavy. And they aren’t heavy to make them less fuel efficient, they are heavy to make them safe. All that reinforced steel, the stuff that holds a car together in a wreck, Obama’s formula means that has to go.
Lighter vehicles get better gas mileage. Obama has decreed that we get better gas mileage. That means he has decreed that we drive lighter vehicles.
That means he has decreed that more of us will die on the highways.
As the use of minivans and SUVs went up, the highway mortality rate went down. Why? Because people in minivans and SUVs are safer. Safety is directly proportional to vehicle size. The death rate in small vehicles is higher than the death rate in large vehicles.
And he is making vehicles smaller.
Hopefully it won’t be one of your children who has to be sacrificed for Chancellor Obama’s volks wagen.
But it’s more than dead people. It’s also expense and availability.
Pick-up trucks, for example, will probably become the most-expensive vehicles on the highway. To meet the mileage and emission standards, the most common single vehicle in American today – the pick-up truck – will probably be priced between $75,000 and $100,000, some have estimated.
Every car, the White House says, will probably increase in price something like $1,300. The argument is that that will be made up in savings on gasoline – except that new Democrat policies are expected to dramatically increase the price of gasoline.
And the electricity won’t be cheap, either. With the Caesar, as a candidate, pledging to bankrupt any company that tried to open a coal-fired power plant, and with his administration ruling out nuclear power and canceling federal leases to search for oil and gas, the price of electricity will soar and plugging a car in will cost more than pulling it up to the pump.
Also, you can forget four-wheel drive, all-wheel drive and air conditioning. Those are gas-guzzling luxuries that can’t be accommodated under the new rules.
The federal government has metastasized into something at direct variance with the Constitution, it is a monster that seeks to control every corner of our lives and our economy.
And now the Fuehrer is designing cars.
Maybe we misunderstood the campaign motto. As some have suggested, maybe what he was saying was: Chains you can believe in.
And live to regret.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2009
