The Justice Department has reportedly launched an antitrust investigation into four automakers that defied the Trump administration in signing a deal with California on vehicle emissions standards.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the situation, said DOJ lawyers are looking at whether Ford Motor, Honda Motor, BMW AG and Volkswagen AG “violated federal competition law by agreeing with each other to follow tailpipe-emissions standards beyond those proposed by the Trump administration.”
The Justice Department has reportedly launched an antitrust investigation into four automakers that defied the Trump administration in signing a deal with California on vehicle emissions standards.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the situation, said DOJ lawyers are looking at whether Ford Motor, Honda Motor, BMW AG and Volkswagen AG “violated federal competition law by agreeing with each other to follow tailpipe-emissions standards beyond those proposed by the Trump administration.”
jfc
Isn’t the principle that states are generally free to impose stricter restrictions than those outlined in federal law?
If not, why hasn’t California been dealing with lawsuits over this issue for decades?
The Justice Department has reportedly launched an antitrust investigation into four automakers that defied the Trump administration in signing a deal with California on vehicle emissions standards.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the situation, said DOJ lawyers are looking at whether Ford Motor, Honda Motor, BMW AG and Volkswagen AG “violated federal competition law by agreeing with each other to follow tailpipe-emissions standards beyond those proposed by the Trump administration.”
jfc
Isn’t the principle that states are generally free to impose stricter restrictions than those outlined in federal law?
If not, why hasn’t California been dealing with lawsuits over this issue for decades?
Clearly a monopoly in the making for all these car makers to agree to some rules to sell cars in what would be the 5th largest country by GDP if it were independent. No reason to try for that market at all.
California has an explicit carve out in the Clean Air Act to be able to make more stringent tailpipe regulations because of its history with smog. It's just wasting lawyers' time.
In a sign of just how far things have pushed, the US Chamber of Commerce is actually pushing for a federal gas tax increase.
I've heard them mentioned before, but know next to nothing about them.
Are they powerful enough domestically among his supporters that Trump will get on board (like Wayne LaPierre can), or we gonna get a reactionary Trump saying "No, we demand a lower federal gas tax!"?
They both fairly powerful and usually hilariously conservative/regressive on fiscal issues. So them pushing for a gas tax increase is probably a game changed
I have to wonder what all factors into their logic on a gas tax increase. I can kind of see the economic argument for it, even if it'll suck for the people on the bottom.
-No doubt a fair number of businesses have assets that are threatened by climate change. A gas tax could force a reduction in fossil fuel use. This probably has a negative impact on the economy, but it does buy more time to either shore up and move stuff and it might even remove the need for either of those two things based on the other impact it could have.
-High fuel prices would make alternative energy more competitive or even cheap than fossil fuels. This can often have an positive impact on the climate change side of things. it also has the net positive of many of them being things we can't run out of, so once the shift is done, you don't have an issue where you suddenly have a mining town with a massive unemployment problem thanks to all the coal being exploited. Not to mention fossil fuels are being phased out, better to be an early adopter and stack claim in the industry, than be a late adopter and having to buy energy and equipment from the early adopters that you might not be able to compete with, if you do try to enter the market.
-Finally, infrastructure is important and it's really better to have it run by the government than some money-grubbing asshole because the privateer will fuck over everyone for a profit, where the government is going to be more incline that it's accessible for the public good. Issue is that the government needs to have a tax revenue in order to fund shit. Last I checked a ton of our infrastructure is in piss poor shape and in need of repairs & upgrades.
Granted this is the US Chamber of Commerce, so they could be pushing for this for really idiotic reasons. One such reason is to stick it to the a ton of oil producing countries or it could be something completely from "WTF is wrong with them."
Isn't the gas tax pretty much ear marked for infrastructure projects? The Chamber of Commerce has a vested interest in our infrastructure not sucking. Especially when they can get folks who touch interstates a couple times a year to subsidies long haul truckers.
In the article they pretty explicitly list it out as an infrastructure thing.
Lawmakers are struggling to find a way to pay for infrastructure improvements, and the fuel tax is regarded as an important source of revenue.
“We need Congress and the president to move past the current dysfunction and agree on federal legislation to modernize and fix our nation’s infrastructure,” said Ed Mortimer, the Chamber’s vice president of transportation and infrastructure.
They both fairly powerful and usually hilariously conservative/regressive on fiscal issues. So them pushing for a gas tax increase is probably a game changed
"Chamber of Commerce" generally means "business owners of X". So you'll have a city one, a state one, a county one, etc.
They all tend to lean conservative, because they're "pro business" in the "low regulations" sense. They also are something of a "local country club" tier in that you can get discounts at CoC businesses if you're a member (Intel has a major sway in my town to where businesses want our business, so we get access to them. So for years I had like...free sodas at Chipotle and stuff).
US CoC is a bit different in that, instead of being affiliated with specific businesses, it's straight up a lobbying group.
California has an explicit carve out in the Clean Air Act to be able to make more stringent tailpipe regulations because of its history with smog. It's just wasting lawyers' time.
Also, since the manufacturers are speaking and complying with state agencies, it is by definition not subject to antitrust.
Just make a real video with some dude hooking up his boat or a bed of gravel and driving it a couple hundred miles and then back home to plug it in.
I guarantee that would sell a lot of vehicles.
None of this silly "pulls a million pounds on a totally level surface with rail cars designed to roll" theatre.
Just use the damn vehicles like a normal human being
+13
Options
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Isn’t this basically showing the electric motor at its most advantageous application? There’s a reason most train locomotives are electric (whether supplied locally via diesel generators or externally), an electric motor can produce massive amounts of torque relative to other propulsion types at low rpm.
Since most people aren’t pulling trains around at 5mph using a pickup this doesn’t matter much in the real world though.
Isn’t this basically showing the electric motor at its most advantageous application? There’s a reason most train locomotives are electric (whether supplied locally via diesel generators or externally).
It's showing how low friction rails are.
The actual tension on the line is like 2000 pounds, if that.
But I really caused this thread to veer off-track, so let's table this for now and continue in the cars thread if we want to.
Isn’t this basically showing the electric motor at its most advantageous application? There’s a reason most train locomotives are electric (whether supplied locally via diesel generators or externally).
It's showing how low friction rails are.
The actual tension on the line is like 2000 pounds, if that.
But I really caused this thread to veer off-track, so let's table this for now and continue in the cars thread if we want to.
Is the possible need of an increase of the federal gas tax rate is because of trumps tax breaks on the wealthy or are the two not connected?
They're unconnected. The Federal gas tax is in a nominal amount $0.184/gallon and has been unchanged since 1993.
Inflation makes it worth about 27% of what it was under Clinton, a generation ago.
+5
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
the fact that no dollar amount in legislation ever gets pegged to inflation is probably the easiest example of the general megalomania and incompetence of your average congresscritter
the fact that no dollar amount in legislation ever gets pegged to inflation is probably the easiest example of the general megalomania and incompetence of your average congresscritter
A number of things are indexed. Income tax brackets, 401(k) limits, social security, being the big ones off the top of my head.
the fact that no dollar amount in legislation ever gets pegged to inflation is probably the easiest example of the general megalomania and incompetence of your average congresscritter
Well Nm got 800m from oil/Ngas tax last year and now is arguing about what to do with it
In essence the state took from the future to save themselves today as they are looking to fix the programs and depts. they broke to do this {like public ed , health and child programs and various infrastructure programs as well as the pipe dream of state retirement programs :rotate:}
This is why I cheer on the coming job apocalypse and economic stuff on the horizon as it will be the nut punch that will down this state. As they just have a façade to keep away investors and other credit agencies.
0
Options
Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
the fact that no dollar amount in legislation ever gets pegged to inflation is probably the easiest example of the general megalomania and incompetence of your average congresscritter
A number of things are indexed. Income tax brackets, 401(k) limits, social security, being the big ones off the top of my head.
I bet the difference between numbers that should be indexed and those that aren't is tremendous
the fact that no dollar amount in legislation ever gets pegged to inflation is probably the easiest example of the general megalomania and incompetence of your average congresscritter
A number of things are indexed. Income tax brackets, 401(k) limits, social security, being the big ones off the top of my head.
I bet the difference between numbers that should be indexed and those that aren't is tremendous
I will end that bet. Federal minimum wage isn't indexed and should be... as of 2014 1.3 million workers made exactly federal minimum, 1.7 million made less out of 80 million hourly workers who the vast majority of would be paid on scale based on the minimum.
As of 2018 these numbers are .5M and 1.7M out of 55 million hourly workers (i have absolutely no clue what changed to cause this my guess is a reclassification to "contractors" is disguising the numbers but its only a guess. State/local minimums increasing would also contribute which might be why the "number under" didn't change).
A decent off the cuff estimation is that this impacts about 25% of all labor in the united states due to carry over effects.
Isn't inflation kind of arbitrary, given how much the relative prices for everything can shift around semi-independently? Is there some sort of unbiased mechanism for formally determining it, or are official inflation statistics just whatever the government decides to put into a report?
Just make a real video with some dude hooking up his boat or a bed of gravel and driving it a couple hundred miles and then back home to plug it in.
I guarantee that would sell a lot of vehicles.
None of this silly "pulls a million pounds on a totally level surface with rail cars designed to roll" theatre.
Just use the damn vehicles like a normal human being
What? No, no. This is exactly the shit you want. Trucks, more then basically any other vehicle, are sold on their penis-substituteability. Trucks are big and manly and tough and powerful and turgid. You need to show electric trucks are just as much about toxic masculinity as gas-powered ones to get people to switch.
Isn't inflation kind of arbitrary, given how much the relative prices for everything can shift around semi-independently? Is there some sort of unbiased mechanism for formally determining it, or are official inflation statistics just whatever the government decides to put into a report?
The Commerce Dept. has a 100+ page PDF explaining exactly how the Consumer Price Index is measured, giving multiple alternative measures of price inflation for different categories of goods, and a justification of why they aggregate the various categories in the way they do. So yes, it's arbitrary in the sense of "there are a whole lot of different things one might be interested in, and the choice of precisely which goods to focus on in which proportions is going to somewhat be a matter of taste and judgment," but it's not arbitrary in the sense of "being pulled out of their asses and being biased to say whatever Commerce wants it to say."
In the CPI, the urban portion of the United States is divided into 38 geographic areas called index areas, and the set of all goods and services purchased by consumers is divided into 211 categories called item strata. This results in 8,018 (38 × 211) item–area combinations.
The CPI is calculated in two stages. The first stage is the calculation of basic indexes, which show the average price change of the items within each of the 8,018 CPI item–area
combinations. For example, the electricity index for the Boston CPI area is a basic index. The weights for the first stage come from the sampling frame for the category in the area. At the second stage, aggregate indexes are produced by averaging across subsets of the 8,018 CPI item–area combinations. The aggregate indexes are the higher level indexes; for example, the all-items index for Boston is an average of all of the area’s 211 basic indexes. Similarly, the aggregate index for electricity is an average of the basic indexes for electricity in each of the 38 index areas. The U.S. city average All-items CPI is an average of all basic indexes. The weights for the second stage are derived from reported expenditures from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE).
Isn't inflation kind of arbitrary, given how much the relative prices for everything can shift around semi-independently? Is there some sort of unbiased mechanism for formally determining it, or are official inflation statistics just whatever the government decides to put into a report?
There's no unbiased way of computing one number for a diverse group of consumers. You want to see how the price of goods people buy has changed but the goods vary wildly between households, and that's just the start of the headache.
Posts
jfc
Isn’t the principle that states are generally free to impose stricter restrictions than those outlined in federal law?
If not, why hasn’t California been dealing with lawsuits over this issue for decades?
You know why
In a sign of just how far things have pushed, the US Chamber of Commerce is actually pushing for a federal gas tax increase.
I've heard them mentioned before, but know next to nothing about them.
Are they powerful enough domestically among his supporters that Trump will get on board (like Wayne LaPierre can), or we gonna get a reactionary Trump saying "No, we demand a lower federal gas tax!"?
so they're probably right for the wrong reasons, but at this point i'll take anything.
-No doubt a fair number of businesses have assets that are threatened by climate change. A gas tax could force a reduction in fossil fuel use. This probably has a negative impact on the economy, but it does buy more time to either shore up and move stuff and it might even remove the need for either of those two things based on the other impact it could have.
-High fuel prices would make alternative energy more competitive or even cheap than fossil fuels. This can often have an positive impact on the climate change side of things. it also has the net positive of many of them being things we can't run out of, so once the shift is done, you don't have an issue where you suddenly have a mining town with a massive unemployment problem thanks to all the coal being exploited. Not to mention fossil fuels are being phased out, better to be an early adopter and stack claim in the industry, than be a late adopter and having to buy energy and equipment from the early adopters that you might not be able to compete with, if you do try to enter the market.
-Finally, infrastructure is important and it's really better to have it run by the government than some money-grubbing asshole because the privateer will fuck over everyone for a profit, where the government is going to be more incline that it's accessible for the public good. Issue is that the government needs to have a tax revenue in order to fund shit. Last I checked a ton of our infrastructure is in piss poor shape and in need of repairs & upgrades.
Granted this is the US Chamber of Commerce, so they could be pushing for this for really idiotic reasons. One such reason is to stick it to the a ton of oil producing countries or it could be something completely from "WTF is wrong with them."
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
"Chamber of Commerce" generally means "business owners of X". So you'll have a city one, a state one, a county one, etc.
They all tend to lean conservative, because they're "pro business" in the "low regulations" sense. They also are something of a "local country club" tier in that you can get discounts at CoC businesses if you're a member (Intel has a major sway in my town to where businesses want our business, so we get access to them. So for years I had like...free sodas at Chipotle and stuff).
US CoC is a bit different in that, instead of being affiliated with specific businesses, it's straight up a lobbying group.
Also, since the manufacturers are speaking and complying with state agencies, it is by definition not subject to antitrust.
This is getting into cars thread territory, but I'm genuinely curious how Ford's EV Trucks end up doing.
Even if it keeps people commuting in trucks, if we can get the truck commuters to swap to EV, that's a huge win.
All electric pickup with good towing, payload and OK range.
I guarantee that would sell a lot of vehicles.
None of this silly "pulls a million pounds on a totally level surface with rail cars designed to roll" theatre.
Just use the damn vehicles like a normal human being
Not good enough for me. I want their giant unnecessary assess off the road and not taking up multiple parking spots everywhere.
Since most people aren’t pulling trains around at 5mph using a pickup this doesn’t matter much in the real world though.
It's showing how low friction rails are.
The actual tension on the line is like 2000 pounds, if that.
But I really caused this thread to veer off-track, so let's table this for now and continue in the cars thread if we want to.
I see what you did there.
They're unconnected. The Federal gas tax is in a nominal amount $0.184/gallon and has been unchanged since 1993.
Inflation makes it worth about 27% of what it was under Clinton, a generation ago.
A number of things are indexed. Income tax brackets, 401(k) limits, social security, being the big ones off the top of my head.
Well Nm got 800m from oil/Ngas tax last year and now is arguing about what to do with it
In essence the state took from the future to save themselves today as they are looking to fix the programs and depts. they broke to do this {like public ed , health and child programs and various infrastructure programs as well as the pipe dream of state retirement programs :rotate:}
This is why I cheer on the coming job apocalypse and economic stuff on the horizon as it will be the nut punch that will down this state. As they just have a façade to keep away investors and other credit agencies.
I bet the difference between numbers that should be indexed and those that aren't is tremendous
I'll take that bet. Let me know what you find.
As of 2018 these numbers are .5M and 1.7M out of 55 million hourly workers (i have absolutely no clue what changed to cause this my guess is a reclassification to "contractors" is disguising the numbers but its only a guess. State/local minimums increasing would also contribute which might be why the "number under" didn't change).
A decent off the cuff estimation is that this impacts about 25% of all labor in the united states due to carry over effects.
What? No, no. This is exactly the shit you want. Trucks, more then basically any other vehicle, are sold on their penis-substituteability. Trucks are big and manly and tough and powerful and turgid. You need to show electric trucks are just as much about toxic masculinity as gas-powered ones to get people to switch.
The Commerce Dept. has a 100+ page PDF explaining exactly how the Consumer Price Index is measured, giving multiple alternative measures of price inflation for different categories of goods, and a justification of why they aggregate the various categories in the way they do. So yes, it's arbitrary in the sense of "there are a whole lot of different things one might be interested in, and the choice of precisely which goods to focus on in which proportions is going to somewhat be a matter of taste and judgment," but it's not arbitrary in the sense of "being pulled out of their asses and being biased to say whatever Commerce wants it to say."
Edit, e.g.:
There's no unbiased way of computing one number for a diverse group of consumers. You want to see how the price of goods people buy has changed but the goods vary wildly between households, and that's just the start of the headache.
Not sarcasm at all. It's how trucks are advertised.