Ira Ruskin is Mis-informed!!!
April 9th, 2007 | by steve |Okay… we all know California is the most liberal state in the Union. It is. Truly. Undeniable.
Now enter, Ira Ruskin, State Assemblyman from district 21. Check out what this guy wants to do.:
Let me quote:
SACRAMENTO – Assemblymember Ira Ruskin (D-Redwood City) introduced “The Clean Car Discount Act of 2007” (AB 493) to reduce harmful global warming and smog-forming pollution from cars and trucks by establishing an innovative program to make cleaner cars and trucks more affordable. This program is a market-based solution that will provide one time rebates on purchases of new vehicles that are cleaner. The rebates are funded by one-time surcharges on new vehicles with higher emissions of global warming pollution. AB 493 is sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and strongly supported by major environmental and consumer groups.
Huh? So you want to charge a person more for their SUV to give rebates to those who by “earth friendly” cars. Um… how is this not a violation of the 14th Amendment?
Wait there is more!! Look:
The program will have compounding benefits: incentives to consumers will increase demand for low polluting cars; which, in turn, will spur manufacturers to produce more of them.
“Since transportation accounts for over 40 percent of global warming emissions in this state, we need effective tools to avert the worst consequences of climate change now,” Ruskin stated. “California has established itself as a leader on greenhouse gas reduction with the passage of AB 32 (The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006), yet, we cannot meet AB 32’s global warming mandate without addressing emissions from the vehicles we drive.”
The leader of Global Warming Solutions? Spur manufacturers to produce more “eco friendly” vehicles? WTF? Is this guy, high?
First off, it is clear that oil companies are leading the charge in forcing the demand for low emission, high mpg vehicles. All you have to do is go out to the corner and see the price of gas. Wow!! I spent $3.35 per gallon filling up a rental car at the airport. Hello? Newscaster everyday have a lead story talking about the price of gas. Just the other day, I saw a film crew filming people for some high cost fuel vignette at a local station. Wait! Though, is it the gas stations fueling the demand or is it us who keep buying more cars and driving longer and farther.
The second revelation I’d like to point out on this to Ira is LA Freeway traffic. LA Traffic, world renowned for low freeway speeds with seven full lanes of cars going nowhere for hours at a time. Tells me we actually need more freeways or a better system, but really, doesn’t a lower speed cause you to burn more fuel (except in a Prius, I’ll give them that)? And if hundreds of cars are stuck on a 5 mile stretch aren’t creating a massive bubble of CO2.
The third thing I see, and I witnessed this personally is why the hell at 11pm on Easter Sunday was there a freaking traffic jam on the 60? I couldn’t believe it. But I believe I know the cause of the problem, and I am gonna go freakonomics on you and say the problem lies in: Divorce. I could not tell you how many single people were in there cars last night as I pulled out of the airport to my hotel. There were hundreds of cars with one person in each. They couldn’t all be going to work. I suspect on a holiday night like last night there were a lot of single mom’s and dad’s out visiting or coming back from dropping off their kids at their former spouse’s home. It was a mess! And at 11pm… Easter Sunday, you did not see one car in the 24hour car pool lane. What crock! And this guy wants to say those big bad SUV’s are the problem. And Al Gore also told you he invented the internet. (sort of) Anyhow, off the subject, you think Al Gore regrets inventing the internet, which turned many of us into couch potatoes, burning energy and electricity at the soft, warm glow of an LCD monitor. (No one ponders what the internet’s effect has been on the environment other than our savings of paper… as I shred today’s junk mail)
Meanwhile, Ira wants us to believe SUV’s are causing all the ills of the world and should make them harder to get. I should move to back to the Bay Area, run against this guy in 2008 just so I can point out what an ass he is. FYI… he’s in the richest zip codes of the state, if not the planet. This will never pass.
Debate… y’all!!!
6 Responses to “Ira Ruskin is Mis-informed!!!”
By Ron on Apr 9, 2007 | Reply
It’s a fantastic idea. Think of it as a luxury tax. It nudges people in the right direction yet forbids nothing. Bravo.
By tammara on Apr 9, 2007 | Reply
steve,
i’ll not waste a lot of time with your continous preaching of your gas guzzling lifestyle. you have proven yourself immune to enlightenment before, but consider the following-
“It should be clear by now that it was a mistake to build urban freeways. Because they blighted the older neighborhoods that they sliced through and made it easier to commute from remote new suburbs, the freeways encouraged suburban sprawl - so they generated more traffic, which quickly filled the freeways beyond capacity. Freeways that were supposed to handle projected demand for decades became congested in just a few years, because of the traffic that they themselves generated.
This is what transportation planners call “induced demand.” Building freeways encourages people to drive longer distances: in the short run, people begin to drive to regional malls rather than local stores, and in the longer run, they move to lower density neighborhoods where they have to drive further for all their trips.
One study found that, within five years after a major freeway is built in California, 95 percent of the new road capacity fills up with traffic that would not have existed if the freeway had not been built.(Mark Hansen and Yuanlin Huang, “Road Supply and Traffic in Californian Urban Areas.” Transportation Research A, Volume 31, No 3, 1997, pp. 205-218.) Other studies in different places show different levels of induced demand, but they generally agree that, within a few years, more than half of the new capacity fills with traffic that would not have existed if the road had not been built.”
http://www.preservenet.com/freeways/FreewaysInducedReduced.html
there is more where this came from. suffice it to say, that people like you will fill up every available inch of the freeway with gas hogs like hummers no matter if we built the son of a bitch to 50 lanes.
if you want to reduce traffic, reduce roads, and improve mass transit. i don’t expect you to really grasp this simple concept, but there it is.
By Jersey McJones on Apr 10, 2007 | Reply
The states may tax as they please, Steve. Read the constitution before you go making ignorant claims of it. Incentives and disincentives through taxation are a common practice and have been proven proven quite effective over the years.
JMJ