With impeachment and betrayal of our allies sucking up most of the news coverage, it’s easy to forget what happens when you hand power to pieces of filth and give them licence to crap all over you on a daily basis. The Trump/Republican maladministration is moving full speed with their destruction of the environment, seemingly determined to make a world in which only the wealthiest and most powerful will be able to thrive inside their gated fortresses.
And now three major automakers, GM, Toyota, and Fiat Chrysler, have thrown in with the monsters on fuel efficiency standards. They have refused to join the four other automakers (Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, and BMW) in the agreement with California to maintain California-level mileage targets despite the Trump/Republican vandalism. The California agreement called for a 3.7 percent yearly increase in fuel efficiency, below the Obama administration standard of 4.7 percent, but way ahead of the current Trump proposal of 1.5 percent. Oh, and that 1.5 percent is being seen as a “concession” on the part of the Republicans.
Rolling back mileage standards is one of the most inexplicably stupid and destructive things the Trump/Republican maladministration has done. Nobody, but nobody, wanted this except for those who profit from fossil fuels and those who just want to stick it to the liberals. Future generations will pay for this idiocy as they struggle to cope with an increasingly uninhabitable world.
Elections matter. We are paying in this and a hundred other ways for our failure to support our party consistently, in every election, at every level of government. If we had not turned the House over to the monsters in 2010, the Senate in 2014, the presidency and the Supreme Court in 2016, and most state legislatures and governorships along the way, what a different world we would be living in now. Will we ever stop obsessing over individual presidential candidates and their “flaws,” or carping about the DNC, and realize that what matters is which party holds the appointment power?
In any case, next time you’re shopping for a car, make it a Ford, Honda, or Volkswagen.