The Los Angeles Times reports:
As state air pollution officials step up inspections of diesel exhaust from big rigs, some of their best allies are truckers themselves.
They are pushing the Air Resources Board to enforce pollution rules more aggressively for trucks in advance of a Jan. 1 deadline.
Truckers are also the No.1 tipsters, placing anonymous calls and sending emails to finger competitors they say are gaining an unfair advantage by not upgrading their engines or installing expensive filters that capture harmful diesel particulates before they are released into the air.
Diesel exhaust is the worst remaining pollution source on roadways. It contains smog-forming nitrogen oxides and fine particles — soot — that lodge deep in the lungs and are linked to lung and heart disease, asthma and cancer. Diesel soot was classified as a toxic air contaminant by the state in 1998.
Air quality officials say it accounts for 85% of Southern California’s cancer risk from air pollution.
It’s been my experience that most anti-big business lefties I know can’t think three steps ahead in a reasoned argument. They’re out there protesting big business while applauding more business regulation. Ignorant that the government is feeding monopolies, while stifling competition. Thus creating the means to perpetuate the very entities they despise.
It’s also too bad so-called legitimate journalists aren’t more interested in telling the public what is good for the economy and therefore the people, instead of perpetuating a socialistic (fascist) economic myth that their leftists professors instilled in them when they were 20 years old.
I think even low-info voters can see the simple cause and effect of regulation. Unfortunately, they seem to need the talking heads on TV to connect the dots. It’s hard to get the message out when the messengers refuse to deliver it.
But it was fine for the EPA to subject ignorant test subjects to PM2.5 of diesel exhaust !
You know, “listening to this bilge is linked to stupidity”. There’s as much evidence for that statement.
The KGB was able to recruit at least one in twenty people in Russia. There was no class, kind, or group of people that wasn’t penetrated.
I don’t think Russia is special in any way. Such is human nature (and not only human: other apes seem to behave in similar ways). Whenever there appears to be a dominant force, many enough among us welcome it and support their own oppression; the rest are blackmailed into it. The remaining few that aren’t become “enemies of the people”.
It will be curious to see whether the famous “checks and balances” can counter this tendency.
http://xkcd.com/1252/
“Air quality officials say it accounts for 85% of Southern California’s cancer risk from air pollution.”
What is that in dog years? I.e., this nebulous statement means nothing. Cancer risk is not cancer. The “risk” is undefined; it could be 85% of 0.1% of 0.1%.
Exactly.
They can afford the regulations more so than their smaller competitors. When the smaller ones are gone, they can raise their prices more to get back some of the costs and pass them on to consumers.
Here we see why the Obama ecomony is characterized by an increasing divergence between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots.’ We are also seeing Stasi-like tactics in which people are encouraged turn against each other (e.g. ratting each other out for rewards) to curry favor from the police establishment (or at least to deflect disfavor).
Hoping they will be eaten last?
Big companies are comfortable with fascist states. Intense regulation creates monopolies; the under capitalized competitors fall by the wayside. And, just as important, no new companies are started.