Re: Ranting about emissions testing

[Ralph Moorhouse <ralphmo@xxxxxxxxxx>]

My $0.02-worth.   My daughter bought a car a few years ago in CA(actually I
bought her the car---you know how it goes with kids!!!!!), a CA spec car
BUT originally sold in Las Vegas, NV.  No problem, no extra fees.  Then she
moved to AZ & registered the car there cause she thought she would stay.
Big mistake.  She didn't stay more than a year & moved back to CA.  Guess
what??  Because the car had originally been sold in NV she had to come up
with the $300 extortion fee - this despite the fact that the car had been
registered in CA for several years.  Something wrong with this picture??

Ralph
Houston, TX

At 07:51 AM 11/11/98 -0800, Jay Mackro wrote:
>At 11:47 PM 11/10/98 -0500, David R Johnson wrote:
>> I do wonder... what you have to do to
>>register a car bought in an emissions-challenged state?  I assume this can be
>>done, since to prohibit it seems a violation of freedom, but what does it 
>take?
>
>Real simple - you pay a higher fee to register your car.  There is some
>added amount - I believe it's about $300 - that supposedly goes to abate
>the additional pollution that your non-Calif. vehicle is going to emit.
>Now, how the State actually uses that $300 (or whatever) to chean up
>your car's pollution is beyond me - maybe they hire someone with a net
>to follow your car, and catch all the bad things coming out of the 
>tailpipe.  Then they mail it back to New Jersey, or wherever your
>car was originally sold. 
>
>And, Gregory Scott wrote:
>>Subject: Emissions
>>
>>The EPA exists to make money.....
>>So here is some solid advice for you folks out there who want to
>>make some large amounts of money-- start building emissions testing
>>machines.  You will be filthy rich in no time.
>
>Not that any Alfa-digest readers would actually stoop to do something
>so low, but, this isn't strictly correct.  If you want to get filthy
>rich from the emissions racket, it would be FAR better to be politicly
>well-connected, and just license emissions testing technology from 
>some dumb engineer.  Heck, the quality of the emissions testing
>equipment is totally irrelevant - all it needs to do is to make sure
>that > X% and < Y% of the vehicles fail - enough to placate the greens,
>and not too many to cause civil unrest among the voters.  There could
>be squirels running around a wheel inside the thing, but as long as
>your consortium is well-placed in Sacramento, the mortgage on your
>mansion in Brentwood will get paid.
>
>The sad thing is that the vast majority of the voters actually believe 
>that this sh*t actually cleans the air!  Anyone with a rudimentary 
>knowledge of economics would grasp that:
>
> - Newer cars are vastly cleaner than older cars, given Federal
>emissions specifications.
> - Additional fees and testing charges are paid by consumers
>from the same funds that would otherwise be available to buy new 
>vehicles, or better maintain their old ones.
> - As the State increases the charge for "emissions" they
>decrease the amount of money that consumers have to spend on
>new cars.   
> - So, consumers have to keep their old, polluting cars on the road  
>longer, in order to pay for legally-mandated emissions testing.
> - This is all simply a revenue transfer scheme, taking money that
>would otherwise go to Detroit (or Tokyo or Milan) and sending it to 
>Sacramento.
>
>Jay Mackro
>no longer living in California
>

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