RE: [ihc] About those parking brakes .....

[Steven Stegmann <steve.stegmann@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

They'll never give up the visual inspections.  They're
having too much fun.  And that's really what's going
on.  Driving an old car vs the environmental cost of
building a new one is a no-brainer from an
environmental point.  They're just power drunk. 
Absolute power corrupts, absolutely.   Who said that?

Sure sounds like the old Soviet Union to me.

Steve
--- Peter  Shubin <pshubin@domain.elided> wrote:

> I don't think the visual inspections went away in
> California and unless they
> changed the law any vehicle, even the smog exempt
> ones, can be called for a
> smog test including the full visual inspection.  I
> had it happen to a '64
> Bug I had a few years ago.  Found out after the
> whole ordeal with the State
> that any do-gooder can report a car that is
> polluting "too much" and call in
> the license plate number to the State and then they
> come after you.  I tried
> the number tonight and it still connects you to the
> South Coast Air Quality
> Management District.
> 
> All I can say is that modified cars, women, and a
> sore loser's knowledge of
> the smog laws here caused me a lot of grief.
> 
> I feel the need to correct your statement regarding
> the out of state fees.
> To my recollection California never said they were
> "wrong" to charge the
> fees.  The courts ruled the fees unconstitutional
> and ordered the State to
> pay the fees back to the public.  There is a big
> difference.  Our dear
> Legislature would never see a tax on a few to
> "benefit" the many as wrong.
> 
> Someone else mentioned the mileage driven argument
> as to why their Scout
> would not pollute as much as 122 or so of today's
> SUV's.  You need to be
> sent to reeducation camp.  Many years ago I went to
> reeducation camp, sorry,
> I intended to write graduate school, at Cal Poly
> Pomona.  Every year my
> illustrious professors in the College of
> Environmental Design would invite
> one or two of the numerous alumni who worked at the
> SCAQMD to come and talk
> to the College about suburban sprawl, transportation
> planning, smog, and how
> we all had to learn to take the train (the biggest
> irony of the whole thing
> is that the SCAQMD office building sits on top of a
> hill in suburbia with
> only one steep street for access so you must drive
> to get there).  One of
> the arguments they had against old cars is that they
> were pollution machines
> even when sitting still.  The argument is that since
> gasoline evaporates the
> older cars release pollutants from gas tanks,
> carburetors, open element air
> filters, etc. even when they are not running and as
> a result they need to be
> destroyed.  This was around the time that the SCAQMD
> would buy your old car
> for $600, crush it for you to get it off the road,
> and sell pollution
> credits to industrial polluters to cover the money
> they gave to you for your
> car.
> 
> I'm not a scientist and neither were the people who
> I came in contact with
> at the SCAQMD.  I don't know if their statements
> were true but I know that
> it didn't matter.  They "felt" it was important to
> get the old cars off the
> road so it was important to get the old cars off the
> road.  They had the
> influence and the public funding to shape the agenda
> on the issue.  The
> State is on the verge of becoming non compliant
> again or already is non
> compliant again with the requirements of the Federal
> Clean Air Act so the
> State must take steps to fix the problem or else
> risk losing lots of Federal
> highway funds.  This is how the push to rescind the
> rolling 30 year
> exemption started and more attacks on older vehicles
> are yet to come.  I
> would not bet money that my two currently SMOG
> exempt Scouts will be exempt
> in 2007.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 18:35:47 -0600
> From: "Mac McMuffin" <mac@domain.elided>
> Subject: RE: [ihc] About those parking brakes .....
> 
> 
> so are you saying that they can't do those visual
> inspections anymore?  i
> remember them saying the out of state fees were
> wrong and they couldn't do
> that anymore, but i hadn't heard anything about the
> emissions visual
> inspections part.