Not so long ago, the Great Satan to the labor movement was Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker — who faces a union-led recall election later this year. This week, if perhaps temporarily, that title is being claimed by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels whose signature Wednesday made Indiana the only right-to-work state in the upper Midwest and one of only two such states in the entire northeast quarter of the nation. (See right-to-work state map here .) Labor unions would like you to think that right-to-work laws outlaw unions. But what they actually do is say that a person can’t be compelled to be a union member or pay union dues in order to hold a job. In other words, right-to-work laws increase the economic liberty of all Americans while threatening the funding sources for union bosses in states where workers are held captive to big labor. This of course threatens Democrats whose life blood is that same union money. Indiana is the 23rd right-to-work state and the first state to adopt a right-to-work law since Oklahoma, which took that step in September, 2001. The industrial, labor-dominated states of the Midwest’s “Rust Belt” such as Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio have for years been losing jobs (and population) to the South, where there are legal protections of workers’ and employers’ freedom. Indiana is aiming to become a Midwest alternative to those southern states. Republican Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore David Long, quoted in the Indianapolis Star , described an Indiana company which was going to move to Alabama but is now staying put, as well as saying that “a company from Michigan was planning to go to a ‘right to work’ state in the South. When they saw what was happening here, (they) invited the state to bid. . . . We are now in consideration for those jobs.” If Indiana can show that its new law is a magnet for jobs, it may turn out to be the first domino to fall across a part of the nation which has been rapidly losing manufacturing jobs while Democrats’ desire to protect union coffers has trumped their desire to promote their citizens’ prosperity. Although less discussed than Indiana’s move, Virginia also struck a blow for public finance rationality and to protect that state’s right-to-work law. With the state’s lieutenant governor casting a tie-breaking vote in the state senate, the legislature passed a bill that
Heather Peters (no relation to this writer) just won her lawsuit against Honda over what she argued were misleading claims about the gas mileage she’d get out of her then-new 2006 Civic hybrid. She was awarded $9,867 in compensation, the maximum amount she could have been awarded in small claims court. Now comes the deluge. Because while Peters’ $9k judgment is small potatoes, the fact that she succeeded could encourage a tsunami of similar court cases that might end up costing Honda (and potentially other hybrid car sellers and so, ultimately, consumers ) a lot more than $9k. As Peters (a lawyer) notes, there are at least 200,000 Honda Civic hybrid owners alone. That’s just one make/model of hybrid. There are at least a dozen different hybrid vehicles on the market — and theoretically, the same case could be made against them, too. But is this Honda’s (and the other car companies’) fault? Or does the fault lie with the federal government? For it is not Honda — or any other automaker — that puts the mileage numbers on the window sticker. It is the federal government. The government — in this case, the EPA — takes a new car, then runs it through its test loop. Mileage figures are posted on the window sticker based on these tests, which are by nature subjective . Hence the caveat, in plain standard English: Your mileage will vary. Note, not may . Will . The exact wording is as follows: “Your actual mileage will vary depending on how you drive and maintain your vehicle [italics added].” And just under the big “best case” mileage numbers, in smaller type, one finds a range of “expected mileage.” As an example, this week I am test-driving a new Fiat 500C. The “best case” number is 32 MPG highway. But underneath this is a range of “expected mileage” between a low of 26 MPG and an even higher high of 38 MPG. In other words, your mileage will vary. Unfortunately for Honda — and potentially every other seller of hybrid cars and perhaps cars , period — there are a lot of people out there who cannot read and comprehend the meaning of plain English and worse, assume everything the government tells them must be true, since it’s the government that’s telling it to them. Thus, they become angry when reality disabuses them — but unfortunately, they channel their anger toward the wrong party. Here is the truth about the Civic hybrid — and all hybrids: If you drive it very gingerly, if you keep it under 50MPH and accelerate very gradually, it is entirely possible to realize the federal government’s publicized “high” MPG figures — and even to exceed them. The problem, of course, is that it is difficult to drive this way if you ever want to get anywhere — and/or have any concern about not driving your fellow drivers to fury by impeding their progress. There is also the problem of conditions. They, too, vary. A Civic hybrid that does not have to ascend 8 percent grades every day, that is not driven at high altitudes (where the air is thinner) or for months on end in 20 degree weather, is going to be easier on gas than a hybrid Civic that is subjected to any one of these conditions, or to all of them. And if, say, you run around on under-inflated tires, or need of a tune-up, then once again, your actual mileage will vary. So, arguably, Peters’ lawsuit was fundamentally wrongheaded — and the judgment, unjust. The court did not even try to determine how she actually drove her car, even though it is a critical piece of evidence. The only question considered was whether her car delivered the advertised mileage — notwithstanding the bold-faced caveat that the advertised mileage is for “comparison purposes only” and that (wait for it) your actual mileage will vary . I’d be worried if I were a major (or minor) automaker because the same engineering-ignorant reasoning used by the court to award Peters her $9k could be used to award many others a lot more than $9k. Peters believes the potential payout could exceed $2 billion — and that’s just Honda . If the other automakers are targeted along similar lines — and remember, legal precedents apply across the board — then the total sum could be many times a mere $2 billion. It could cripple the industry, not just the hybrid vehicle industry. The mileage of every single car on the road will vary, according to all the subjective conditions and use patterns each individual car is subjected to. I test cars for a living and drive a new one every week. I can assure you that the mileage I see varies considerably from that promised by the window sticker. I have pushed it down by 50 percent (drive a car at 90 or 100 MPH and see how much your mileage varies) and — for a change of pace — done everything conceivable to eke as many MPGs out of it as possible by driving as slowly and a gingerly as possible. These are extremes, of course — but the essential point remains: Your mileage will vary. Unfortunately for Honda — and potentially, the entire car industry — it’s a point lost on both Peters and the California courts.
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Honda Hounded
The dirty little secret the left wants everyone to ignore. Planned Parenthood is first and foremost an abortion provider and doesn’t perform mammograms, they only refer women to clinics that actually perform them. In other words, Komen was getting nothing for their money. (LifeNews) — During a conference call with reporters this afternoon, Susan G. Komen
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Note To The Left: Susan G. Komen Stopped Funding Planned Parenthood Because They Do Not Perform Mammograms…
The dirty little secret the left wants everyone to ignore. Planned Parenthood is first and foremost an abortion provider and doesn’t perform mammograms, they only refer women to clinics that actually perform them. In other words, Komen was getting nothing for their money. (LifeNews) — During a conference call with reporters this afternoon, Susan G. Komen
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Note To The Left: Susan G. Komen Stopped Funding Planned Parenthood Because They Do Not Perform Mammograms…
Jeffrey Lord, who has intellectual integrity about equivalent to Bill Clinton’s, has become a purveyor of smear jobs utterly divorced from facts, logic, and decency. After an exchange of about a dozen emails back and forth in which he refused to acknowledge simple facts — not opinions, facts — the time has come to show him up for his growing and despicable hackery. One of Lord’s obsessions these days seems to be the idea that Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post , and formerly of this publication, is “in the tank” for Mitt Romney (oh, really? How about this , Jeff?) and that she has written almost nothing in favor of any real conservative. I noted to him that she has written literally several dozen pieces that are absolutely glowing about Rick Santorum, whom Jeff does indeed accept as a real conservative. Despite easy Google access to the evidence, Jeff continued to refuse to acknowledge this fact, and refused to retract the smears against Rubin (which included smears against Elliott Abrams and others). So, to set the record straight, here are a number of posts Rubin has written that are favorable to Santorum, or on balance critical of Romney, or more favorable of Santorum than of Romney. Here (way back in August) and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here (“Romney’s lack of connection to voters is precisely the opening Santorum can use to wedge himself in between Romney and a conservative base that has not yet embraced Romney wholeheartedly”) and here and here and here and …. oh gosh, I’m tired, but I could go on and on after these 21 I’ve already cited. Why does this matter? Because there’s a sick trend out there, which is to try to read between the lines of a writer’s posts and ascribe motives to them that are different from what they actually write — in other words, to accuse them of deliberate deception, based on nothing other than some extensions of logic (as in: hmmm… if somebody is AGAINST Gingrich, AND it is accepted wisdom that this is a two-man race between Romney and Gingrich, AND if the conventional wisdom is right to the effect that Santorum has no chance and that a late entry has no chance, THEN, ergo, anybody who criticizes Gingrich, even if praising Santorum, must secretly be trying to help Romney). Readers of these columns and blog posts repeatedly accuse me, for instance, of being in the tank for Romney even though they can find not one shred of evidence that I have written in praise of Romney’s substance in the past four years, and even though I have written several full columns and numerous blog posts harshly critical of Romney. In short, everybody’s integrity is made suspect even without a shred of evidence that there is a reason for suspicion. Jeff did this to Rubin, for instance, through his long, rambling, connect-the-invisible-dots attempt to smear Rubin’s integrity by means of some imagined guilt-by-association-by-association-by-association link to Elliott Abrams’ wife. Here’s a suggestion: Let’s discard the idiotic labels (Establishment Romneyite; RINO; Right-Wing-nutso; Neocon), and instead just focus on the substance of people’s records, proposals, and, yes, demonstrable public character. And let’s stop asserting that everbody who opposes one’s own candidate is therefore automatically excluded from the conservative club.
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An Answer to Jeffrey Lord’s Absurd, Speculative, Smear Jobs, Plural
