Detroit beats California

My old home town of Detroit is in hard times. The Bush-Greenspan-Bernanke inflation has cut the dollar’s value by 2/3, bringing back 1970s-style jumps in gas prices, crashing the sales of the gas-guzzlers on which the Big Three auto makers thrived a few years ago.

But Detroit just won a big victory against fruity-tooty, enviro-nutsy California. Out here, our state bureaucrats want all of us to leave our cars powered by internal-combustion engines — mankind’s greatest invention — and either crawl into zero-emission vehicles with the acceleration of a trycicle, or be squeezed into smelly mass-transit that takes three times as long to get anywhere.

The Detroit News reports on the California Air Resources Board (a dictatorial, anti-democratic bureaucracy):

The board will require the automakers to sell a combined 7,500 zero-emission vehicles from 2012 through 2014, a 70 percent cut from a previous mandate of 25,000 vehicles.

About the only way even that reduced requirement will be met is if the automakers build electric cars with 50-mile extension cords.

The technology just isn’t there, especially for batteries.

Take that, California!

In fact, the Declaration of Independence specifically said that all Americans are supposed to drive around in gas-guzzlers, like the 1971 Caddy Eldorado in the picture, on “freeways” with no diamond (socialist) lanes, no tolls, no speed limits, and a Stuckey‘s every 50 miles.

Where’s that in the Declaration, you might ask? It’s part of the “pursuit of happiness” clause.

All these planning boards resemble economic planning under the Soviet Union, in which a “five-year plan” — pyatiletka po russki — was imposed to meet industrial goals. If the goals weren’t met, the “wreckers” were shot.

At least nobody is shot for that in America.

Not yet.