smoke-filled rooms

April 2, 2020 3:47 PM

Over the last two years, the Trump administration has sought to undo Obama-era car and truck tailpipe emission regulations, basing their argument on a flawed analysis of U.S. automobile fuel economy standards and 'phantom vehicle miles traveled [VMT]'[PDF].
Gutting fuel economy standards during a pandemic is peak Trump, but then so too is Going Full 'Shock Doctrine' by indefinitely suspending some pollution laws even though air pollution makes respiratory diseases like COVID-19 more dangerous (see Kurt, Zhang and Pinkerton 2016)
posted by the man of twists and turns (16 comments total)

I don’t think I’ve seen here on the blue the analysis that much of what DOPUS45 does is simply try and undo everything the black man did and only because he did it. Over and over we see “Obama-era” or just “Obama” before some bill/policy/etc. and that DOPUS45 is trying to undo it. This is not policy it’s just pure racism. Everything else, including flawed analysis, are just rationalizations for doing it, that is “here are our non-racist reasons for doing something racist” so it doesn’t look as craven and disgusting as it really is. DOPUS45 is a simple man acting out of simple motivations, either “what’s in it for me?” or “keep those non-white people in their place.”
posted by njohnson23 at 4:39 PM on April 2, 2020 [9 favorites]

Is DOPUS45 supposed to be a mash up of "dope" and "45th President of the United States of America"? In any case, just "Trump" is shorter.
posted by sideshow at 4:42 PM on April 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

Somewhere online I saw this referred to as "governing by tantrum". I don't dispute it's racist behavior, but I think on top of that he's got it out for Obama specifically.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:43 PM on April 2, 2020 [7 favorites]

Why? Because Trump is a spiteful bigot who hates Obama because he is a black man. That’s really the whole thing. You can filigree it with neoliberalism if you like, but it’s all raw bigotry in the end.
posted by hilberseimer at 4:56 PM on April 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

Well, that, and he thinks Obama insulted him with malice at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner. We know that Trump doesn't get the concept of banter. He hates it when people joke about him, even when he knows it's coming. There's a couple of clips where I've seen Trump make one of his grimacing smiles at Letterman after Dave said something as a joke about him, but he couldn't get back at Dave unless he'd've bought CBS. Plus, he considered Dave an alpha (white) male that he could respect, so he took it.

But in Trump's mind (because it's so obvious), Obama has no business being an alpha male because he's black—and then to "insult" him in front of important people, and THEY LAUGHED? That was way beyond what Trump could bear, and he started in on the birther stuff not long after. He's a thin-skinned narcissist, and he's willing to destroy this country, if not the world, to "get back" at Obama for a joke that everyone else let go of it moments after it came out of Obama's mouth.
posted by droplet at 5:16 PM on April 2, 2020 [9 favorites]

I don't care why he's doing it, it's obscene regardless of how petty or small his reasons are.
posted by potrzebie at 5:33 PM on April 2, 2020 [7 favorites]

Well, that, and he thinks Obama insulted him with malice at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Nah. He was a leading “birther” as early as 2010.
posted by jmauro at 7:58 PM on April 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

Njohnson23, Trump is absolutely trying to nullify the entire Obama presidency.
posted by SisterHavana at 8:05 PM on April 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

Impeach him again, and keep doing it.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:45 PM on April 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

Rascist edgelords are the new Visigoths
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:52 PM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I started to think about this in the vein of "but don't they realize lax emissions requirements would make it impossible to sell US cars abroad"*, but a quick round of googling told me that 1) the US import a lot more passenger cars and light trucks than they export, and 2) a large and rapidly growing percentage of those passenger cars and light trucks they do export are Teslas, which of course are emission free.

(A more nuanced analysis would probably take into account domestic brands produced in Canada and Mexico, and foreign brands assembled in the US. The latter would maybe still be produced to world emissions standards? And how does the California emissions standards come into play? My understanding is that California has pretty much set the bar for emissions, as it doesn't make much sense to produce a California-only vehicle variant.)

* Since, you know, the all-mighty dollar and all that. Peoples' quality of life be damned...
posted by Harald74 at 12:28 AM on April 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

There is just so much work for the next president and administration. It's insane.
posted by mumimor at 5:58 AM on April 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

Trump acts like a Boer - whoops I spelt that wrong!!!
posted by Burn_IT at 6:10 AM on April 3, 2020

Factories in the US, Europe, and other parts of the world already produce cars in region-specific variants: right vs left hand drive, metric vs. mile gauges, etc.

The more different standards the more complicated the development process is, but they’re already running different engines, transmissions, wheels, etc. down the same line.

I mean, BMW runs the Z4 roadster and the X5 SUV down the same assembly line in South Carolina; variations aren’t that hard to handle.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:36 AM on April 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

Nah. He was a leading “birther” as early as 2010.

Thanks for the correction, jmauro.
posted by droplet at 8:27 AM on April 3, 2020

These air pollution standards kept people out of the hospital. Trump just rolled them back.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:51 PM on April 22, 2020