From a green economy perspective, this legislation could not be more important. The military’s huge demand for energy translates into enormous market pull. By creating a market for biofuels and green technology, the military can spur further research and drive down the price of clean energy to levels that would be competitive with traditional energy sources. According to analysis presented at a congressional briefing on the Defense Department’s Deployment of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, section 526 sends positive signals to the green energy sector by reassuring clean energy producers that their investments will be met with steady demand from the DoD. Such stability is critical for any burgeoning industry.

Read the rest at the Epoch Times.

Federal employees will not be allowed to text while driving, according to an executive order signed Wednesday night by President Obama.

Department of Transportation Secretary Ray H. LaHood on Thursday announced the measures aimed at curbing what he called a deadly epidemic of distracted driving.

The order covers federal employees when they are using government-provided cars or cellphones and when they are using their own phones and cars to conduct government business.

Separately, the federal government plans to ban text messaging by bus drivers and truckers who travel across state lines, and may also preclude them from using cellphones while driving, except in emergencies.

Tragically, distracted driving claims thousands of lives each year. Texting is becoming more and more popular with both teens and adults, and many of those teens who grew up texting are now getting behind the wheel as inexperienced – and distracted – drivers.  

Last year, 5,870 people died and 515,000 were injured nationally in crashes linked to distracted driving – often due to the increasing number of drivers who juggle cell phones, BlackBerries, and other gadgets.

Drivers who talk on cell phones are four times as likely to crash, regardless of whether they’re using a hands-free device, studies show. In fact, a yakking driver is just as much a road hazard as one who is legally drunk. Texting poses even greater risks, since motorists have to take their eyes off the road.

It’s not just cell phones and text messages. The availability and variety of in-car gadgets continues to grow, and with it the potential for distracting drivers long enough to reduce reaction time and rob drivers of that critical second or two that could mean the difference between accident avoidance or tragedy.

Now we’re learning that dealerships who participated and “fronted” the $3500 to $4500 government rebate to the customers are now having trouble getting the actual rebate from the government, causing immediate cash flow problems. They basically sold cars at a loss, intending to “make” their profit from somewhere in the rebate check.

If you remember the program works because the government offers consumers a roughly $4500 dollar rebate.

So every clunker a dealership takes in puts them in the red until the government reimburses them. “What you have is hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting out there waiting for the government to pay,” Speers said.
Sheppard Auto has yet to see any cash, “I’m not concerned,” Speers continued, “I think we will get paid, it’s just going to take longer than we anticipated.”

That is fine for big dealerships like Sheppard Motors and Kendall Auto. Kendall’s CEO said they have been paid for 84 of their clunkers, but they have sold about 600.

For smaller dealerships, keeping up with this could be trouble. “A small dealership would have a tough time continuing with this,” Jeff Shutt the GM of Nissan Lithia in Eugene said.

They are doing alright, despite not getting reimbursed for all their clunkers, but there are rumors in the industry that some small dealerships may have to discontinue the program, if they don’t see some cash fast.

Now dealers are waiting on the mailman, hoping that the check arrives soon enough to pay the bills. Wonderful. Payments are so slow that many dealers are opting-out of the IOU’s for Clunkers program.

What are your thoughts? Did you take advantage of C4C? If so, how did it work out for you?

—

UPDATE: Even more good news over at the LA Examiner…

Natasha Bishop: My understanding of the program is that a customer comes in with their clunker and they hand it over to a dealership for a credit of $2500 to $4500 towards a new car.  Does the customer immediately get to take the new car home?

Megan N: The dealership must release the sold car even if government money has not yet been received.

Natasha Bishop:  Your dealership hands over the new car before any rebate money is seen?

Megan N:  Dealerships are having to front the cost and hope that they will get reimbursed by the government. Many dealerships would like to hold onto the sold car until they receive the government money.

Natasha Bishop:  That seems like a big risk for dealerships.  Why can’t dealerships hold cars?

Megan N:  The government is telling customers to report dealerships as they MUST release the car to the customer at time of purchase.

Natasha Bishop:  How does the dealership get their rebate for each clunker sale?

Megan N:  There are well over 20 pages of paperwork the dealership must fill out for each “Cash for Clunker” sold vehicle.  If there is one mistake on this paperwork the government will deny that dealership the money “rebate” for that sold vehicle. There are NO second chances to re-do this paperwork.

Natasha Bishop:  Sounds like dealerships could potentially lose millions of dollars from this program.  What happens to the clunkers when they are turned over to the dealership?

The mandated “engine destruction procedure” is dangerous – spewing hot oil and coolant into the air around the engine compartment – and in some cases starting fires in the engine compartment. Wait until someone is maimed for life from a steam explosion during this procedure.

The mandated “engine destruction procedure” is filthy – causing a maximum amount of emissions from the engine during the procedure. High temperatures also cause engine coolant (a poison) to boil and sometimes explode from the engine with an uncontrolled low-pressure steam explosion. 

The mandated “engine destruction procedure” is wasteful – all internal engine parts need not be destroyed to render the car “un-sellable”. All that is needed is a simple annotation in the state’s vehicle VIN record that the car is “scrap”, and you can not get a title for that car – no one will buy a car they can not title.  You can then recycle those car parts into the used-car-parts market.

Here’s a YouTube playlist with over 80 Cash-For-Clunkers “Engine Stop” videos:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FEAC2AC1708B4D61

The CARS program effectively buys and destroys your old oil-addicted vehicle, and helps you replace it with a moderately more fuel efficient oil-addicted vehicle – prolonging the overall lifespan of our oil-addicted fleet of vehicles in American garages!

The government jumped too soon… we don’t have viable alternative-fuels established yet to usher in the much anticipated post-petroleum era in transportation… If you are truly trying to fix our problems, you’d have waited to incentivize a change to whatever is “next” – instead of prolonging the history of 100% oil-dependency.

(Of course we could have had at least some choice with FlexFuel, had Congress not failed to mandate this low-cost alternative be built-in to new cars many times over the last few years.) 

Even worse, Congress is so enamoured with the “success” of CARS that they are going to fund it up some more by taking money out for real energy efficiency research programs! 

It boggles my mind really – and I’m a fuel-efficiency nut who spends much of his “free” time promoting fuel efficiency! You’d think I’d love this program… instead I can’t get beyond what and an ugly display of excess it is to needlessly destroy working vehicles that still have value. 

My brain is about to have an  uncontrolled low-pressure steam explosion of it’s own.

The NY Times says Government Can Promote Energy Efficiency – why not start with a program that can actually accomplish a great deal of success w/o a great deal of up-front costs?

Click image to enlarge.

The API report wants to emphasis that oil companies only make a 5.5% margin on each drop of oil the buy, refine, and transport to your local filling station.

More interesting are the taxes; nearly a quarter of the money consumers spend at the pump gets fed back to local, state, and federal governments. Any idea why every administration since the 1970′s oil crisis has so far failed to solve our oil addiction? Anyone?

Enter Iowahawk. He’s a guy with a clue about what it takes to help rescue the American Automotive Industry… take a hint from the booming American Custom Car Industry… all he needs is “unlimited regulatory powers and expense account“.

I realize the [automotive] industry is not suffering from a lack of law professors — it is suffering from a lack of  imagination. They gave us cup holders and electric seat warmers when we wanted angel fur and bubble tops. They pushed micro-clown cars and hybrids when the market was rife for chromed 8-deuce Chrysler Hemis. Well, Bucko, all that outmoded thinking is going to end during the reign of Czar Dave. Saving the American auto industry is going to be a big job, but I won’t be doing it alone. I have already appointed my own shadow Council of Automotive Advisors, a select group of successful auto manufacturers whose qualifications appear after the jump. Many are close personal friends of mine, and I can attest to their patriotism, integrity, ingenuity, and wonderful lack of law degrees.

Not too many gas sipping hybrids on display at the link – but there is just as many customizers (both professional and do-it-yourselfers) who’s passion are cars that squeeze every last tenth-of-a-mile from a gallon of gas.

The point is that we need car guys — who know cars and what makes people love cars, not more lawyers and bureaucrats — saving our auto industry. 

Read the rest of Iowahawk’s argument, with lots more photos of hot cars…

The Obama administration’s new fuel economy standards for 2011 vehicles, the first industry wide increase in miles-per-gallon requirements since the mid-1980s, were challenged in court Thursday by an environmental group, which said the rules are too weak and still don’t consider the impact of emissions on global warming.

The standards, announced last Friday by the Department of Transportation, would boost average fuel economy requirements to 27.3 mpg for all vehicles, up by 2 mpg from 2010 models. Passenger cars would have to reach 30.2 mpg and light trucks 24.1 mpg.

Some environmental groups have said the new standards are a small step in the right direction, but the Center for Biological Diversity said Thursday they’re actually weaker than the requirements that the Bush administration proposed last year for 2011 vehicles…

Our fuel economy standards have been nearly flat since the early 1980′s – while modern engines are more efficient than older models (fuel injection vs. carburetors is a simple example),  cars and trucks have become bigger and more powerful, and actual fuel mileage – miles per gallon – has not increased. 

…The group asked the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to declare that the administration violated a federal law requiring that fuel economy standards be set at the maximum feasible level, in light of current technology, economic impact, and the nation’s need to conserve energy. The same court ruled in a similar lawsuit in 2007 that the Bush administration’s fuel standards for light trucks and SUVs for the 2008 through 2011 model years were invalid…

Given the existing “climate of chaos” gripping the government, it’s unlikely that this appeal will make many ripples. The problem is not enough time to do the various impact studies and set the standards based on those findings – while still  giving the struggling manufacturers time to retool and implement the needed technologies. 

…The administration “cooked the books to conclude the maximum fuel efficiency level the United States can achieve in 2011 is the lowest in the world,” Siegel said.

Critics of Obama’s “Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry” pointed out early that the members of the task force generally seem a little out of touch with the importance of improved fuel economy – another example of this administration’s disappointing “do as I say, not as I do” approach to the subject of energy efficiency.

The vehicles owned by the Obama administration’s auto team were released in a list today by The Detroit News. While Detroit is focusing on the fact that the “Big Three” are underrepresented amongst the auto-owners on the federal task force, I just did some back-of-the-envelope math and made a shocking discovery…The federal task force fails CAFE standards.

I’d like to mention that both the CAFE and EPA ratings have very little to do with _actual_ fuel mileage (fleet or personal), and can be exceeded in nearly any car by anyone taking the initiative to practice simple “eco-driving” techniques.

Obama’s task force could track their actual fuel mileage using their existing cars on a website like FuelClinic [www.fuelclinic.com] and use the eco-driving techniques to show the nation the easily repeatable efficiency improvements _anyone_ can make – and it wouldn’t cost a dime.

Governor Palin writes she is “dismayed that legislation has again been introduced in Congress to prohibit forever oil and gas development in the most promising unexplored petroleum province in North America – the coastal plain of ANWR, in Alaska”…

…”Americans know that gasoline and other refined crude oil products will keep fueling our transportation system for the foreseeable future. Further, the soaring prices of food, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and other products illustrate the importance of petroleum to the health and well-being of America.”

She made the following points, among others…

* Oil from ANWR represents a huge, secure domestic supply that could help satisfy U.S. demand for more than 25 years.

* ANWR sits within a 20 million acre refuge (the size of South Carolina) but thanks to advanced technology like directional drilling, the aggregated drilling footprint would be less than 2,000 acres (about one-quarter the size of Dulles Airport). This is like laying a two-by-three-foot welcome mat on a basketball court.

* Incremental ANWR production would help reduce energy price volatility. Previous price disruptions demonstrate how even relatively low levels of oil production influence world prices.

* Federal revenues from ANWR – cash bids, leases, and oil taxes – would help reduce the multi-trillion dollar national debt, and we’d circulate U.S. petrodollars in our own country instead of continuing to send hundreds of billions of our dollars overseas, creating jobs and stronger economies in other countries.

What do you think:

• Is this political payback time?
• Is banning (forever) drilling in ANWR smart for the country or economy?
• How does banning drilling in ANWR help America?

High gas prices, whether achieved by market forces or by government imposition, encourage fuel economy. In the short term, they simply reduce the amount of driving. In the longer term, they lead to the increased (voluntary) shift to more fuel-efficient cars. They render redundant and unnecessary the absurd CAFE standards–the ever-changing Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations that mandate the fuel efficiency of various car and truck fleets–which introduce terrible distortions into the market. As the consumer market adjusts itself to more fuel-efficient autos, the green car culture of the future that environmentalists are attempting to impose by decree begins to shape itself unmandated. This shift has the collateral environmental effect of reducing pollution and CO2 emissions, an important benefit for those who believe in man-made global warming and a painless bonus for agnostics (like me) who nonetheless believe that the endless pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere cannot be a good thing. 

But how exactly do you convince American’s to accept this new tax – especially now as so many still struggle with job losses, mortgage payments, and a skidding stock market? How about establishing a tax-refund proportional to the amount of tax paid at the gas pump.

The rub, of course, is that this price drop is happening at a time of severe recession. Not only would the cash-strapped consumer rebel against a gas tax. The economic pitfalls would be enormous. At a time when overall consumer demand is shrinking, any tax would further drain the economy of disposable income, decreasing purchasing power just when consumer spending needs to be supported.

What to do? Something radically new. A net-zero gas tax. Not a freestanding gas tax but a swap that couples the tax with an equal payroll tax reduction. A two-part solution that yields the government no net increase in revenue and, more importantly–that is why this proposal is different from others–immediately renders the average gasoline consumer financially whole.

Here is how it works. The simultaneous enactment of two measures: A $1 increase in the federal gasoline tax–together with an immediate $14 a week reduction of the FICA tax. Indeed, that reduction in payroll tax should go into effect the preceding week, so that the upside of the swap (the cash from the payroll tax rebate) is in hand even before the downside (the tax) kicks in.

The math is simple. The average American buys roughly 14 gallons of gasoline a week. The $1 gas tax takes $14 out of his pocket. The reduction in payroll tax puts it right back. The average driver comes out even, and the government makes nothing on the transaction. (There are, of course, more drivers than workers–203 million vs. 163 million. The 10 million unemployed would receive the extra $14 in their unemployment insurance checks. And the elderly who drive–there are 30 million licensed drivers over 65–would receive it with their Social Security payments.)

Essentially it’s a redistribution of tax, from paychecks to gas pumps, giving a real incentive to conserve fuel while keeping the price of crude oil in check – since a hike in crude prices would cause too much pain at the pump, and cut demand like we’ve seen over the past few months.

I am concerned with the mechanics of administering such a tax for those in the “exceptional” areas – I disagree that an average of 14 gallons week is even close to fair, judging from a cusory look thru some of the aggregate data here at FuelClinic. Perhaps we’d build a system like FuelClinic – which tracks actual fuel usage – but in a more verifiable way (this site is basically using the honor system, you can add to it whatever you want, but you’re only hurting your own statistics, not stealing any money from the government.)

So… would you support a gas-tax if it was coupled to a tax credit or some sort?