I’ll say it: were the industrial revolution to try to take place today, we’d all of us still be living in log homes and crapping in ditches.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforced nearly $500,000 in fines and mandatory “environmental projects” on a school bus contractor for “excessive idling,” and as part of its anti-idling campaign to reduce the carbon footprint of school buses waiting to pick up children for their routes.
“As part of a settlement for alleged excessive diesel idling in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Durham School Services will commit to reduce idling from its school bus fleet of 13,900 buses operating in 30 states,” read an EPA press release on Tuesday.
The EPA says an agency inspector two years ago spotted buses of the Durham School Services, the second largest school bus transportation contractor in the country, “idling for extended periods of time” in school lots in New England.
“The inspector observed some buses idling for close to two hours before departing the bus lot to pick up school children,” it said. State rules limit idling to three minutes in Connecticut and five minutes in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where the infractions occurred.
Durham reached a settlement for the violation and agreed to pay $90,000 in penalties. It also agreed to pay for $348,000 worth of environmental projects, including implementing a national training and management program “to prevent excessive idling from its entire fleet of school buses.”
Tribute. Plain and simple. If they were breaking state laws, arrest them and prosecute them, if that’s what you want to do. Declare an “idling emergency” and institute “idling martial law.” Otherwise, this is a kind of PC extortion.
And it’s that simple, no matter what the environmentalists argue. Because watch:
RULES FOR IDLING:
1. No more than 3 minutes in Connecticut
2. No more than 5 minutes in MA and RI
There. That’ll be $348,000.00
Here’s the thing: Once we decided to give an unelected bureaucratic apparatus complete regulatory control of the air, earth, and water, it was only a matter of time before humans (other than those good ones protecting us from ourselves) would be treated as interlopers onto their turf — with rent and tribute and obeisance demanded of us as a condition of existing.
Jesus. This country is so fucking over.
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update: related, have you paid your run-off fee for all your impervious surfacing today, Green Citizen?
The fact that someone could look at the EPA and call it pragmatic is proof in itself that this country, as is, really deserves to be over.
The country or the political class?
Where did the country lose the thread? Or when, if you like, though the question still boils down to why? Har-de-har-har.
It ain’t funny though. Stuff’s gone bad and it seems like we’ve no choice but to look to ourselves as the source.
So while we can admit to an error, it might be best to pin that error like a butterfly on a display board, in order that (should we ever have the opportunity avoid making the same error again) we’ll know it when we encounter it.
EPA tribute collectors needn’t worry about trivial things like starting a diesel engine in the middle of winter. That’s for the little people.
Sdferr, as little as I’ve ever prayed, I pray that there will be history books in the future that marvel at the wisdom of the American people and the brilliance of the Constitution and the fact that the country was able to weather the 100-year liberal putsch and return to its individual-primacy, liberty-loving, republican self.
But I usually only pray when I hallucinate.
Fortunately, this country is still big enough that numerous Galt’s Gulches are feasible, and “you and what army?” won’t always be answered with a rain of gunfire.
EPA tribute collectors needn’t worry about trivial things like starting a diesel engine in the middle of winter.
Which is why Minneapolis school districts wisely converted all their buses to 100% ethanol.
Just wait until these laws are extended to private vehicles. I imagine we won’t have to wait very long.
RI Red, is that then a prayer for a handful of human beings possessing the understanding to write those books at some distant date? But if only a handful in a flood of misunderstanding, to what good, I wonder (much as we may wonder about ourselves in the current political context)?
” Fortunately, this country is still big enough that numerous Galt’s Gulches are feasible, and “you and what army?” won’t always be answered with a rain of gunfire.”
Unfortunately I suspect that a lot of the Galt’s will see the opportunity to set themselves up as feudal lords and those desperately afraid of the leftist super state will allow themselves to be turned into biker legions or serfs for the boss. The left will try to unionize the biker legions and play the new barons off against one another.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
I also wonder, sdferr. Whether the country regains its sanity and forces a Long Retreat Through the Institutions, destroys itself in a paroxysm of entitlement rage, or morphs into something unrecognizable, I hope that there remain people who can live and prosper under our founding principles.
I also hope to be one of those people, but given my advancing years, this better happen tout d’suite.
Ever see what comes out of the exhaust of a cold started truck?
we’d all of us still be living in log homes
Me?
I’ve a mud hut.
Ditto in the ditch, though.
This. And then, in a grand irony, Darwin takes over for a while and those left standing can go back to the beginning and build it again. The trick is to be one of those left standing.
Unless it’s close to a half mil in crispy Benjamins, the EPA just don’t much care.
we’d all of us still be living in log homes
What makes you think we will let you cut down Gaia’s bowered children, filthy Visigoth? You’ll live in a ditch and like it.
Come to think of it our nation is starting to look like a setting for Estragon and Vladimir, with Pozzo paying a visit from DC.
Oscar concurs, RI.
Pleasant as it is however, it ain’t enough.
Palaeo, you have a point about feudalism. There would need to be a large contiguous grouping of Gulches ( say, Texas) for a chance to survive against the legions and remaining liberal leviathan. Call it Galt’s Republic. Or Republic of Texamerica.
Yeah, about that shitting in a ditch fellas. We have LAWS to protect against run-off polluting our lakes and streams.
No shitting allowed.
By DECREE
Pablo, I’m changing my middle name to Darwin.
So Durham will pass this along to the school districts and them to the taxpayers. We see how committed to reducing pollution our betters are. As long as they are paid off it’s problem solved.
“Yeah, about that shitting in a ditch fellas. We have LAWS to protect against run-off polluting our lakes and streams.
No shitting allowed.
By DECREE”
Sure. Tell m’lord’s bikers with the “illegal” grenade machine gun and the scoped assault rifles that. Y’know, the ones you can see. We don’t want any trouble of course. But you know things go sometimes. I wouldn’t put my hands into my pockets if I were you. Oh, we have a predator in the air today too. You probably should have paid the army and airforce a little better.
Speaking of Darwin, CMP is now selling Garands in .308.
this better happen tout d’suite.
Sorry, Red, but I’m pretty sure that’s spelled toot sweet.
This IS America, after all.
Is it? I wonder.
In Atlas Shrugged, as you’ll recall, there were many areas and parts of states and states that rebelled and broke off — and descended into paroxysms of locally-based entitlement rage and disappeared and no one heard from anyone who lived there. It didn’t go well.
paleo @ #2, kinda both. The political class is obviously FUBAR’ed, but how many regular people actually feel any differently? The fact that this, at most, will cause people to shrug is disheartening.
My gulch doesn’t have many entitlement serfs in it. Which is a big part of the reason why I chose it.
Excessive idling? Can I report my county’s food-stamp recipients to the EPA for that?
Shoot, our local food-stamp recipients look like busy little beavers compared to our public servants.
Q: What’s orange and sleeps six? A: A MnDOT truck!
di, I don’t even speak French. But it looked good.
I feel woozy.
Clearly it’s because the buses around here idle excessively, not because I can feel my country swirling around the drain.
Excessive idling? Can I report my county’s food-stamp recipients to the EPA for that?
I was recently filled with the white-hot rage of a thousand suns — or somewhat perturbed, at the very least — when I was stuck in line behind some idiot buying chips and soda (or whatever) with an EBT card. Happens all the time, doesn’t normally bother me. But this time I noticed because she was bad at it. For whatever reason, it took much longer than simply handing the dude a $20. I think she might have had to run two transactions, as some of what she was buying wasn’t EBT-able.
Whatever. The thing that actually pissed me off is that, after wasting my time with her ineptitude, I see her walk out of the store and get into her big, shiny, less-than-5-years-old SUV. I, on the other hand, am driving around in a 24 year old Mazda, not entirely by choice, as you’d imagine. But somehow, I’m expected to help buy her fucking food.
“Sell your goddamned car if you can’t afford to eat, bitch!”
And other unhelpful thoughts.
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Saw a trailer for a new Bobcat Goldthwait film. He’s not dead; I’m as surprised as anyone. Perhaps he is, as well.
Anyway: they bill it as a ‘black comedy’. I say it’s a (semi) rational response to an irrational world, and not a bad exit strategy…
That trailer John Bradley linked was funny as hell. I want to see the movie.
So – exactly how much fuel is saved by being forced to start the engine multiple times, rather than idling? EPA must have those numbers, right?…
Yeah, rhetorical.