LoebA

Automakers: A Pitiful Trio

as a former senior official at the U.S. EPA in a program (to take lead out of gasoline) that succeeded in saving the consumer billions of dollars in waste, in saving children and aging adults from the scourge of IQ deficits and heart attacks, in preventing violence and raising SAT scores, and in averting long-term damage to public health while strengthening national security, I resent ideological people such as yourself that trash the government and its many beneficial programs. moreover, we did all this by introducing an untried market-based trading mechanism that has been copied successfully for CFCs, acid rain, and soon for climate change. it was called the "lead phasedown." by contrast, Atlas Shrugged is fiction, and though it is appealing it is still fiction. that is, someone made it up from her imagination. by contrast, what we did at EPA is fact, and if you study the history of the conflicts between the auto industry and its petroleum allies you will see that laissez-faire is a dangerous ideology when there is no institutional mechanism to offset its extremes. so you folks that trash the government ought to give some thought to how lucky you are that this incredible return on investment was achieved on so little public investment, and then think about how much worse life would have been for you and your own descendants had they lived in the world that would have existed without our efforts. all you are offering against the fact of what actually occurred is fiction. I suggest you stop misleading people with stuff that isn't even factual. you are an ingrate of the first order.