Today's article to get upset about - and what else is the newspaper for? has to be this one:

Panel Tones Down Report on Fuel Economy Increases

Apparently, in the current Bushsphere, panels have to be supersensitive to corporate need and greed. When the Times leaked the story that the Panel on Energy efficiency in Automobiles might actually recommend measures to bring about better fuel economy in the next 4 to 6 years, the panel was "contacted" by concerned automakers. You know how concerned those automakers can get. And hey presto - the measures now have a different time window - just a little nudge. Just 6 to 10 years. Sounds like what happened in the early nineties with the California Air Resources Board, which battled the big three about emissions and lost - but the auto companies are acutely aware that they can't simply crush an emission standard, since that would not look good. Instead, you move the time frame up - it is sort of like Zeno's paradox of the tortoise and the hare.

The hare, here, is a real clean air standard. Let the tortoise represent the auto companies. And let father time be represented by a bunch of greedy s.o.b.'s otherwise known as congressmen, senators, and the president of the united states. The tortoise, in this revised version of the paradox, bribes father time with millions of dollars, and father time obliges by issuing a time edict that makes the hare hop faster and move forward slower. Isn't that a wonderful fairy tale, kids? And it is true.

Ah, and as to the members of the panel who are showing such concern, such touching concern, for the automakers, here's the quote:

"E. William Colglazier, the executive officer of the National Academy of Sciences, said he was confident that the committee would resist all such pressures. Environmentalists have complained that the panel has many engineers linked to the auto industry and no consumer advocates, but Mr. Colglazier said the panel needed technical expertise and was balanced."

The need for technical expertise is important. You have to have that expertise to explain why Ford, for example, needs bigger and heavier platforms to sell bigger and more monstrous SUVs. Sympathetic heads nod on the panel, and everybody goes out for a cigar and a scotch. Shucks, it is a shame, a damned shame, that technologies that were developed, say, ten years ago, using carbon fiber body parts, can't be used to lighten the chassis of these monsters, if they must be produced at all - because, gosh darn it, Detroit just doesn't want to do that. The thing to do when pesky innovators come up with these crazy ideas for reducing car weight and getting better gas mileage is to call upon mysterious technical difficulties, requiring technical expertise by people whose expertise is in designing heavy body, gas guzzling vehicles - and so you see the problem. Now go to sleep.

Here's a nice link for more information about SUVs.
And, as always, I'm the Editor.