Posted by Tina
Putting government in charge of anything is not only risky, its costly and absolutely, positively stupid. Government is unaccoutable. It doesnt have to bother with small details like will this plan work, is it feasable, or will it be cost effective. It need not worry about pleasing the consumer or satisfying shareholders. (Perhaps most significantly it isn’t required to bend to the will of insane mandates issued from on high) Witness the following story from the Washington Post regarding the BILLIONS of dollars the federal government spent on alternative fuel vehicles to be used by government employees. The program was meant to be a model that would set the standard for the rest of the country. Pressured by environmental groups and threats of lawsuits the lresulting bills put the cart before the horse and created instead an expensive embarrassment that appears to be going nowhere fast.
Problems Plague U.S. Flex-Fuel Fleet, by Kimberly Kindy and Dan Keating
* The federal government has invested billions of dollars over the past 16 years, building a fleet of 112,000 alternative-fuel vehicles to serve as a model for a national movement away from fossil fuels. *** But the costly effort to put more workers into vehicles powered by ethanol and other fuel alternatives has been fraught with problems, many of them caused by buying vehicles before fuel stations were in place to support them, a Washington Post analysis of federal records shows. *** As a result, more than 92 percent of the fuel used in the government’s alternative-fuel fleet continues to be standard gasoline. *** The latest generations of alternative vehicles have compounded the problem. Often, the vehicles come only with larger engines than the ones they replaced in the fleet. Consequently, the federal program — known as EPAct — has sometimes increased gasoline consumption and emission rates, the opposite of what was intended. *** The Post analysis shows that at least 2,341 flex-fuel vehicles were placed in seven states with no E85 stations, and in Puerto Rico, where the situation is the same. *** Hawaii has the greatest share, with more than 1,000 flex-fuel vehicles purchased or leased by various agencies, mostly military. The U.S. Navy tops the list. *** The Navy has more than 670 flex-fuel vehicles on three islands. Not one of the sedans, sport-utility vehicles or trucks has ever operated on E85. *