Trump Official: We're Going To Cut The EPA In Half

[beagle9]

You people blame the rich for everything. You don't want to look at the big picture. Trump has the right message: buy American. How can you have a society with good paying jobs and cheap products? You can't. You have to choose one or the other.

In recent years, we chose cheap products. The cheaper, the better. None of those Walmart shoppers give a rats ass if they are putting Americans out of work through their purchases.

Since the US consumers demand cheap products, American manufacturers have to provide. They do that by getting rid of humans and replacing us with automation, they do that by keeping wages as low as possible, they do that by moving out of a state where they are trapped by a union and go to another state or even another country.

. Consumers can't do anything or choose anything without the rich providing the platform, goods and services recieved. If the rich have created some kind of get filthy rich system that no one can escape, then how does the consumer get blamed for that ?? The whole dam system of things we all have been experiencing was by design. Think tanks created this bull crap, and then it was slowly and precisely implemented over the years. Have to have lived through when America was better, products was better, and then watched as it all went down.

Manufacturers don't call the shots--consumers do. It's not a plot by any stretch of the imagination.

If we consumers decided we wanted more expensive American made products, that's what Walmart and their suppliers will provide. But Walmart became number one because they did sell cheap imported products, and the consumers responded.

Why can't you find many American made products in stores today? Because very few if any shoppers will buy them. Americans don't look at where the product is made, Americans look at price.

You see two 50 foot stands of Christmas lights; one is $5.99 made in China, and the other is $15.99 made in the USA, which strands do you think will sell the most?

. I would buy the $15.99 dollar stand, and this was because I would be after the lights that last 20 years instead of 2 years, but the options are going away because historic American companies found themselves in a situation where they could no longer compete against cheap goods that the beat down low wage Americans could only afford. It was all by design these things have taken place Ray. Not sure how old you are, but I have lived long enough to have seen it all go down. I am a realist Ray, and I know what has happened over time.

So have I, and that's why I'm telling you (like always) it's a consumer controlled market.

If you are around my age, then certainly you remember full service gasoline stations. They guy came out, pumped your gas, checked your oil, checked the tire pressure, filled your windshield washer fluid, took your cash or credit card into the station, and brought back your change or receipt with green stamps.

More realistically: The guy came out, pumped your gas (dribbling the last quart down the side of the car), checked your oil (and sold you an overpriced quart you didn't need), checked the tire pressure (and set all 4 to the incorrect pressure), filled your windshield washer fluid (with water, so it froze solid the next cold night), took your cash or credit card into the station (wrote down the card number to sell), and brought back your change or receipt with green stamps.

So why have they disappeared? Well it started out slow. Gas station owners found it more profitable to keep their mechanics working on the cars instead of pumping gas. So they opened up one island that offered cheaper gasoline if you pumped it yourself. After a while, there were waiting lines at the self-serve pump so they opened up another, then another. Before you know it, all gas stations were self-serve because nobody used the full-service island any longer. Everybody wanted cheaper gas.

Self-service gasoline was not a conspiracy. It was totally consumer driven. It's the same reason discount stores are popping up all over the place. We will buy in bulk if it saves us money. Even today, internet sales are taking over brick and mortar stores and that is a threat. Why? Because of cheaper prices and convenience.

I would willingly pay a premium to pump my own gas. I will not deal with having to watch a stoned high-school dropout like a hawk to make sure he doesn't pump the wrong grade, dribble gas down the car I just spent 2 hours detailing, steal my gas cap, or clone my debit card!

A couple of years ago I went to my KFC store only to find it padlocked. So I traveled to the next nearest one only to find the same thing. Suspicious, I went to the internet to find out what was going on. What I found was that my experience was not just local, it was happening all across the country. KFC's were closing down all over the place. Why? Because KFC never changed. They kept the same quality all these years, but that costs money. Customers were driven to places like Church''s or Popeye's because their chicken is cheaper. Nobody cared about the cheaper quality, only cheaper prices.

Seriously? Dude...KFC "quality" has been rock-bottom for 20+ years, and if anything, their service is even worse

. You have a very daming opinion of your fellow man, and my guess is that you aren't very popular among your family members as well.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Would you support cutting the budget of the FBI? How about the Marshal Service? In fact, why don't we eliminate all federal funding for local law enforcement. No more grants to purchase military equipment to be used on the people. That would sure save some money.

Nope, I doubt you would support those cuts. And I am pretty sure you are a strong supporter of Trump's plans to expand the Border Patrol. In fact, I bet you are all about spending money on the enforcement of the law.

Except when it comes to the environment. And that is a little bothersome. The FBI, the Border Patrol, local cops--they all protect us from criminals. From rapists, murderers, robbers, sexual predators--mostly punk ass individuals that, even on their best day, with the best gun and the highest capacity magazine--might be able to take out a couple dozen of us.

WTF. Ain't you guys got guns? Why you so damn skeered? Hell, I ban guns from my house, they all stay at the family armory, and I ain't skeered. It would take a damn fool to come down in this holler and stir up some shit. In twenty years I can count the times I saw a member of law enforcement down here on one hand.

But the EPA, well they are cops too. But they don't protect us from the little punk ass bitches and their guns, they protect us from the dudes in the suits that are more than willing to dump toxic waste into our water supply, spew nauseous chemicals into our atmosphere, and strip off the tops of our mountains in pursuit of profit. And when those waste ponds burst and flood the valley, when our childhood asthma rates soar, and when cancer clusters pop up around industrial facilities, people don't die by the dozens, they die by the thousands.

Now, the EPA comes down in this holler too. They check the industrial pond not too far over the hill. They check the water, make sure my well is safe. You can defund all the local law enforcement you want, I can handle it. The punk ass bitches know better. But that factory over the hill, owned by some company out of Florida, could give two shits about my well. If nobody is keeping them in line you force me to make sure they don't have the opportunity to go out of line.

Your analogy is flawed. The Constitution charges our representatives with the duty to protect citizens here and abroad. The FBI, CIA, Border Patrol don't create laws against us, they only enforce the ones we have set forth by our law makers.

It's a balancing act really. The cleaner the air and water, the more economic damage we suffer. The less damage we suffer economically, the worse for air and water. You can't have both a good economy and stringent environmental regulations.

I agree that it is a balancing act. But that is precisely why we both need the EPA, and we need to fund it adequately. We are balancing two sides. One, industry, which very structure encourages it to externalize costs whenever possible. The other, the environment. Industry has their leaders, their money, their power, to support their side. Who does the environment have?

And like my well. Don't really have to worry about the neighbor next door poisoning my well. He and his family have to live here. And perhaps my enemy down the road might think about it, but fears enforcement from the sheriff. But that factory, with the owners living far away, they don't give a shit. The only thing, and I mean the only think, keeping them from dumping their waste chemicals directly into the water table, is the EPA. When they no longer fear the EPA they sure as hell won't fear me.

If somebody or some company does something to effect your property or health, get a lawyer and have the case heard in court.

The EPA doesn't balance anything. They are out there to keep their jobs. Sitting back and not creating regulations and fines means we don't need them any longer, so they create all kinds of economically harmful regulations that cost you and I money every single day.

Do this: ask an environmentalist when enough will be enough? What does it take to make them happy and keep their yaps shut? How much money are we really talking about here? I bet you'd be met with a blank stare.

The truth is we've been cleaning up our environment for nearly 50 years now, and the environmentalists are less happy today then before. They will never be happy because the environment is a bottomless money pit. You can take every last US dollar in this country today, and some environmentalists would still be complaining.

The problem with all this environment crap is that the costs of it are intrinsic. You don't even know you're paying them. If I were Trump, I'd take an idea Michelle came up with. She got her hold man to force all restaurants to put calorie count on every item they sell. While the stupid idea never made one fat kid skinny, I think it would be a great idea if we did the same with environmental costs.

When you buy a car, there should be an environmental cost on it telling you you're paying $6,500 for a greener car. If you buy a lawnmower, that has a $75.00 environmental cost. If you buy a jar of pickles at the grocery store, it should have an environmental cost of 20 cents printed right on the jar.

Maybe if people realized what all this environmental crap cost us personally, people would become very disinterested in a greener country.

Spot on. Offhand, the point of diminishing returns is far in the past on cars. I drove a Dodge Magnum for a while. When I had it smog tested, it went on the IM-240 roller test...and blew zero across the board, That's right, zero-no unburned fuel, no carbon monoxide, no nitrogen oxides. The guy testing it was so surprised he ran it again...same result. It was his second zero. (First was a Prius.) The car had 60,000 miles, and there are at least two levels of certification that are CLEANER than my Magnum's Tier II Ultra Low Emission Vehicle!

That was ten years ago...and things are getting TIGHTER? Ridiculous.

They had too many problems using the roller, so now they just plug their tester into your computer to measure how good your car is (or is not) doing.

When they first started with the rollers, they were getting sued because of mishaps. One time the rollers locked and the car when right through the garage door. A couple of times the tester revved up the engine so high that they actually blew the engine in the car. Multiple complaints about the car not running properly after they left the testing station.

The thing is it's a huge waste of money. Even if you don't pass the emissions test, all you have to do is show that you put $250.00 into repairs towards the problem and they let it go at that. I've seen cars drive out of those testing stations smoking like it was on fire.

Then of course it led to multiple scams. People were registering their cars in a relatives name that lived in one of the counties that didn't require testing. There were a couple of places that were changing addresses on the title for the same reason. Garages that were making out phony repair bills for a small price.

So what did this all accomplish? Not a damn thing. Tens of millions of dollars that could have been spent (or saved) for a better use. These environmentalists will be the end of this country yet.

My Caddy and my wife's Buick both had to go on the rollers...both being pre-OBD2 (1979 & 1986, respectively), they COULDN'T just do the scan. Aside from my having to back the giant Caddy into the bay (only about 6" of clearance on each side), no problems. The Caddy passed easily, less than 20% of allowable emissions. Not bad for a 542 inch stroker engine and 3x the factory power.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

More realistically: The guy came out, pumped your gas (dribbling the last quart down the side of the car), checked your oil (and sold you an overpriced quart you didn't need), checked the tire pressure (and set all 4 to the incorrect pressure), filled your windshield washer fluid (with water, so it froze solid the next cold night), took your cash or credit card into the station (wrote down the card number to sell), and brought back your change or receipt with green stamps.

Really? I never experienced that. In fact a few times, the mechanic warned me about things that I didn't know about. I loved full serve islands.

I would willingly pay a premium to pump my own gas. I will not deal with having to watch a stoned high-school dropout like a hawk to make sure he doesn't pump the wrong grade, dribble gas down the car I just spent 2 hours detailing, steal my gas cap, or clone my debit card!

Well I have some bad news for you, and that is credit card scammers use the credit card machines on the pump to steal your number. In fact we just had one here a couple of months ago. The maintenance guy came out to service a pump and found the credit card scanner inside of the pump.

Cuyahoga County Department of Consumer Affairs Issues Credit Card Skimmer Alert - Office of the Cuyahoga County Executive

Seriously? Dude...KFC "quality" has been rock-bottom for 20+ years, and if anything, their service is even worse

Nope, they taste the same as they did 30 years ago. Unlike most fast food places that kept reducing quality to keep prices low, KFC kept their same quality all of these years. But again, you have to pay for it.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Your analogy is flawed. The Constitution charges our representatives with the duty to protect citizens here and abroad. The FBI, CIA, Border Patrol don't create laws against us, they only enforce the ones we have set forth by our law makers.

It's a balancing act really. The cleaner the air and water, the more economic damage we suffer. The less damage we suffer economically, the worse for air and water. You can't have both a good economy and stringent environmental regulations.

I agree that it is a balancing act. But that is precisely why we both need the EPA, and we need to fund it adequately. We are balancing two sides. One, industry, which very structure encourages it to externalize costs whenever possible. The other, the environment. Industry has their leaders, their money, their power, to support their side. Who does the environment have?

And like my well. Don't really have to worry about the neighbor next door poisoning my well. He and his family have to live here. And perhaps my enemy down the road might think about it, but fears enforcement from the sheriff. But that factory, with the owners living far away, they don't give a shit. The only thing, and I mean the only think, keeping them from dumping their waste chemicals directly into the water table, is the EPA. When they no longer fear the EPA they sure as hell won't fear me.

If somebody or some company does something to effect your property or health, get a lawyer and have the case heard in court.

The EPA doesn't balance anything. They are out there to keep their jobs. Sitting back and not creating regulations and fines means we don't need them any longer, so they create all kinds of economically harmful regulations that cost you and I money every single day.

Do this: ask an environmentalist when enough will be enough? What does it take to make them happy and keep their yaps shut? How much money are we really talking about here? I bet you'd be met with a blank stare.

The truth is we've been cleaning up our environment for nearly 50 years now, and the environmentalists are less happy today then before. They will never be happy because the environment is a bottomless money pit. You can take every last US dollar in this country today, and some environmentalists would still be complaining.

The problem with all this environment crap is that the costs of it are intrinsic. You don't even know you're paying them. If I were Trump, I'd take an idea Michelle came up with. She got her hold man to force all restaurants to put calorie count on every item they sell. While the stupid idea never made one fat kid skinny, I think it would be a great idea if we did the same with environmental costs.

When you buy a car, there should be an environmental cost on it telling you you're paying $6,500 for a greener car. If you buy a lawnmower, that has a $75.00 environmental cost. If you buy a jar of pickles at the grocery store, it should have an environmental cost of 20 cents printed right on the jar.

Maybe if people realized what all this environmental crap cost us personally, people would become very disinterested in a greener country.

Spot on. Offhand, the point of diminishing returns is far in the past on cars. I drove a Dodge Magnum for a while. When I had it smog tested, it went on the IM-240 roller test...and blew zero across the board, That's right, zero-no unburned fuel, no carbon monoxide, no nitrogen oxides. The guy testing it was so surprised he ran it again...same result. It was his second zero. (First was a Prius.) The car had 60,000 miles, and there are at least two levels of certification that are CLEANER than my Magnum's Tier II Ultra Low Emission Vehicle!

That was ten years ago...and things are getting TIGHTER? Ridiculous.

They had too many problems using the roller, so now they just plug their tester into your computer to measure how good your car is (or is not) doing.

When they first started with the rollers, they were getting sued because of mishaps. One time the rollers locked and the car when right through the garage door. A couple of times the tester revved up the engine so high that they actually blew the engine in the car. Multiple complaints about the car not running properly after they left the testing station.

The thing is it's a huge waste of money. Even if you don't pass the emissions test, all you have to do is show that you put $250.00 into repairs towards the problem and they let it go at that. I've seen cars drive out of those testing stations smoking like it was on fire.

Then of course it led to multiple scams. People were registering their cars in a relatives name that lived in one of the counties that didn't require testing. There were a couple of places that were changing addresses on the title for the same reason. Garages that were making out phony repair bills for a small price.

So what did this all accomplish? Not a damn thing. Tens of millions of dollars that could have been spent (or saved) for a better use. These environmentalists will be the end of this country yet.

My Caddy and my wife's Buick both had to go on the rollers...both being pre-OBD2 (1979 & 1986, respectively), they COULDN'T just do the scan. Aside from my having to back the giant Caddy into the bay (only about 6" of clearance on each side), no problems. The Caddy passed easily, less than 20% of allowable emissions. Not bad for a 542 inch stroker engine and 3x the factory power.

The rollers are still there so perhaps they still use them for older model cars. But the last few times I went there, they just plugged the cars into the module to read what it said. The only other thing they do is use a mirror to look under the car to see if there is a converter on it or not.

 

[Jarlaxle]

We have a truck driving hauler company about 40 miles away. Always have adds in the paper looking for workers or drivers. They must be a very bad place to work as they can't find workers.

More likely, they have no trouble finding warm bodies. They just have trouble finding people willing to WORK! My company recently hired four drivers...and it took more than thirty interviews, and about fifteen people who left after anywhere from a few days to a month. That is in addition to the half dozen drivers failing road tests! (One of them-with a class A license and 6 years driving semis-could not drive a standard shift!)

. I know of a company that is going through the same things. In fact the owners are so aggravated that they are trying to sell it now. Simplify the dam thing again, but just make sure that no one drives over 10 hours total, and them being on duty in total for no more than 12 hours to end the day. Make sure people are healthy enough to drive of course, but go back to using common sense on that one also. A doctor dealing with a Truck driver over 55 years old, should also be allowed to semi-retire that driver if his or her health becomes to frail to be safe driving a truck any longer. The reason I say this is because most drivers will have been in the industry most of their lives, and don't no much of anything else, and their health at this point makes them a high risk for other companies to hire them.

My uncle still has a valid medical card (with no restrictions, 2-year renewal), though he's retired. He's in his 60's.

I worked with a dude that was threading 45' coach buses through Boston and Manhattan in his 80's. The only restriction on his medical card was needing glasses and an annual renewal.

 

[Jarlaxle]

. There needs to be a mandatory class that all new license seekers should have to take as pertaining to big trucks. A simulator should also be part of the class. If you can't pass the class you don't get your license. These things you speak of are very important.

LOL, would you like to try and take the test for a CDL Class A license?

If you can pass that test, then you're perfectly qualified to drive. Driving isn't about class time, driving is about experience. I don't care if you take a six month class to drive a truck, it's something you actually have to do to get good at.

In my company, my boss got sick of trying to find Class A drivers, so now he's promoting from within. He offers our straight truck drivers the opportunity to upgrade to drive tractor--trailer. So far it's working pretty well. But even though they drive straight trucks now, they have to take the test all over again for tractor-trailer. Everyone of them failed the first time and had to go back to get tested again. One guy that did it is a very good tractor-trailer driver given his experience, and even he failed the first time.

The real problem we have today are foreigners. Some of them can't speak or read English. I have no idea how they find places or get around. They are terrible drivers to boot. Every couple of months, some foreigner runs up to me and says "Mister, mister! Please back in trailer for me, I don't know how!" I have no idea how these people get a license to drive in this country. I suspect we honor CDL"s from Mexico or Canada, and they are driving on our roads today.

. I know what your mean about foreigner drivers that are being hired not to fill badly needed driver positions, but mainly it is because corporations won't have to pay American workers good money to do the job. Every dam excuse in the book has been used to replace Americans with cheap labor from abroad. There should be huge trailer parking facilities on the border, where as goods coming from Mexico are brought to the border, but then the load is transferred at this point to American drivers to finish the trip of the goods destination. Vice-a-versa.

As usual, it's all politics. If we did that, then other countries would demand we do the same by halting deliveries to Canada and Mexico.

It's not a bad paying job depending on what you do and where you go. Some over the road jobs pay close to six figures and local jobs in the 50K a year range plus benefits. Overtime? Make even more.

And many (even MOST) OTR jobs pay peanuts, and about the only way drivers can scrape by if by running illegally-often being forced to do so by their companies.

If we could halt all immigration to this country including work Visa's, the pay would have to increase because these sleaze ball places would have no choice but to offer more. If nobody will work for you, then you close down.

Another thing would be getting government off of our ass and make things fair for us. When you get a CDL, you lose some of your constitutional rights and there's nothing you can do about it.

Bullshit.

1st is being addressed by electronic logging, but this imho shouldn't be the case with all trucking companies. Dump truck, cement mixers and local delivery companies of all sorts that run the 100 mile air bus radius should be excluded. What is bull crap ?

Most of those will not hire people without OTR experience...and many local jobs (especially for new drivers) ALSO pay peanuts. (Offhand, trash companies frequently are <$15/hour.)

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

. There needs to be a mandatory class that all new license seekers should have to take as pertaining to big trucks. A simulator should also be part of the class. If you can't pass the class you don't get your license. These things you speak of are very important.

LOL, would you like to try and take the test for a CDL Class A license?

If you can pass that test, then you're perfectly qualified to drive. Driving isn't about class time, driving is about experience. I don't care if you take a six month class to drive a truck, it's something you actually have to do to get good at.

In my company, my boss got sick of trying to find Class A drivers, so now he's promoting from within. He offers our straight truck drivers the opportunity to upgrade to drive tractor--trailer. So far it's working pretty well. But even though they drive straight trucks now, they have to take the test all over again for tractor-trailer. Everyone of them failed the first time and had to go back to get tested again. One guy that did it is a very good tractor-trailer driver given his experience, and even he failed the first time.

The real problem we have today are foreigners. Some of them can't speak or read English. I have no idea how they find places or get around. They are terrible drivers to boot. Every couple of months, some foreigner runs up to me and says "Mister, mister! Please back in trailer for me, I don't know how!" I have no idea how these people get a license to drive in this country. I suspect we honor CDL"s from Mexico or Canada, and they are driving on our roads today.

. I know what your mean about foreigner drivers that are being hired not to fill badly needed driver positions, but mainly it is because corporations won't have to pay American workers good money to do the job. Every dam excuse in the book has been used to replace Americans with cheap labor from abroad. There should be huge trailer parking facilities on the border, where as goods coming from Mexico are brought to the border, but then the load is transferred at this point to American drivers to finish the trip of the goods destination. Vice-a-versa.

As usual, it's all politics. If we did that, then other countries would demand we do the same by halting deliveries to Canada and Mexico.

It's not a bad paying job depending on what you do and where you go. Some over the road jobs pay close to six figures and local jobs in the 50K a year range plus benefits. Overtime? Make even more.

And many (even MOST) OTR jobs pay peanuts, and about the only way drivers can scrape by if by running illegally-often being forced to do so by their companies.

If we could halt all immigration to this country including work Visa's, the pay would have to increase because these sleaze ball places would have no choice but to offer more. If nobody will work for you, then you close down.

Another thing would be getting government off of our ass and make things fair for us. When you get a CDL, you lose some of your constitutional rights and there's nothing you can do about it.

Bullshit.

1st is being addressed by electronic logging, but this imho shouldn't be the case with all trucking companies. Dump truck, cement mixers and local delivery companies of all sorts that run the 100 mile air bus radius should be excluded. What is bull crap ?

They are excluded. I don't have to use a log book unless I'm over 100 air miles from our terminal.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

LOL, would you like to try and take the test for a CDL Class A license?

If you can pass that test, then you're perfectly qualified to drive. Driving isn't about class time, driving is about experience. I don't care if you take a six month class to drive a truck, it's something you actually have to do to get good at.

In my company, my boss got sick of trying to find Class A drivers, so now he's promoting from within. He offers our straight truck drivers the opportunity to upgrade to drive tractor--trailer. So far it's working pretty well. But even though they drive straight trucks now, they have to take the test all over again for tractor-trailer. Everyone of them failed the first time and had to go back to get tested again. One guy that did it is a very good tractor-trailer driver given his experience, and even he failed the first time.

The real problem we have today are foreigners. Some of them can't speak or read English. I have no idea how they find places or get around. They are terrible drivers to boot. Every couple of months, some foreigner runs up to me and says "Mister, mister! Please back in trailer for me, I don't know how!" I have no idea how these people get a license to drive in this country. I suspect we honor CDL"s from Mexico or Canada, and they are driving on our roads today.

. I know what your mean about foreigner drivers that are being hired not to fill badly needed driver positions, but mainly it is because corporations won't have to pay American workers good money to do the job. Every dam excuse in the book has been used to replace Americans with cheap labor from abroad. There should be huge trailer parking facilities on the border, where as goods coming from Mexico are brought to the border, but then the load is transferred at this point to American drivers to finish the trip of the goods destination. Vice-a-versa.

As usual, it's all politics. If we did that, then other countries would demand we do the same by halting deliveries to Canada and Mexico.

It's not a bad paying job depending on what you do and where you go. Some over the road jobs pay close to six figures and local jobs in the 50K a year range plus benefits. Overtime? Make even more.

And many (even MOST) OTR jobs pay peanuts, and about the only way drivers can scrape by if by running illegally-often being forced to do so by their companies.

If we could halt all immigration to this country including work Visa's, the pay would have to increase because these sleaze ball places would have no choice but to offer more. If nobody will work for you, then you close down.

Another thing would be getting government off of our ass and make things fair for us. When you get a CDL, you lose some of your constitutional rights and there's nothing you can do about it.

Bullshit.

1st is being addressed by electronic logging, but this imho shouldn't be the case with all trucking companies. Dump truck, cement mixers and local delivery companies of all sorts that run the 100 mile air bus radius should be excluded. What is bull crap ?

Most of those will not hire people without OTR experience...and many local jobs (especially for new drivers) ALSO pay peanuts. (Offhand, trash companies frequently are <$15/hour.)

If you don't have experience, you will make lower wages for a while. That's because insurance is so expensive for your employer for the first couple of years. After that, his rates go down and you can then make better money.

 

[Jarlaxle]

. Consumers can't do anything or choose anything without the rich providing the platform, goods and services recieved. If the rich have created some kind of get filthy rich system that no one can escape, then how does the consumer get blamed for that ?? The whole dam system of things we all have been experiencing was by design. Think tanks created this bull crap, and then it was slowly and precisely implemented over the years. Have to have lived through when America was better, products was better, and then watched as it all went down.

Manufacturers don't call the shots--consumers do. It's not a plot by any stretch of the imagination.

If we consumers decided we wanted more expensive American made products, that's what Walmart and their suppliers will provide. But Walmart became number one because they did sell cheap imported products, and the consumers responded.

Why can't you find many American made products in stores today? Because very few if any shoppers will buy them. Americans don't look at where the product is made, Americans look at price.

You see two 50 foot stands of Christmas lights; one is $5.99 made in China, and the other is $15.99 made in the USA, which strands do you think will sell the most?

. I would buy the $15.99 dollar stand, and this was because I would be after the lights that last 20 years instead of 2 years, but the options are going away because historic American companies found themselves in a situation where they could no longer compete against cheap goods that the beat down low wage Americans could only afford. It was all by design these things have taken place Ray. Not sure how old you are, but I have lived long enough to have seen it all go down. I am a realist Ray, and I know what has happened over time.

So have I, and that's why I'm telling you (like always) it's a consumer controlled market.

If you are around my age, then certainly you remember full service gasoline stations. They guy came out, pumped your gas, checked your oil, checked the tire pressure, filled your windshield washer fluid, took your cash or credit card into the station, and brought back your change or receipt with green stamps.

More realistically: The guy came out, pumped your gas (dribbling the last quart down the side of the car), checked your oil (and sold you an overpriced quart you didn't need), checked the tire pressure (and set all 4 to the incorrect pressure), filled your windshield washer fluid (with water, so it froze solid the next cold night), took your cash or credit card into the station (wrote down the card number to sell), and brought back your change or receipt with green stamps.

So why have they disappeared? Well it started out slow. Gas station owners found it more profitable to keep their mechanics working on the cars instead of pumping gas. So they opened up one island that offered cheaper gasoline if you pumped it yourself. After a while, there were waiting lines at the self-serve pump so they opened up another, then another. Before you know it, all gas stations were self-serve because nobody used the full-service island any longer. Everybody wanted cheaper gas.

Self-service gasoline was not a conspiracy. It was totally consumer driven. It's the same reason discount stores are popping up all over the place. We will buy in bulk if it saves us money. Even today, internet sales are taking over brick and mortar stores and that is a threat. Why? Because of cheaper prices and convenience.

I would willingly pay a premium to pump my own gas. I will not deal with having to watch a stoned high-school dropout like a hawk to make sure he doesn't pump the wrong grade, dribble gas down the car I just spent 2 hours detailing, steal my gas cap, or clone my debit card!

A couple of years ago I went to my KFC store only to find it padlocked. So I traveled to the next nearest one only to find the same thing. Suspicious, I went to the internet to find out what was going on. What I found was that my experience was not just local, it was happening all across the country. KFC's were closing down all over the place. Why? Because KFC never changed. They kept the same quality all these years, but that costs money. Customers were driven to places like Church''s or Popeye's because their chicken is cheaper. Nobody cared about the cheaper quality, only cheaper prices.

Seriously? Dude...KFC "quality" has been rock-bottom for 20+ years, and if anything, their service is even worse

. You have a very daming opinion of your fellow man, and my guess is that you aren't very popular among your family members as well.

I realized in junior high school that most of the human race are worthless.

Everything I mentioned happened the one year (2006) the Hot Rod Power Tour went to New Jersey-a state that thinks its citizens are too stupid to operate a gas pump. One guy nearly lost an engine when the pump jackass filled the tank with regular instead of premium. Another guy wound up with a 4" gouge (through eight coats of paint and primer to bare metal) in the quarter panel of the car he had just painted--which was impossible-to-match Candy Apple Red. (He wound up repainting the whole car, costing almost $5000.)

 

[Jarlaxle]

More realistically: The guy came out, pumped your gas (dribbling the last quart down the side of the car), checked your oil (and sold you an overpriced quart you didn't need), checked the tire pressure (and set all 4 to the incorrect pressure), filled your windshield washer fluid (with water, so it froze solid the next cold night), took your cash or credit card into the station (wrote down the card number to sell), and brought back your change or receipt with green stamps.

Really? I never experienced that. In fact a few times, the mechanic warned me about things that I didn't know about. I loved full serve islands.

I would willingly pay a premium to pump my own gas. I will not deal with having to watch a stoned high-school dropout like a hawk to make sure he doesn't pump the wrong grade, dribble gas down the car I just spent 2 hours detailing, steal my gas cap, or clone my debit card!

Well I have some bad news for you, and that is credit card scammers use the credit card machines on the pump to steal your number. In fact we just had one here a couple of months ago. The maintenance guy came out to service a pump and found the credit card scanner inside of the pump.

Cuyahoga County Department of Consumer Affairs Issues Credit Card Skimmer Alert - Office of the Cuyahoga County Executive

Which is why I gas up at places with tamper seals on their pumps. If the seal is broken, the pump gets shut down and someone comes out-that day-to check it.

Seriously? Dude...KFC "quality" has been rock-bottom for 20+ years, and if anything, their service is even worse

Nope, they taste the same as they did 30 years ago. Unlike most fast food places that kept reducing quality to keep prices low, KFC kept their same quality all of these years. But again, you have to pay for it.

Yes, their quality is steady: it has SUCKED for thirty years.

 

[beagle9]

More realistically: The guy came out, pumped your gas (dribbling the last quart down the side of the car), checked your oil (and sold you an overpriced quart you didn't need), checked the tire pressure (and set all 4 to the incorrect pressure), filled your windshield washer fluid (with water, so it froze solid the next cold night), took your cash or credit card into the station (wrote down the card number to sell), and brought back your change or receipt with green stamps.

Really? I never experienced that. In fact a few times, the mechanic warned me about things that I didn't know about. I loved full serve islands.

I would willingly pay a premium to pump my own gas. I will not deal with having to watch a stoned high-school dropout like a hawk to make sure he doesn't pump the wrong grade, dribble gas down the car I just spent 2 hours detailing, steal my gas cap, or clone my debit card!

Well I have some bad news for you, and that is credit card scammers use the credit card machines on the pump to steal your number. In fact we just had one here a couple of months ago. The maintenance guy came out to service a pump and found the credit card scanner inside of the pump.

Cuyahoga County Department of Consumer Affairs Issues Credit Card Skimmer Alert - Office of the Cuyahoga County Executive

Seriously? Dude...KFC "quality" has been rock-bottom for 20+ years, and if anything, their service is even worse

Nope, they taste the same as they did 30 years ago. Unlike most fast food places that kept reducing quality to keep prices low, KFC kept their same quality all of these years. But again, you have to pay for it.

. Hmmm, my credit card has insurance that keeps me from worrying about scammers doing anything.

 

[beagle9]

We have a truck driving hauler company about 40 miles away. Always have adds in the paper looking for workers or drivers. They must be a very bad place to work as they can't find workers.

More likely, they have no trouble finding warm bodies. They just have trouble finding people willing to WORK! My company recently hired four drivers...and it took more than thirty interviews, and about fifteen people who left after anywhere from a few days to a month. That is in addition to the half dozen drivers failing road tests! (One of them-with a class A license and 6 years driving semis-could not drive a standard shift!)

. I know of a company that is going through the same things. In fact the owners are so aggravated that they are trying to sell it now. Simplify the dam thing again, but just make sure that no one drives over 10 hours total, and them being on duty in total for no more than 12 hours to end the day. Make sure people are healthy enough to drive of course, but go back to using common sense on that one also. A doctor dealing with a Truck driver over 55 years old, should also be allowed to semi-retire that driver if his or her health becomes to frail to be safe driving a truck any longer. The reason I say this is because most drivers will have been in the industry most of their lives, and don't no much of anything else, and their health at this point makes them a high risk for other companies to hire them.

My uncle still has a valid medical card (with no restrictions, 2-year renewal), though he's retired. He's in his 60's.

I worked with a dude that was threading 45' coach buses through Boston and Manhattan in his 80's. The only restriction on his medical card was needing glasses and an annual renewal.

. Your point being ?? Does this address the problem of the industry suffering from the lack of certified or certifiable drivers overall ??

 

[Winston]

Ohio is not forced to use E-check. They can ditch the program, they will just lose millions of dollars in highway funding. And it is only in seven counties who's air did not meet EPA quality standards. Those standards are LAWS passed by an elected legislature. Meet those standards, no more e-check.

Your solution is not to attempt to meet the standards. Not even to pass LAWS that change the standards. Your solution is to just do away with the enforcement mechanism behind the standards. From where I come from we call that being a CHICKEN SHIT.

You are a SPECIAL kind of stupid, boy.

Wow. Obviously I can see why you want to eliminate enforcement instead of change regulations. You are a real coward, and I am pretty sure you wouldn't call me a boy to my face.

You guys are stupid as hell. Obama didn't kill coal jobs, natural gas did. The EPA has PROPOSED new guidelines. I mean you guys do know what propose means, right?

Fact-checking Obama's rules on carbon and coal plants

So, the Chamber of commerce misinterprets the data, posts job loss predictions based on that misinterpretation, later retracts those predictions, and yet those numbers are posted everyday by internet dumbasses.

Read the study, the problem is coal is not as cost effective as natural gas and in some areas solar and wind. Coal accounted for half of all electricity produced from 2000 to 2008. Now coal is not even the predominant means of generating electricity, natural gas is.

Why the U.S. Coal Industry and Its Jobs Are Not Coming Back

Look, I am pretty sure the buggy whip industry got a little upset when the car came along. Should the government have propped up the buggy whip industry?

What most plants do is use whatever is cheaper. When gas goes up, they switch to coal. When gas prices go down, they switch to gas.

Remember too the reason gas prices are low: fracking. That's right, the same fracking leftists are against.

Converting a coal plant to natural gas runs about 150 million dollars. Nobody is going to pay to switch back even if coal were to drop in price. But it won't. All the easy to get coal is gone.

And think of this, natural gas is beating coal in an Obama EPA, even with restrictions being placed on fracking. The Trump administration plans to lift some of the restrictions on fracking giving natural gas even more of a competitive advantage.

So here is a prediction I can be pretty confident in. Trump will destroy more jobs within the coal industry than Obama. Coal will produce a lower percentage of our power after Trump leaves office.

And here is a bet. I bet for every coal job lost during the Obama administration we can find TWO JOBS within the energy sector, be it a solar panel installer or a mechanical engineer working on boiler design.

That's a pipe dream if I ever heard one. We have enough coal in this country to supply the world for the next century if we wanted. Fracking and domestic oil are great, but remember that DumBama reduced the amount of federal land for oil permits and exploration. Our new fuel comes from private land. When the prices get too low, the land owners put a halt to drilling until the prices increase again.

I didn't say power plants convert from gas to coal, what I said is that they can produce electricity from either. At least here, they were setup for both.

Sure, we have tons of coal. And yep, we have millions of barrels of oil reserves. But at what cost? Because that is the problem. The fossil fuel industry is fighting a losing battle and it is not with the EPA and regulations.

We have already gotten all the easy coal. We have already gotten all the easy oil. It will take increasingly more dollars to get those resources out of the ground. The cost curve is increasing But renewable energy is on the opposite end of the cost curve. Each additional output generated comes at a lower cost, not a higher one. It is a battle against MATH, the fossil fuel industry is destined to lose.

But that brings us to the EPA. That brings us to a decline in enforcement and a rolling back of standards. See, there is not only a cost of getting those fossil fuels out of the ground, there is a cost of burning them. There is a cost to spewing out emissions, and the dirtier the more expensive. If the fossil fuel industry can "externalize" those costs, that is, make you and me pay for it so they don't have to, they can perhaps postpone their inevitable defeat by the cost curve.

 

[beagle9]

LOL, would you like to try and take the test for a CDL Class A license?

If you can pass that test, then you're perfectly qualified to drive. Driving isn't about class time, driving is about experience. I don't care if you take a six month class to drive a truck, it's something you actually have to do to get good at.

In my company, my boss got sick of trying to find Class A drivers, so now he's promoting from within. He offers our straight truck drivers the opportunity to upgrade to drive tractor--trailer. So far it's working pretty well. But even though they drive straight trucks now, they have to take the test all over again for tractor-trailer. Everyone of them failed the first time and had to go back to get tested again. One guy that did it is a very good tractor-trailer driver given his experience, and even he failed the first time.

The real problem we have today are foreigners. Some of them can't speak or read English. I have no idea how they find places or get around. They are terrible drivers to boot. Every couple of months, some foreigner runs up to me and says "Mister, mister! Please back in trailer for me, I don't know how!" I have no idea how these people get a license to drive in this country. I suspect we honor CDL"s from Mexico or Canada, and they are driving on our roads today.

. I know what your mean about foreigner drivers that are being hired not to fill badly needed driver positions, but mainly it is because corporations won't have to pay American workers good money to do the job. Every dam excuse in the book has been used to replace Americans with cheap labor from abroad. There should be huge trailer parking facilities on the border, where as goods coming from Mexico are brought to the border, but then the load is transferred at this point to American drivers to finish the trip of the goods destination. Vice-a-versa.

As usual, it's all politics. If we did that, then other countries would demand we do the same by halting deliveries to Canada and Mexico.

It's not a bad paying job depending on what you do and where you go. Some over the road jobs pay close to six figures and local jobs in the 50K a year range plus benefits. Overtime? Make even more.

And many (even MOST) OTR jobs pay peanuts, and about the only way drivers can scrape by if by running illegally-often being forced to do so by their companies.

If we could halt all immigration to this country including work Visa's, the pay would have to increase because these sleaze ball places would have no choice but to offer more. If nobody will work for you, then you close down.

Another thing would be getting government off of our ass and make things fair for us. When you get a CDL, you lose some of your constitutional rights and there's nothing you can do about it.

Bullshit.

1st is being addressed by electronic logging, but this imho shouldn't be the case with all trucking companies. Dump truck, cement mixers and local delivery companies of all sorts that run the 100 mile air bus radius should be excluded. What is bull crap ?

Most of those will not hire people without OTR experience...and many local jobs (especially for new drivers) ALSO pay peanuts. (Offhand, trash companies frequently are <$15/hour.)

. No trucking company should pay any driver less than $15.00 dollars an hour no matter what, and if they do they should be fined for it. To much involved to try and pay cheaper than that.

 

[owebo]

You are a SPECIAL kind of stupid, boy.

Wow. Obviously I can see why you want to eliminate enforcement instead of change regulations. You are a real coward, and I am pretty sure you wouldn't call me a boy to my face.

You guys are stupid as hell. Obama didn't kill coal jobs, natural gas did. The EPA has PROPOSED new guidelines. I mean you guys do know what propose means, right?

Fact-checking Obama's rules on carbon and coal plants

So, the Chamber of commerce misinterprets the data, posts job loss predictions based on that misinterpretation, later retracts those predictions, and yet those numbers are posted everyday by internet dumbasses.

Read the study, the problem is coal is not as cost effective as natural gas and in some areas solar and wind. Coal accounted for half of all electricity produced from 2000 to 2008. Now coal is not even the predominant means of generating electricity, natural gas is.

Why the U.S. Coal Industry and Its Jobs Are Not Coming Back

Look, I am pretty sure the buggy whip industry got a little upset when the car came along. Should the government have propped up the buggy whip industry?

What most plants do is use whatever is cheaper. When gas goes up, they switch to coal. When gas prices go down, they switch to gas.

Remember too the reason gas prices are low: fracking. That's right, the same fracking leftists are against.

Converting a coal plant to natural gas runs about 150 million dollars. Nobody is going to pay to switch back even if coal were to drop in price. But it won't. All the easy to get coal is gone.

And think of this, natural gas is beating coal in an Obama EPA, even with restrictions being placed on fracking. The Trump administration plans to lift some of the restrictions on fracking giving natural gas even more of a competitive advantage.

So here is a prediction I can be pretty confident in. Trump will destroy more jobs within the coal industry than Obama. Coal will produce a lower percentage of our power after Trump leaves office.

And here is a bet. I bet for every coal job lost during the Obama administration we can find TWO JOBS within the energy sector, be it a solar panel installer or a mechanical engineer working on boiler design.

That's a pipe dream if I ever heard one. We have enough coal in this country to supply the world for the next century if we wanted. Fracking and domestic oil are great, but remember that DumBama reduced the amount of federal land for oil permits and exploration. Our new fuel comes from private land. When the prices get too low, the land owners put a halt to drilling until the prices increase again.

I didn't say power plants convert from gas to coal, what I said is that they can produce electricity from either. At least here, they were setup for both.

Sure, we have tons of coal. And yep, we have millions of barrels of oil reserves. But at what cost? Because that is the problem. The fossil fuel industry is fighting a losing battle and it is not with the EPA and regulations.

We have already gotten all the easy coal. We have already gotten all the easy oil. It will take increasingly more dollars to get those resources out of the ground. The cost curve is increasing But renewable energy is on the opposite end of the cost curve. Each additional output generated comes at a lower cost, not a higher one. It is a battle against MATH, the fossil fuel industry is destined to lose.

But that brings us to the EPA. That brings us to a decline in enforcement and a rolling back of standards. See, there is not only a cost of getting those fossil fuels out of the ground, there is a cost of burning them. There is a cost to spewing out emissions, and the dirtier the more expensive. If the fossil fuel industry can "externalize" those costs, that is, make you and me pay for it so they don't have to, they can perhaps postpone their inevitable defeat by the cost curve.

We,have over 1000 years of coal....once Trump undoes Obamas war on coal, we will be building hundreds of new coal plants....it just is what it is....

 

[beagle9]

You are a SPECIAL kind of stupid, boy.

Wow. Obviously I can see why you want to eliminate enforcement instead of change regulations. You are a real coward, and I am pretty sure you wouldn't call me a boy to my face.

You guys are stupid as hell. Obama didn't kill coal jobs, natural gas did. The EPA has PROPOSED new guidelines. I mean you guys do know what propose means, right?

Fact-checking Obama's rules on carbon and coal plants

So, the Chamber of commerce misinterprets the data, posts job loss predictions based on that misinterpretation, later retracts those predictions, and yet those numbers are posted everyday by internet dumbasses.

Read the study, the problem is coal is not as cost effective as natural gas and in some areas solar and wind. Coal accounted for half of all electricity produced from 2000 to 2008. Now coal is not even the predominant means of generating electricity, natural gas is.

Why the U.S. Coal Industry and Its Jobs Are Not Coming Back

Look, I am pretty sure the buggy whip industry got a little upset when the car came along. Should the government have propped up the buggy whip industry?

What most plants do is use whatever is cheaper. When gas goes up, they switch to coal. When gas prices go down, they switch to gas.

Remember too the reason gas prices are low: fracking. That's right, the same fracking leftists are against.

Converting a coal plant to natural gas runs about 150 million dollars. Nobody is going to pay to switch back even if coal were to drop in price. But it won't. All the easy to get coal is gone.

And think of this, natural gas is beating coal in an Obama EPA, even with restrictions being placed on fracking. The Trump administration plans to lift some of the restrictions on fracking giving natural gas even more of a competitive advantage.

So here is a prediction I can be pretty confident in. Trump will destroy more jobs within the coal industry than Obama. Coal will produce a lower percentage of our power after Trump leaves office.

And here is a bet. I bet for every coal job lost during the Obama administration we can find TWO JOBS within the energy sector, be it a solar panel installer or a mechanical engineer working on boiler design.

That's a pipe dream if I ever heard one. We have enough coal in this country to supply the world for the next century if we wanted. Fracking and domestic oil are great, but remember that DumBama reduced the amount of federal land for oil permits and exploration. Our new fuel comes from private land. When the prices get too low, the land owners put a halt to drilling until the prices increase again.

I didn't say power plants convert from gas to coal, what I said is that they can produce electricity from either. At least here, they were setup for both.

Sure, we have tons of coal. And yep, we have millions of barrels of oil reserves. But at what cost? Because that is the problem. The fossil fuel industry is fighting a losing battle and it is not with the EPA and regulations.

We have already gotten all the easy coal. We have already gotten all the easy oil. It will take increasingly more dollars to get those resources out of the ground. The cost curve is increasing But renewable energy is on the opposite end of the cost curve. Each additional output generated comes at a lower cost, not a higher one. It is a battle against MATH, the fossil fuel industry is destined to lose.

But that brings us to the EPA. That brings us to a decline in enforcement and a rolling back of standards. See, there is not only a cost of getting those fossil fuels out of the ground, there is a cost of burning them. There is a cost to spewing out emissions, and the dirtier the more expensive. If the fossil fuel industry can "externalize" those costs, that is, make you and me pay for it so they don't have to, they can perhaps postpone their inevitable defeat by the cost curve.

. If the yield is bigger then the cost is absorbed easily. Still should be affordable no matter what is used. Technology has a way of doing that sort of thing.

 

[owebo]

Wow. Obviously I can see why you want to eliminate enforcement instead of change regulations. You are a real coward, and I am pretty sure you wouldn't call me a boy to my face.

You guys are stupid as hell. Obama didn't kill coal jobs, natural gas did. The EPA has PROPOSED new guidelines. I mean you guys do know what propose means, right?

Fact-checking Obama's rules on carbon and coal plants

So, the Chamber of commerce misinterprets the data, posts job loss predictions based on that misinterpretation, later retracts those predictions, and yet those numbers are posted everyday by internet dumbasses.

Read the study, the problem is coal is not as cost effective as natural gas and in some areas solar and wind. Coal accounted for half of all electricity produced from 2000 to 2008. Now coal is not even the predominant means of generating electricity, natural gas is.

Why the U.S. Coal Industry and Its Jobs Are Not Coming Back

Look, I am pretty sure the buggy whip industry got a little upset when the car came along. Should the government have propped up the buggy whip industry?

What most plants do is use whatever is cheaper. When gas goes up, they switch to coal. When gas prices go down, they switch to gas.

Remember too the reason gas prices are low: fracking. That's right, the same fracking leftists are against.

Converting a coal plant to natural gas runs about 150 million dollars. Nobody is going to pay to switch back even if coal were to drop in price. But it won't. All the easy to get coal is gone.

And think of this, natural gas is beating coal in an Obama EPA, even with restrictions being placed on fracking. The Trump administration plans to lift some of the restrictions on fracking giving natural gas even more of a competitive advantage.

So here is a prediction I can be pretty confident in. Trump will destroy more jobs within the coal industry than Obama. Coal will produce a lower percentage of our power after Trump leaves office.

And here is a bet. I bet for every coal job lost during the Obama administration we can find TWO JOBS within the energy sector, be it a solar panel installer or a mechanical engineer working on boiler design.

That's a pipe dream if I ever heard one. We have enough coal in this country to supply the world for the next century if we wanted. Fracking and domestic oil are great, but remember that DumBama reduced the amount of federal land for oil permits and exploration. Our new fuel comes from private land. When the prices get too low, the land owners put a halt to drilling until the prices increase again.

I didn't say power plants convert from gas to coal, what I said is that they can produce electricity from either. At least here, they were setup for both.

Sure, we have tons of coal. And yep, we have millions of barrels of oil reserves. But at what cost? Because that is the problem. The fossil fuel industry is fighting a losing battle and it is not with the EPA and regulations.

We have already gotten all the easy coal. We have already gotten all the easy oil. It will take increasingly more dollars to get those resources out of the ground. The cost curve is increasing But renewable energy is on the opposite end of the cost curve. Each additional output generated comes at a lower cost, not a higher one. It is a battle against MATH, the fossil fuel industry is destined to lose.

But that brings us to the EPA. That brings us to a decline in enforcement and a rolling back of standards. See, there is not only a cost of getting those fossil fuels out of the ground, there is a cost of burning them. There is a cost to spewing out emissions, and the dirtier the more expensive. If the fossil fuel industry can "externalize" those costs, that is, make you and me pay for it so they don't have to, they can perhaps postpone their inevitable defeat by the cost curve.

. If the yield is bigger then the cost is absorbed easily. Still should be affordable no matter what is used. Technology has a way of doing that sort of thing.

There really is nothing to absorb....coal is the cheapest power in the world.....if Trump is going to succeed in re-industrializing America, coal will be king....

 

[beagle9]

What most plants do is use whatever is cheaper. When gas goes up, they switch to coal. When gas prices go down, they switch to gas.

Remember too the reason gas prices are low: fracking. That's right, the same fracking leftists are against.

Converting a coal plant to natural gas runs about 150 million dollars. Nobody is going to pay to switch back even if coal were to drop in price. But it won't. All the easy to get coal is gone.

And think of this, natural gas is beating coal in an Obama EPA, even with restrictions being placed on fracking. The Trump administration plans to lift some of the restrictions on fracking giving natural gas even more of a competitive advantage.

So here is a prediction I can be pretty confident in. Trump will destroy more jobs within the coal industry than Obama. Coal will produce a lower percentage of our power after Trump leaves office.

And here is a bet. I bet for every coal job lost during the Obama administration we can find TWO JOBS within the energy sector, be it a solar panel installer or a mechanical engineer working on boiler design.

That's a pipe dream if I ever heard one. We have enough coal in this country to supply the world for the next century if we wanted. Fracking and domestic oil are great, but remember that DumBama reduced the amount of federal land for oil permits and exploration. Our new fuel comes from private land. When the prices get too low, the land owners put a halt to drilling until the prices increase again.

I didn't say power plants convert from gas to coal, what I said is that they can produce electricity from either. At least here, they were setup for both.

Sure, we have tons of coal. And yep, we have millions of barrels of oil reserves. But at what cost? Because that is the problem. The fossil fuel industry is fighting a losing battle and it is not with the EPA and regulations.

We have already gotten all the easy coal. We have already gotten all the easy oil. It will take increasingly more dollars to get those resources out of the ground. The cost curve is increasing But renewable energy is on the opposite end of the cost curve. Each additional output generated comes at a lower cost, not a higher one. It is a battle against MATH, the fossil fuel industry is destined to lose.

But that brings us to the EPA. That brings us to a decline in enforcement and a rolling back of standards. See, there is not only a cost of getting those fossil fuels out of the ground, there is a cost of burning them. There is a cost to spewing out emissions, and the dirtier the more expensive. If the fossil fuel industry can "externalize" those costs, that is, make you and me pay for it so they don't have to, they can perhaps postpone their inevitable defeat by the cost curve.

. If the yield is bigger then the cost is absorbed easily. Still should be affordable no matter what is used. Technology has a way of doing that sort of thing.

There really is nothing to absorb....coal is the cheapest power in the world.....if Trump is going to succeed in re-industrializing America, coal will be king....

Or part of it still... Don't agree with the new technique of blowing off the tops of mountains for the coal, but that's just me. Don't like the tunneling for it either because of safety reasons, but it is what it is I guess.

 

[beagle9]

What most plants do is use whatever is cheaper. When gas goes up, they switch to coal. When gas prices go down, they switch to gas.

Remember too the reason gas prices are low: fracking. That's right, the same fracking leftists are against.

Converting a coal plant to natural gas runs about 150 million dollars. Nobody is going to pay to switch back even if coal were to drop in price. But it won't. All the easy to get coal is gone.

And think of this, natural gas is beating coal in an Obama EPA, even with restrictions being placed on fracking. The Trump administration plans to lift some of the restrictions on fracking giving natural gas even more of a competitive advantage.

So here is a prediction I can be pretty confident in. Trump will destroy more jobs within the coal industry than Obama. Coal will produce a lower percentage of our power after Trump leaves office.

And here is a bet. I bet for every coal job lost during the Obama administration we can find TWO JOBS within the energy sector, be it a solar panel installer or a mechanical engineer working on boiler design.

That's a pipe dream if I ever heard one. We have enough coal in this country to supply the world for the next century if we wanted. Fracking and domestic oil are great, but remember that DumBama reduced the amount of federal land for oil permits and exploration. Our new fuel comes from private land. When the prices get too low, the land owners put a halt to drilling until the prices increase again.

I didn't say power plants convert from gas to coal, what I said is that they can produce electricity from either. At least here, they were setup for both.

Sure, we have tons of coal. And yep, we have millions of barrels of oil reserves. But at what cost? Because that is the problem. The fossil fuel industry is fighting a losing battle and it is not with the EPA and regulations.

We have already gotten all the easy coal. We have already gotten all the easy oil. It will take increasingly more dollars to get those resources out of the ground. The cost curve is increasing But renewable energy is on the opposite end of the cost curve. Each additional output generated comes at a lower cost, not a higher one. It is a battle against MATH, the fossil fuel industry is destined to lose.

But that brings us to the EPA. That brings us to a decline in enforcement and a rolling back of standards. See, there is not only a cost of getting those fossil fuels out of the ground, there is a cost of burning them. There is a cost to spewing out emissions, and the dirtier the more expensive. If the fossil fuel industry can "externalize" those costs, that is, make you and me pay for it so they don't have to, they can perhaps postpone their inevitable defeat by the cost curve.

. If the yield is bigger then the cost is absorbed easily. Still should be affordable no matter what is used. Technology has a way of doing that sort of thing.

There really is nothing to absorb....coal is the cheapest power in the world.....if Trump is going to succeed in re-industrializing America, coal will be king....

. Was responding to Winston talking about new explorations in gas etc. The cost curves he was speaking of.

 

[Jarlaxle]

. I know what your mean about foreigner drivers that are being hired not to fill badly needed driver positions, but mainly it is because corporations won't have to pay American workers good money to do the job. Every dam excuse in the book has been used to replace Americans with cheap labor from abroad. There should be huge trailer parking facilities on the border, where as goods coming from Mexico are brought to the border, but then the load is transferred at this point to American drivers to finish the trip of the goods destination. Vice-a-versa.

As usual, it's all politics. If we did that, then other countries would demand we do the same by halting deliveries to Canada and Mexico.

It's not a bad paying job depending on what you do and where you go. Some over the road jobs pay close to six figures and local jobs in the 50K a year range plus benefits. Overtime? Make even more.

And many (even MOST) OTR jobs pay peanuts, and about the only way drivers can scrape by if by running illegally-often being forced to do so by their companies.

If we could halt all immigration to this country including work Visa's, the pay would have to increase because these sleaze ball places would have no choice but to offer more. If nobody will work for you, then you close down.

Another thing would be getting government off of our ass and make things fair for us. When you get a CDL, you lose some of your constitutional rights and there's nothing you can do about it.

Bullshit.

1st is being addressed by electronic logging, but this imho shouldn't be the case with all trucking companies. Dump truck, cement mixers and local delivery companies of all sorts that run the 100 mile air bus radius should be excluded. What is bull crap ?

Most of those will not hire people without OTR experience...and many local jobs (especially for new drivers) ALSO pay peanuts. (Offhand, trash companies frequently are <$15/hour.)

. No trucking company should pay any driver less than $15.00 dollars an hour no matter what, and if they do they should be fined for it. To much involved to try and pay cheaper than that.

Most OTR work doesn't pay hourly at all...it's by the mile.