A Substack post entitled “Wrong Answers” includes this sad, but amusing story of stupidity out of Washington state in the USA which describes the common story of government regulations blowing up in the face of the government.

Starting with the incredible idiocy of the Washington state government deciding back in 2005 that they would adhere not to Federal regulations on vehicle emissions but to those of the Great Leftist Success Story to their South, California. The following has also sucked in Oregon, New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey – all One Part Democrat states.

This led them to pass the “Advanced Clean Truck regulations” bill that required any vehicle over 8,500 lbs to be zero emissions, or off set by other vehicles being sold by the same company that ARE zero emissions – the detailed prescription being no such vehicle over 8,500 lbs. with an engine made after Jan 1 2025 will be sellable and licensable as a new vehicle in those states.

The thought was that “well, if we make it illegal to sell these vehicles unless they’re battery powered, they’ll make them battery powered.” This sort of thinking is much like “Well, an irrational number is just too hard to deal with, so we’re going to make Pi equal to 3 by law.”

He calculates the results just for his state of Washington:

  • Loss of $14 million a year in sales tax on RV vehicle sales (sales were $155.7 million in 2020).
  • Loss of $136 million dollars in sales taxes on trucks ranging from large transport to smaller ones like Ford F-250’s.
  • Loss of several hundred million more dollars per annually due to the loss of payroll tax, vehicle registration money, business taxes, employee income taxes, etc from trucking companies moving across the border to other states like Idaho – even as they continue to use those big trucks to transport goods into Washington.

Locals like farmers and small businesses are stuck of course so there’s that money retained but here’s the biggest kicker:

New engines run cleaner than old ones do. Fact of life. But if you can’t get new engines, then much like Cuba, you will keep the old, more polluting one, running for ever. Gosh, I don’t think that was their plan, but that’s what’s going to happen.

We are ruled by utter fucking morons.