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EPA Gave Volkswagen a Free Pass On Emissions Ten Years Ago Due To Lack of Budget
An anonymous reader writes: A new report suggests that continuing cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency's budget contributed to Volkswagen being able to cheat on its emissions tests. When the test scripts were developed the department — which can still only conduct 'spot tests' on 20% of all qualifying vehicles — was forced to concentrate on heavy machinery and truck manufacturers, which at the time had a far higher incidence of attempting to cheat on vehicle standards tests. Discounting inflation the EPA's 2015 budget is on a par with its 2002 budget (PDF), and has been cut by 21% since 2010.
Yes, let's cut their budget some more... "Don't give us money, we won't do our job." The question is, did they have enough money to fulfill their charter or did they just say screw it and do nothing because they didn't get what they asked for?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Why do we assume that all government agencies need an endlessly increasing budget to do their job? Why do we accept endlessly increasing government budgets? We have a kneejerk belief that money fixes everything, but it seems only to bring more corruption, entitlement and fewer freedoms.
I believe all of the regulating agencies under the Bush administration were hampered from doing their job. It was part of what the administration believed in.
Either, an anti regulation person was appointed to run a regulating agency, or an industry insider was appointed.
was forced to concentrate on heavy machinery and truck manufacturers
Forced? Budget cuts typically don't force things--the EPA reacted to the lack of funds.
Lastly blaming the gov't on this is a cop-out. The truth is VW took advantage of the situation and ran with it plain and simple. The gov't didn't force VW to choose their fate.
Why would they need more money now on an inflation adjusted basis then 2002?
love is just extroverted narcissism
I bought a VW diesel in 2005, the last year of the "old" line. When VW came back with their "clean diesel" a little over a year later, it came with a huge advertising campaign, and, as posters have noted in other forums, other car manufacturers publicly and privately wondered "how did VW do a clean diesel" without seeming to have changed their technology.
>> Byron Bunker, director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s vehicle compliance program, says: “We can’t do a 100 percent check of every data point for every modelWe focus on new vehicles, new technologies or those where we have a concern.”
So...if that didn't raise a flag for "new vehicle or new technology" in the mid-2000's, one has to wonder what kind of dark place the EPA's head was in then.
I wonder if the EPA has any idea what percentage of all air pollution comes from car emissions. I wonder if they might notice that air pollution regulations for coal energy, cement plants, glass plants, paper mills, and shipping are constantly being violated, intentionally, because paying fines is cheaper than preventing air pollution. So now we are focused on scrutinizing VW and automakers, the bastards of successful industry, along with all the other already on the road cars in the world probably account for less than 1% of all air pollution sources. Consumer diesels do not matter to air pollution. But do slashdot posters even notice that they're being hoodwinked into caring about something that does not matter to our air quality? I haven't seen any evidence that anyone has noticed that this emissions thing doesn't mean anything. Its synthetially lowering stock prices that will soon rebound, allowing shrewd investors to make out like bandits. This whole story is... crap, start to finish.
The EPA should be punished. I suggest that we cut their budget to teach them a lesson.
This is starting to sound like the plot line to a mid nineties Hollywood movie.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
CUT TAXES! CUT TAXES!
No, see, really. See. If you cut taxes, you know, step 3, profit!
Every time I've been exposed to the operational aspects of a government agency (and, unfortunately, most large non-profits and even some large corporations) I see things being done in a way that costs around five times as much as we would do it in small- to mid-scale private industry, and even at that expense level the quality of work is outright appalling. When you start working with the management of these organizations, they simply don't care about setting appropriate standards for what they can achieve on a certain budget and then squeezing things to make do with what they have. Quite the contrary, their incentives are structured around having as much budget as possible. So bloat is everywhere, and the response to any additional "needs" is to demand more money. This is an endless cycle - giving them more money will never achieve their goals, because that would harm management's careers.
Privatizing these functions is its own can of worms - it's often far cheaper (see: SpaceX vs. NASA), but still a long way away from excellent, and rife with corruption and politics (see: Military-Industrial Complex, Prison-Industrail Complex, etc).
If I really wanted to have the EPA catch these things the best method I can think of would be to offer bounties paid on caught cheaters. This creates incentives to check everything everywhere, and retains the incentives to maximize efficiency.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
VW was not given a free pass by any means. VW cheated. Even with a larger budget you might not have caught this.
Just another eff-up neoconservative Republicans will to refuse to stand accountable for.
They remind of the old story about the kid telling a grasshopper to jump, and pulling a leg off each time it hops. When he's pulled all six legs off, he concludes it's gone deaf.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Gutting agencies like the EPA has been the aim of neoconservative politics since the Reagan Administration. This is exactly what they want, literally.
VW is a shining (well, maybe not shining) example of what happens when you allow industry to self-regulate.
We should be able to do this for free. Simply outsource it to a company in India. Tell them that we won't pay them and that we don't have any money for oversight or auditing either. They'll approve mostly any company who pays them enough to "pass" the testing. We'll get what we deserve - a bunch of polluting cars. Since we don't want to pay for the EPA to do their job, we won't have the job done.
It wasn't an inflation adjusted basis since 2002. The EPA has a smaller budget than in 2002 as they are DISCOUNTING (not even counting) inflation. If it was to be actually equal to the 2002 budget it would need to raise by ~1.02^13 (29%). If the budget hadn't been cut in 2010, then the EPA's budget would actually be on par with the 2002 figures.
Cut the budget to zero and we can all be free of government organizations ran but unelected bureaucrats interfering with the noble purpose of free enterprise. *cough,cough*.
and where are "private independent companies" going to get their funding? You do realize that the "free market" doesn't just print more money, right?
Its really strange that you go from "don't bash the EPA for congress not funding them" to "EPA has proved that they are useless" with an even more extraneous "yet again" (as you don't mention any previous EPA failures).
I'm just trying to understand your jump from facts to fiction.
All the control freaks want to hold VW accountable. I want to hold the EPA accountable. If you car does not get better mileage that your car in the 80s blame the EPA. I thing we should cut the EPA's budget by 110%. If these guys are really civil servants, they will be happy to pay us to work. If not they will stop fucking up our cars and everything else they touch. The USA is supposed to be the land of the free, not the land of oppressive government bureacracy
I see things being done in a way that costs around five times as much as we would do it in small- to mid-scale private industry, and even at that expense level the quality of work is outright appalling.
I recall a story that conveys this rather poignantly.
The extreme right wants to prove that any government regulations are wasteful and ineffectual. To make certain that all programs fail they insist on severely under funding the programs at which point they do become wasteful and ineffectual. There followers are so stupid that they can't even see what is actually going on.
Could they not simply charge the auto manufacturers for the testing? Also, are there any ways to automate the testing process,to increase throughput, or is there a market for consumer operated testing equipment?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Right, especially since we just found out that Coca-Cola has been found to be paying the Nutionists Association to look the other way on sugary drinks.
Yea, he had you with the "don't bash" bit. Then he took the mask off.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I admit I didn't RTFA, but the headline is even inconsistent with the summary.
Even if the EPA did *NO* testing/verification, that doesn't mean that any company, including VW, had a "free pass". It didn't have a right to violate the rules.
But that's 'gubbmints fault two!!1one
Brought to you by GOP and self-fulfilling prophecies - if we don't like something we can always cut their funding and 'prove' they can't do the job.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
And then the agencies waste huge amounts of money with Oracle and SAP consultancies that produce nothing useful, end up getting sued, and we go back to wondering why we handed them blank checks and why they're not using the money we do give them effectively.
As long as government agencies can be the recipients of those bonuses, it's a good idea.
EPA: ummm...ok
and where are "private independent companies" going to get their funding? You do realize that the "free market" doesn't just print more money, right?
Its really strange that you go from "don't bash the EPA for congress not funding them" to "EPA has proved that they are useless" with an even more extraneous "yet again" (as you don't mention any previous EPA failures).
I'm just trying to understand your jump from facts to fiction.
You are right, the "free market" doesn't just print more money.
And for that I am grateful.
Every time big bro prints more money the money I already have loses purchasing power.
I heard the story in Economics class. Expect our Prof added on... "Now let me show you show the private contracting business works. A congressman sees that this Scrap yard watchman project is $900k over budget (or whatever the figure in the story was) and recommends that the private sector be brought in to manage it. His largest donor bids only $700k for the project and both congressman and business get to play the saving-the-taxpayers-money card to the press. But have they actually saved anything at all?"
Why don't they do this? We pay to have cars inspected in some states, we pay a licensing fee. We pay out the nose for medical device submissions. Why not require the manufacturers to pay for 3rd party certified testing if they want to sell a car here?
1. EPA is trying to ban wood burning stoves. With that type of trend, in thirty years you will end-up in jail for having a barbecue in your backyard.
2. EPA actually polluted rivers by letting industrial waste/poison to them. 1 million gallons... http://www.denverpost.com/envi...
3. EPA is a money stealing organization, waste of taxpayer's funds. http://www2.epa.gov/sites/prod...
4. And lastly, EPA is cool with fracking. I am not. But because EPA is cool, you are also ok.
EPA is completely incompetent agency, 100% wast of taxpayer's funds, should have been closed. All they do is pretend to be working. And you must be one of those who says more government and more taxes is the best answer to every issue. Perhaps you should leave to North Korea.
Seriously, the neo-cons have been gutting EPA and any form of gov that they hate.
HOWEVER, that does not give VW, Audi, Mercedes, Samsung, etc license to cheat at will.
I prefer that we block these companies from selling in the states, but next up, would be fines so large that they can fund these groups.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes, and we can issue letters of mark for the big polluters. I can finally shoot down Al Gore in his multimillion dollar private jet as it flies around between various green rallies.
By killing big polluters we can bring the USA back to 18th century levels in a matter of weeks. Don't like that power plant belchin smokey smoke. Blow it up and be rewarded with Ca$h from the USAian government. Don't like that smoker belching dangerous carcinogins in your clean neighborhood, shot him.
It is a proposition that is filled with WIN!
I am running for world dictator in 2016. Vote for me!!
Shorter version: I'm a rich liberal elite and I can afford high taxes. I don't care about your middle class problems. I don't care about you or your family. I don't care about the nicer house you might want for your children -- the house you can't afford because your tax burden is too high. I don't care about your household bills. I don't care about how you'd like to help out an elderly parent or send your daughter to college without making her take out ruinous student loans. You say you want to save for the future? I don't care about your future. Pay your taxes to fund my rich liberal elite priorities!
Foisted on us by the EPA to get more funds for its takeover of everything. The summary is wrong as is easily verified.
Corporations can regulate themselves. Invisible hand of the market and all that. ...o, waitaminnit....
ask the Pentagon, which destroyed A-10's to make sure we gave them the hundreds of billions for the F-35 POS.
Or ask the Prisons, which let life prisoners go when they didn't get the RAISE they wanted.
Or ask NASA.
No, as usual, starving America for what we want and need while buying more war toys and cutting taxes for the top 1% (who got 45% of the tax savings) is more important than Americans breathing.
whose air is finally breathable for 9 months a year in L.A. THANKS TO THE EPA
America tried De-REgulation.
What we got was less service, lower wages, higher prices and a nation dependent on foreign investment
Monopolism simply is not an answer
what we call "conservatives" are actually radical regressives. They want to roll us back to the 1800s when capitalists were kings. They don't really try to hide this, they just say it'll be better for us all.
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I see things being done in a way that costs around five times as much as we would do it in small- to mid-scale private industry, and even at that expense level the quality of work is outright appalling.
Having worked on both sides of the fence, most of the cost saving I have seen so far in the small-to-mid-scale industry comes from cutting corners on things seen as "uncool" (to be honest, that also applies to large industry). Like, for example, compliance with the laws and regulations. I have worked in education, in the automotive industry, in the banking industry, in the risk management industry, in investment banks, in the cloud hosting industry and in local/national/international administrations. I honestly can say I haven't seen as much difference as people claim to see.
I have seen CTOs playing Farmville 8h a days in their startup while complaining about the ton of work they had and I have seen civil servants clocking 80+ hours a week to fix issues (without any hope of overtime compensation). I have seen automotive engineers write books on the evolution of money from the Roman times to modern day during their work hours, then clocking extra time to actually do their work. I have seen systems administrator actively sabotaging servers to get extra money through on-call.
This is the most popular tactic in the Federal Government; it simultaneously deflects attention and blame for any bad thing onto the very few in government who try to be at least minimally responsible and is propaganda for even more tax dollars. The EPA has been wasting money trying to regulate cow farts, dust on farms, and now the CO2 we all exhale with every breath (when they are not polluting rivers with gold mine waste products). The EPA has repeatedly asserted it had a right to regulate stuff congress did not authorize it to regulate and has gone through the courts many times during the years in question demanding the power to regulate more stuff (while not regulating VW). The money claim is just a dishonest tactic.
Example: After Benghazi, the State Department tried to claim that the people who died at the annex were lost due to budget cuts - until [1] the video of under-oath testimony in congress aired showing that State had plenty of money and the budget was not an issue and [2] the State department admitted it was spending millions of dollars buying electric cars for embassies around the world. Now the state department is trying to claim Hillary's email problems were caused by too little cash for new computers (as though e-cars for the Ambassador in Austria are more vital than secure e-mail for the Secretary of State)
Same garbage in the Pentagon, where there's not enough cash to keep the A-10 and the U-2 flying, but the Navy has been buying algea-based biofuels for some ships at about $60 per gallon, and the pentagon lost literally PALLET-LOADS of CASH in Iraq....
NASA is taking an extra decade and BILLIONS to get Orion into space, in-part because of "insufficient cash", while dumping Billions into the JWST cost overruns and heaping money into studying global warming (more appropriately NOAA's turf)
In all these cases and far too many more in nearly every agency, the problem is not the number of dollars in the budget (in nearly every case, more than ever before) but rather PRIORITIES and spending EFFICIENCY.
1. Richard Nixon (Republican, but not Conservative) created the EPA in the 1970s for his own political cover.
2. The budget of the EPA has never been higher than under Obama. Most of the shrieks you hear about cuts to it are either complaints about proposals that never went anywhere or whining that the congress refused to increase it to the even higher levels requested by Obama. In Washington, when somebody proposes quadrupling spending on somebody else's pet project but then the funding only doubles it gets called a "savage cut". (because the rate-of-increase was reduced from what the president wanted even though the number still went up.
In the interests of truth could someone either find some proof that VW was cheating and post it, OR refrain from the "VW cheating" meme. You guys know something about screw ups in software. Isn't it much more likely that the engineers at VW took the software that they bought from Bosch and then added a big list of "features " that the pointy headed bosses thought would "add value". Then the software broke because they had changed the logic without knowing it. It seemed to work, so no one checked, they didn't have a budget for it. After all a logical proof would have taken decades and cost X times the German GDP. Below is the only link I can find to the so called "smoking gun". "It appears they did this with the intent of clearly making the emissions performance different on the test cycle, which I think is the most surprising,” Anair said in an interview. http://www.scientificamerican.... Note the humble technician says 'It appears that.........", he doesn't say "I have proof", and if he did have, he would have said so. The EPA has accidentally fooled the world's media. Remember that Toyota got scammed for billions because someone put a rubber mat over the throttle pedal of their car, and now GM is being scammed for more billions because people hung heavy weights on their key chains. The search for truth depends on intelligent scepticism. At the moment all we can say for certain is that VW is about to be scammed for billions. You guys can do better than this.
Every government agency pleads poverty when they fail... even when the argument is laughable.
Take education... they spend more on it every year and the test scores drop year after year. You can also point at schools that get much less money that do much better while looking at schools that get lots of money that do very poorly. There's no correlation between funding and success in public education.
And you can find similar patterns in a lot of other government services. Simply throwing money at something is not a reliable means to get quality service. And by the same token, cutting a budget does not mean you get poor service either.
In the case of the EPA, I think we can think of a lot of ways for the EPA to have done a better job here without actually having to spend a dime.
Claiming poverty is merely a dodge. If they had received all the money they wanted... they still could have f'ed it up. Look at the ACA scandal where they spent absolutely absurd amounts of money building a website... and it still failed.
Giant piles of money =/= success or competence.
And there are operations around the US and the world that do all sorts of amazing work on a shoe string.
The US needs to get away from this notion that budgets can be infinite. Belts need to be tightened and institutions that can't cope with that need to have the fat trimmed.
In my experience working with government agencies, there are a LOT of people working for the agency that do almost literally nothing. I mean... in some cases they literally are spending their days using the office internet to search for pornography and then jerking off in their offices. Literally all day every day. What makes this even somewhat work is that you have a small cadre of really dedicated hard working people that carry the water for the whole agency. THOSE people deserve to be paid. The people jerking off in their offices do not.
Saying the EPA couldn't error check some f' up at VW for 10 years because of budget problems is an insult to our intelligence and a condemnation of anyone's intelligence that buys that line of crap.
The EPA f'ed up. Period. No buck passing. No finger pointing. Just accept it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The VW cheating was found by a couple of grad students and a professor for a PRIVATE company doing research. While over/under worked EPA employees were eating donuts at yet another 'Diversity Training'.
Best solution: EPA subs out testing, manages contractors, fires those who under perform. Throw any crooks in jail.
Just try firing a crooked or incompetent Government employee. Lois Lerner was 'retired' at full pension. Guy behind several ATF disasters were 'retired'. FannyMae pulled off a bigger accounting scandal than Enron. Enron guys are in jail. Guess what happened to FannyMae execs? Yep, retired.
See a pattern here?