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.

Comments

Re:More like "lack of clue" instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Implicit collusion. They're likely all cheating, on something. So if they report VW, VW reports w/e they're cheating on. So no one tattles.

Re:Hmm...

[circletimessquare]

you're commenting under a story in which the EPA is underfunded and as a result is unable to do it's job, and so a corporation got away with polluting on a massive scale

and your response is: disband them, and only *clean up* messes, instead of *prevent* them

seriously? you're not trolling or making a sarcastic joke?

profoundly, amazingly stupid

i always wondered at the source of this form of idiocy: "government isn't doing it's job, so destroy it" rather than gee, i dunno, fix the fucking problem preventing them from doing their fucking job?

because if no one does the job government is supposed to do, the world will be better? how does that work? no need to regulate markets. no need to prevent pollution, no need to police the food or drug supply? because as history clearly shows, nevermind current fucking events like bp oil spill, this volkswagen story, the peanut salmonella case x1,000,000 other examples: when corporations can get away with crime, *they do*

why are there so many morons like you in this world who see government as the problem, and not the corporations doing all the actual, criminal wrong?

look at the comments under this story

1. industry cheated na dpolluted
2. government is underfunded so it fucked up

and what do we have... criticisms of govt, no criticisms of industry, and calls to disband the very agency tasked with policing the scumbags in industry fucking up

how... the... fuck

"corporation {xyz} did horrible thing dumping pollution... but that's not the problem, the epa screwed up the clean up, that's the real problem!"

really?

seriously, how can people be so fucking stupid on this point?

how can this incredible blindness about the repeated malfeasance and ineptitude in business escape your attention or derision, but only government, which you fucking need to prevent and control and punish these corporate assholes, is always the culprit?

this guy:

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

he's real

he exists. he'll poison your children, he'll kill you, he'll render vast areas uninhabitable. all to make $10 more

time and time and time again throughout history, there's millions of examples of this

but no, he's not the problem: government screwed up the investigation, the cleanup, the prevention. therefore, let's focus all our rage there and ignore the criminals out there screwing up your lives and your communities

WTF?

why are you morons and assholes so blind to this?

you rage at government and give industry a pass: why???