In Volkswagen's Defense

From The American Thinker:

Specifically, it is possible to see their "defeat device" (basically a piece of software that detunes diesel engines during testing, but lets them run hot and clean in actual customer use) as an inspired bit of civil disobedience.

So, with that in mind, here's how Volkswagen could use the difference between the "de facto" real world application of the rule and the "de jure" world of law to defend themselves.

The legal defense is straightforward: the law generally requires these engines to pass EPA specified tests at the time of testing -- and they do. This is, in most jurisdictions, simple, black letter law: there is literally no legal substance to the charge against them.

The reality based defense, however, would be that the rule is known to be both unrealistic in economic and technical terms, and environmentally counterproductive. Basically VW would defend itself by attacking the rule maker and pushing the idea that the whole is thing is driven by the leftist agenda, not environmental concern.

Unique take, might work in front of a judge, but a California Jury, dead meat.

EPA — The Other Villain in the Volkswagen Scam.

Via H/T at Instapundit:

But the hard reality is that this might not be the last such scam we’ll see. If the EPA continues on its anti-industry crusade, it’ll practically invite widespread disrespect for the law.

The EPA slashed allowable nitrogen dioxide car emissions from the already low 1.2 grams per mile average to 0.07 grams per mile in 2008 to boost air quality that courts at the time ruled was already pretty good and adequately protecting public health. The EPA is now poised to tighten that standard another 30 percent.

The problem for carmakers is that they can’t simultaneously satisfy such regulatory edicts and consumer demand.

Drivers want cheap, safe, powerful cars. That is exactly what the EPA’s NOx standards made it very difficult for VW to produce.

To be fair, the people behind the standards want us all riding buses.

You must include the California Air Resources Board (CARB) as part of the radical environmentalist cabal. They just make regulations, without and scientific justifications, it's a waving of the hand, "Make it so."

All Hail VW -- Heroic Resistants Against The Green Tyranny!

From Breitbart's Big Government:

Who’d want to buy a VW right now?

Me, for one. The VW I currently drive is, by some margin, the most exciting car I’ve ever owned.

It’s a Golf Four-Motion which I picked up for a song on Ebay. From the outside it looks deceptively ordinary: just the standard, boxy Golf body with no distinguishing marks or features to tell you how secretly evil it is. But underneath the bonnet is a ludicrously inappropriate 2.8 litre V6 engine. On a Golf. Imagine!
...................

Which is the real reason, I suspect, that they ended up being targeted by the green Gestapo, in the form of the Environmental Protection Agency, which has caught VW out doctoring their emissions tests to make their cars look greener than they actually are. (Invented by Hitler; destroyed by the green Gestapo. Oh the irony!)
...................

And the reason for this is that, unlike most of its craven, corporatist sell-out competitors, VW was brave enough to try to fight against the technologically unfeasible, economically untenable emissions targets being imposed on it by the green commissars of the European Union.

“…The 95 g/km Long-Term-Target for 2020 is the result of a political decision taken last year. It is not based on sound impact assessment nor on a realistic appreciation of the costs and technical progress necessary to meet the goal within the timescale…” — Volkswagen 2010

VW, in other words, was making a stand for its consumers and – just as importantly – its shareholders against a bunch of unelected ideologues who don’t give a stuff for free markets or the bottom line.

That's a different take than I would take, but BooYah!

Comparing GM penalties with threatened VW penalties

From Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker:

General Motors fudged on reporting problems with its ignition system and killed people as a result. The fine, announced last Thursday, was $900 million. Volkswagen fudged on testing its diesel cars for air pollution, killing exactly nobody. The fines being contemplated are well into the billions, in addition to refunds and civil lawsuit penalties for consumers, also running into the billions.
.........................

I will be blunt here, in a way that none of the foreign auto executives with whom I have worked over the years ever would be. There is a strong and growing suspicion that the United States conducts economic warfare against foreign manufacturing competitors of United States companies using the extensive regulatory apparatus for consumer safety and pollution.

One other factor: GM was organized by the United Auto Workers. Volkswagen is heavily unionized in Germany, but in the United States, its manufacturing arm avoided organization by the UAW.

Another pundit suggesting Union membership may something to do with the threaten fines. ANother interesting bit of data, GM contributed over $12,000,000 since 1992, VW, about $50,000.

Folow the money.

EPA’s Own Diesel Crimes Worse Than VW’s

From Breitbart's Big Government:

There is no question that Volkswagen should be in trouble for intentionally rigging its diesel engines to skirt U.S. emissions requirements. But EPA’s own diesel exhaust wrongs put VW’s in the shade.
.........................

The EPA has for years quietly conducted flagrantly illegal scientific experiments in which diesel exhaust was pumped into the lungs of sick people and senior citizens. As pictured nearby, EPA researchers pumped high levels of diesel exhaust from an idling truck into a gas chamber where an unwitting elderly and/or asthmatic victim sat for two hours inhaling it.
.........................

As EPA admitted in litigation with me, it conducts these tests because the agency’s claim about the lethality of diesel exhaust rests largely upon studies that are merely statistical in nature. The human testing is an effort to provide some evidence of biological or medical plausibility for the statistical studies. So, yes, EPA is trying to harm people in order to validate its dubious statistical data.

So as between VW trying to gain an unfair advantage over the competition, and EPA trying to kill people in order to validate its regulations, it would seem that EPA is the actual diesel exhaust villain.

Illegal testing of human guinea pigs by the Government. Does the name Tuskegee ring a bell? Add that to the bogus science regarding the Animus River poisoning.

We are in the best scientific hands.