Bad American

George W. Bush is an enemy of the American people. 

PD Sunday Editorial

E-check, unfortunately, is still with us.

The federal government would have withheld more than $1 billion in federal highway dollars if the Ohio General Assembly had rebelled and axed the justly maligned vehicle emissions test.

But the sneaky way state lawmakers went about its renewal - slipping it into an unrelated bill and resorting to anonymous voice votes - should make them cringe when they look in the mirror.

Over the years, it has become painfully clear that E-check is a fraud. It is a tiresome box that the Environmental Protection Agency checks off - a token effort to comply with federal air quality standards. And as cars and light trucks become cleaner, even the token effort gets harder to sell.

That’s not to belittle the importance of cleaning Ohio’s air. It’s just an admission that E-check isn’t the answer.

You can read the rest at the link, but I agree with it all. It was a scam almost from the beginning but the PD is right to point out the sneaky way this was snuck through back in to law.

In the beginning of the program, there seemed to be a serious effort to really test vehicles. They put all the cars on that treadmill like apparatus and, as you might remember, a few cars went ‘off the rails’ so to speak and crashed into the walls. The process was lengthier and I knew of people who failed and had to have remedial work done on their exhaust systems.

Well, after 10+ years out of Ohio, I came back and found that to get a license plate, I had to go back to the same E-Check facility on Auburn Road.

What a difference from a decade ago.

Now, bored employees literally wave you through the process and my car, from 2002, didn’t even go on the treadmill. They just stuck the probe in the pipe and waved it through - about 5 minutes, barely enough time for a cup of coffee.

And its free.

And its a joke.

In the editorial, the PD actually states the state should sue the Feds and make a literal Federal case out of it. I’m all for that but know that Ohio doesn’t have the guts to do so anyway, even in the age of Bush.

The one thing I think the PD should do in this case is follow the money. This being Ohio, I’m sure there is some kind of cozy contract worked out here and someone politically is benefiting from the continuance of a sham environmental program.

Its really an insult to those who really care about the environment to see the E-check system in operation now as opposed to how it was sold.

And the process the bill was slipped through is another black eye to good honest government in this state.