As I’ve said since forever, VW was a much easier target for America than America was. Dropping a regulator hammer on the Berkeley Professors and Marin Dairy Farmers driving a diesel VW station wagon is like a walk in the park.
Sure, VW got raked over the coals and there was serious fall-out in Germany (e.g., a $4.3 billion fine). In some sense, idling with low emissions isn’t quite the problem people made it out to be, which is why lying about it was such a stupid strategy. But the real story always was that direct action against the huge number of American diesel cheaters was only being signaled instead of enforced — a big overseas takedown on VW was like warning shots that every diesel-head should have heeded immediately.
It’s almost like regulation in Europe somehow emboldened those prone to abuse in America. In fact, on the news of VW getting in hot water, Tesla’s CEO ran out and started operating a huge bank of dirty diesel generators. It was egregiously bad behavior, made even worse by Tesla marketing these generators as clean energy because they were wrapped up and sold as an EV charging station.
And now, finally, wheels of justice are starting to make the rounds on the actual emissions problem being in America. It’s amazing just how intentionally dumb and blind about harms the good ol’ American “tuners” have acted, flaunting laws, even while watching regulators clean up Germany.
Feds Nail Another Diesel Shop With $10M in Fines for Deleting Emissions Equipment: It was caught selling, installing, and manufacturing tuning devices that imitated another company’s products.
So dumb. And of course it was run out of the infamous “what do you mean slavery is wrong” state of North Carolina.
That $10 million seems pitifully low for the intentional harms that generated huge revenues in the 10s of millions. When set low, the fines become rationalized as a cost of doing business instead of a proper prohibition to exploitative practices.
“Those selling defeat devices are willing to pollute the environment so that they can personally profit,” said U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves for the District of Columbia. “Today’s sentencing makes clear that there will be significant consequences for those who traffic in these devices. Anyone considering peddling or installing these devices is on notice of the substantial costs of doing so.”
Fun history fact, the Department of Justice and National Parks were created by President Grant after he won the Civil War, to stop the KKK-minded southern states from trying to profit from massive systemic harms in America including pollution.
Fast forward to today and the Department of Justice is busy shutting down dangerous and dumb North Carolina business models like it’s the 1870s again.
But my favorite part of the story is actually this buried lede:
Rudy’s then started faking these tuners in-house. This involved an $850,000 laptop purchase, as the computer contained the software to convert other tuners into Mini-Maxxes and XRT Pros. Until stopping in July 2018, Rudy’s sold nearly 44,000 imitation tuners and generated about $33 million in revenue from them. All this is as reported by the DOJ.
In 1808 America banned import of slaves so North Carolinians started making them “in-house” (systemic rape of Black women) instead.
See the parallels?
And should we really call it an $850,000 laptop purchase? The computer “contained” valuable software, while the laptop was likely worth next to nothing on its own. The idea someone could license software on just one laptop for nearly $1M tells you just how stupidly lucrative causing intentional environmental harm had become even after the VW takedown.
To put it another way, think about a $10 million fine as the cost of 10 laptops on a diesel cheater’s balance sheet. Is there a business that can afford to buy 10 laptops?
Related: North Carolina was the first to secede to start a Civil War meant to preserve their business of slavery. As the rest of the world was very openly ending slavery towards the late 1700s (shout out to the colonies of Vermont and Georgia), America primarily fought its Revolutionary War to preserve and expand slavery instead. George Washington literally recruited soldiers to fight by asking if they opposed their British King being too progressive and setting free the Blacks in America. And Washington himself went on to keep his slaves even when it became illegal in Pennsylvania, ordering his lawyer to find loopholes that allowed keeping hostages and raping them for profit. Thus we see precedent for the haters in North Carolina who apparently had a hard time accepting a regulation that ended harms. It’s on that note we can see how President Grant was the best President in history. And Washington? An awful cheater. French historians now say he didn’t even fight his own battles.
