Montana is the king of dinosaur digs. Do you enjoy reviewing the past by studying
fossils? Pop the hood on your pickup and take a good look at the history recorded in your
engine’s components. Studying your engine’s fossil record exemplifies big government
at its worst.

The Clean Air Act of 1975 required that all vehicles sold after 1980 be equipped with a
catalytic converter. (It’s the shiny thing that looks like a muffler.) This magical device
uses platinum and palladium to convert the long hydrocarbon chains from your car’s
exhaust into safe and harmless carbon dioxide. (In the ‘70’s carbon dioxide was deemed
harmless but is now considered an evil cause of global warming. For today’s discussion,
let’s put on our smiley faces and consider it a happy compound.)

As is the case when you complicate something as simple as fire with bureaucratic
oversight, the solution to one problem creates others. Lead, added to gasoline to
eliminate the knocking problem, negates the function of a catalytic converter. Thus,
leaded gasoline was outlawed in 1990 requiring auto companies and oil refineries make
expensive adjustments to their production lines. This is why your fuel tank neck has a
skinny “unleaded fuel only” restrictor.

In 1975 the EPA established Combined Auto Fuel Efficiency standards requiring car
companies to meet CAFÉ averages of 20 mpg or pay fines. Auto manufacturers again
retooled their factories and brought light-but-deadly tiny new cars to the marketplace.
Americans, always wanting what is best, flocked past the mini-cars to the safe and
reliable SUVs. These big bad boys became the profit-drivers for the Big-Three so they
sold what the consumer wanted and paid the fine. The fossil evidence for that is
screaming down the interstate talking on a cell phone.

Unhappy with consumers driving SUVs, government officials choked off domestic oil
exploration with environmental regulation and drove the price of crude oil over $120 a
barrel. (European socialists had done this earlier through fuel taxes, but Americans tend
to revolt at punitive levels of taxation.) Gasoline prices shot above $5 dollars per gallon;
the evidence in on your gas receipt.

Undaunted, drivers of SUVs and pickups turned to fuel-efficient diesel engines. The
Powerstroke, Duramax and Cummins engines utilized a fuel that was cheaper at the pump
and yet delivered the power to carry an American payload in a manly fashion. Regulators
responded with new eco-friendly ultra-low sulfur requirements forcing yet another
retooling of both auto assembly lines and refineries. No longer cheaper, ultra-low sulfur
diesel sold at a premium to gasoline. That evidence is also listed on the pump.

Most recently the pyramid scheme of government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
led to a mortgage collapse and secondarily restricted money supplies; auto sales plunged.
Two of the Big Three hopelessly accepted TARP bailout money and were bankrupt in six
months. Suddenly, the federal government controlled two of the largest auto companies
in the world. The fossil record for that became apparent on July 9th, 2009 when
government-controlled GM announced they will void their contract to purchase platinum
and palladium for catalytic converters from the only US supplier, Stillwater Mining
Company of Columbus Montana. Now GM will only purchase these minerals from
Russia and South Africa, and they will use your tax dollars (or debt against your
grandchildren) to buy it.

Go ahead, slam your hood in disgust. The automobile fossil record clearly shows free-
market capitalism is extinct. Montana stands to lose yet another natural resource industry
and several hundred high-paying jobs. Isn’t socialism great? Is this why President Ford
warned “government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take
from you everything you have”?