[quote=justme]I don’t expect to be able to convince you, but there may be others that gain some insight from this discussion.
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You’ve certainly done an excellent job of presenting your viewpoint. It’s tough to argue against idealogues who fail to understand the difference between prohibition of an activity and a tax on an activity that is considered to be disfavored by society.

The CAFE mpg standards do not prohibit low mpg cars. Instead, manufacturers who don’t meet the mpg standards are merely assessed a fine. In the past, Chrysler, Volkswagen, BMW, Ferrari, Porsche, and Maserati have failed to meet the standard. They were merely assessed a fine which they presumably passed onto consumers.

So there can be no loss of an ‘inalienable right’ here. The most that could be argued is that wasting oil and polluting the environment should not be taxed. Not to mention that CAFE has been in place since 1975, so it’s a little late and quite disingenuous for an idealogue to be getting upset over loss of an ‘inalienable right’ when they never even realized said ‘right’ had been missing since the ’70s. However, some people hear the word ‘government’ and lose all sense of reason.