Obama attacks the True North lifestyle

photo by pmarkham

Man. You gotta love the blog True North. All passion. All the time. One of their latest hits is a post on how President Obama is attacking the Minnesota Lifestyle. No. Obama is not going after the Roller Blade industry. He's hitting the car companies to make fuel efficient cars. And that will make life expensive for the powerboat enthusiasts.  The post starts off with a game of can you see what I see? Author Dave Thul puts forth two photos of a parking lot filled with trucks, SUVs, and empty boat trailors. CP couldn't figure out what he was getting at...

Answer:

Every vehicle with a trailer in this public access is a truck or SUV. With the announcement of accelerated fuel efficiency standards by President Obama last week, it occured to me that in his (theoretically) good intentions of reducing carbon emissions, he is also levying a tax on the Minnesota lifestyle of taking your boat out to the lake in the summer. The vehicles needed to pull a boat and trailer will be the very same vehicles most affected by increased fuel efficiency standards.

Dude has a point. The bill will indeed effect the price tag of these trucks and SUVs way more than the Honda Insights zipping around Uptown. By 2016, it will cost more to buy one of these beasts. Maybe thousands more. And the people getting hit the hardest up-front are the powerboat enthusiats of Minnesota... even though they'll save in the long run, a point he almost conceeds.

The problem with blaming Obama is that this mileage standard isn't his baby. He's just moving up the deadline by four years. The person who signed the mileage standards into law back in 2007 was George W. Bush, a fan of outdoor sports and brush cutting. So under this rationale, both Bush and Obama are hurting the Minnesota lifestyle.

Bastards.

Fact: Minnesota has the third most boat registrations in the U.S.

Fact: True North has us listed as second.