Thats great that you are able to hear back from them. I myself have sent multiple emails to smart USA and have never heard back. My take is I'm either disliked or less important, and here I thought I was doing something good.
Reality is that I have only heard back from my VA District Rep. and as was previously posted here. Nothing from the sub-committee chairman (Chicago) nor the two senators. So it goes.
America was founded on the moral principle of individual Liberty. This means that people interact, for business or pleasure, solely on mutually voluntary terms: the Founders understood that initiation of force was immoral. In Liberty, people have freedom of contract. That is, they may make any sort of agreement they choose, as long as all parties involved are acting voluntarily. It is immoral to use force to get what one wants from others who are unwilling.
In the early 20th century, parasitically inclined people began to try to use the power of government as a tool of force, to make others (primarily private enterprises) conform to contract terms they unilaterally dictated (such as limited work hours and particular working conditions). Initially these attempts to use government and law as a bully were, quite properly, disallowed by the supreme court as unconstitutional. It was only after F.D. Roosevelt threatened to pack the court in the 1930s that the continual assault on private enterprise was permitted to proceed essentially unchecked.
A private enterprise consists of a person or group of persons who undertake to place on the market goods or services that others may value and thus wish to purchase. No-one is entitled to those goods or services, regardless of how much they are desired or needed. A transaction can morally take place only on mutually voluntary terms. An offer (such as an offer of goods, services, or employment) is just that: one may choose to accept or decline. It is not moral to employ the power of government to force the offer to be changed to one’s liking (for example: lower prices, particular features, particular levels of quality, a minimum wage, a particular working environment). If one is not satisfied with the goods, services, or employment offers available in the market place, one must simply decline to accept them, and attempt to provide for one’s needs or desires solely by means of one’s own ability and effort. No-one, and no enterprise, has an obligation to provide what others want.
I service all of my own motor vehicles. I greatly value workshop manuals, and desire one for my smart car that will be delivered next week. However, I knew before I placed my order that smart did not provide a manual, and I chose to purchase a smart car regardless of this serious deficit. I can not endorse the use of government to force smart to provide something that was outside of the purchase agreement. The legislation discussed above, like virtually all legislation introduced by politicians to-day, is immoral: it is an attempt to use force to extract from others what they are unwilling to supply (and which they can have no obligation to supply).
In a message above, the hope was expressed that the next presidential administration would be responsive to “we the people”. Which people? Who are “we”? Humans are individuals—they do not form a collective entity. Some people create and operate private enterprises that provide goods and services that have raised the quality of life vastly higher than it was in nature. These people have the same rights as those who desire the goods, services, or employment of the enterprises.
Listen to any of the current candidates, particularly those of the left, and you will hear a constant and naked pandering to the desire of many—if not most—people to-day to get something for nothing:
Oh, you can not afford the health care you desire? Do not worry, I shall use the power of taxation to rob more productive people in order to buy you that care. Oh, you don’t think your employer is paying you enough? I’ll force him to pay you more, and to give you more time off as well—with pay, of course. I’ll get you anything you want, by forcing some-one else to give it to you or pay for it, as the reward you deserve just for living and being less productive or less able.
—and on this disgraceful farce goes. The only saving grace is that the parasite class is growing so large, and the panoply of goods, services, and favours they demand as if by “right” expanding so rapidly, that the entire unsustainable mess must inevitably come crashing to an end.
N.B. I am well aware that businesses very often use the power of government for immoral purposes, too. A moral man is the scarcest of all humans.
Oldsmart. Yes, All the Michigan legislators are in bed with the big 2.5.
Michigan even spent state money to help them push back higher gas mileage standards and Hybrids, by muddying the waters with the hydrogen power myth.
Lets hope change comes, but we might do better by going after Haynes, the Manuel Pubs. Then I wonder if MB would tie them up in court?
You know we've got to go to work on these cars ourselves, and not let the dealers hold us captive.
I went in for the 10k maint/oil thing today as I had other minor issues. $158 out the door. More about the oil and filter later. Thanks for your good work. A2Jack
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