President pardons 9 for Clean Air violations for 'fixing their car'

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/trump-pardons-9-for-clean-air-violations-for-fixing-their-car/ar-AA27cSkT

by OutOfHere • 18 days ago

92 48 18 days ago

All 9 should be immediately arrested again in 2029, I’m sure they’re planning to go back to their criminal ways. I’ll save this article to remind the next AG about it.

blacksmith_tb2• 18 days ago

Sarcasm, presumably, but unless they're caught rolling coal[1] again, they can't be re-arrested as they've been pardoned for the previous cases. It's a tacky crime, hardly the most serious, but that makes a presidential pardon seem especially absurd here.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal

jdboyd• 18 days ago

I thought that most of them were in for selling/commercially installing defeat devices so that others could roll coal or do other things with defeated pollution controls. I assume that would likely be easier to identify than just hoping to someday catching them rolling coal would be.

OutOfHere2• 18 days ago

It is a serious crime. Diesel fumes are very damaging to the lungs and heart. Imagine a pregnant woman being exposed to them. There is no logical way to make light of it.

From your link:

the practice can increase nitrogen oxide emissions as much as 310 times, non-methane hydrocarbons 1,400 times, and carbon monoxide 120 times

SpicyLemonZest2• 18 days ago

I'm not being sarcastic at all. I think it's obvious that most or all of these men will interpret the pardon as permission to violate the Clean Air Act, and it's absolutely essential to the rule of law that they be punished harshly for doing so. They must understand that they are not above the law. Perhaps some of them have learned the error of their ways, and won't be rolling coal ever again; if so I wish them well.

Note that at least one of the men, Jonathan Achtemeier, was caught doing much more than "rolling coal" himself. He led a nationwide conspiracy to "roll coal", charging money to help hundreds of people do it although he knew it was a crime. Career criminals like Mr. Achtemeier rarely stop when they get caught the first time.

qalmakka• 18 days ago

It is a serious crime. Diesel exhaust is s IARC type 1 carcinogen. Somehow people go nuts when companies pollute water but not when they pollute the air they breathe

wewewedxfgdf• 18 days ago

I can't see any way in which a "Pardon Power" can ever result in anything except miscarriage of justice.

If you think there needs to be an escape hatch to fix injustices then you have a bigger problem.

Y-bar2• 18 days ago

I can. Let’s say for example that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was used to prosecute you for downloading JSTOR documents which you had already access to. And you are facing the cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, personal asset forfeiture. Now, would a pardon from the highest executive office be a miscarriage when the prosecution should never have happened in the first place? I don’t think so, I don’t think all laws are neutral (eg Patriot Act) or all prosecutions are equally valid, therefore a pardon may indeed be a way to tipping the scales to a more fair society.

That said, I have never seen the current administration do that.

thesumofall• 18 days ago

But isn’t that what the parent says? Fix the underlying laws instead of relying on a single person to randomly overrule the law

sph• 18 days ago

You can as easily use pardons to tip the scales to a more corrupt society.

If you assume, hypothetically, that the justice system is operating as it should, a pardon means giving one person the right to ignore the laws of the country for a select few acquaintances.

If one has to tolerate this blatant avenue for favoritism, I’d rather see the Supreme Court or judges themselves invested with this power, rather than the president.

I guess I am biased by believing in the separation of the executive and judiciary powers.

potamic• 18 days ago

I think they're more talking about systemic effects resulting from such a concept. When you have unchecked power concentrated at a single position, that position will inevitably use that power for their own personal gain, which in the case of pardons happens by enabling crime.

SilentM682• 18 days ago

In your opinion, which administration have you known to have issued a pardon that was equally justifiable in the eyes of members of political parties from both sides of the isle?

pibaker• 17 days ago

I think the fact that you use a very high profile and beloved person as your example is in fact why giving pardoning power to the executive branch is bad — the pardon goes to whoever is able to draw the attention and appear the most likeable to the person with the pardoning power.

If you think a law is bad, repeal it. Go through the same legislative process that made it happen in the first place. Trying to fix systematic issues with one off bandaids heavily impacted by personal judgement of whoever happens to be in power is just asking for corruption.

jryb• 18 days ago

Local cops/AG persecuting groups they don’t like

larrymcp• 18 days ago

I agree with the example given in the sibling comment, and this is why the framers believed there needed to be a final “safety valve” outside the courts. Legal systems are imperfect, and sometimes a pardon is the only practical way to remedy an egregious error.

Another example where pardons might be useful is when laws are changed after sentencing. If the new law does not provide for retroactive adjustments, a president or governor can grant clemency in order to correct disparities in sentencing outcomes.

rjrjrjrj2• 18 days ago

Too bad the safety valve is corrupt and dishonest.

shpx• 18 days ago

A finite set of symbols (laws) can never express everything a reasonable person would want to be allowed to happen in the world.

saghm4• 18 days ago

There are hundreds of years of examples of it being used. How closely did you actually go through them before deciding that it's literally impossible for it to ever result in a just outcome?

orwin• 18 days ago

Pardons are useful in a single specific way. As the laws cannot be changed retroactively (this would be against the principles of democracy), you need something to handle the case where a law was too strict or too dumb and is rescinded. In my country, pardons are mostly issued by judges, and presidential pardons are also reviewed by judges (and always transformed into 'commutation of sentence' instead of full pardon, so that the person is still guilty)

ndsipa_pomu• 18 days ago

There's always going to be miscarriages of justice and laws which are morally wrong.

e.g. Alan Turing being prosecuted for homosexuality.

bryanlarsen• 17 days ago

Take a look at the list of people pardoned by any president except the current one. Most (but not all) of the pardons are to correct clear miscarriages of justice.

philistine• 17 days ago

It’s your politicians who are crooked beyond belief, and have been for a long time.

In the early 90s, Jean Chrétien was caught on a hot mike incident decrying that American politicians make sure that every vote they give has a local benefit for them. He was right to be incredulous that there is no party line in American politics; the only safety against pure cronyism is morals.

US politicians were appalled and reportedly threatened Chrétien with supporting the Québec separatists. He was never caught complaining again.

All that to say that Trump is the end result of the long tumble of US politics. Unless you rewrite your constitution I consider you guys toast. You’ll lose democracy in my lifetime.

datadrivenangel• 18 days ago

"Jonathan Achtemeier pleaded guilty in November 2024, admitting that between 2019 and 2022, he tampered with the monitoring devices on hundreds of vehicles nationwide so those trucks would not detect that their owners removed pollution control hardware systems. Achtemeier advertised his services on the internet and was able to tamper with the monitoring devices in diesel trucks remotely. Between 2019 and 2021 Achtemeier’s company grossed $4.3 million. "

Fixing his own vehicle... for sure...

bob1029• 18 days ago

The biggest problem with diesel engines is that they tend to last nearly forever by virtue of their design (tolerating high compression ratios).

I see a lot of ancient big trucks on the road today that are completely legal in Texas but would probably get you sent straight to jail in Europe. The owners of these vehicles are oftentimes also diesel mechanics to some degree and can make their machine run much longer than they can.

The problem with all of this is that there is this entire niche of the market that you simply cannot penetrate with policy. I think some of these old trucks should be taken off the road, but I also sympathize with the owner/operators of these vehicles. I don't think many people drive a big dump truck around for fun (even in Texas). That's mostly a phenomenon on the consumer side. Rolling coal out of your Ram 3500 isn't something that really bothers me. The optics are horrible, but the actual impact is not. The thing that concerns me is the fleet of old Kenworth trucks from 1988 that the local construction company uses all day every day. Straight pipes and a constant rumble the USGS could monitor tend to drown out the broader concerns regarding emissions, but those also pop into your mind if you happen to be riding behind one.

I think a lot of the defeat device stuff is blown out of proportion for political reasons. Something approximating this has been going on since the 70s. Anything pertaining to consumer vehicles makes me roll my eyes. The studies they ran around VW are absolutely hyperbolic (hundreds of billions in damages, 100k+ dead eventually). Compare the marginal impact of slightly cheating emissions standards in a family sedan with one supermax cargo ship or a data center parking lot full of gas turbines and you'll probably find you are wasting your energy on the car thing. The deception is what makes most people angry. Not the actual impact.

saghm4• 18 days ago

The problem with all of this is that there is this entire niche of the market that you simply cannot penetrate with policy.

I don't really understand how the rest of your comment provides evidence for this claim. Not wanting to address it with policy, sure, I can see you seem to feel that way, but it's not clear why you're convinced it can't be addressed.

roryirvine• 18 days ago

Why couldn't it have been penetrated with policy?

As you note, Europe did this quite successfully with successively-tighter diesel emissions standards for new vehicles being introduced every few years since 1992. Other countries - China, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, Australia, etc - have either adopted the Euro standards wholesale or tweaked them slightly for their local market conditions.

That was backed up by measures such as testing individual vehicles for continued compliance at their annual inspections, banning commercial vehicles that fail to meet recent standards from using public roads, charging private vehicles which fail to meet recent standards when they enter dense urban areas, and scrappage schemes to mop up the remaining non-compliant vehicles.

It took a while to produce results, but eventually resulted in pretty dramatic improvements in air quality - and we now have good evidence of improved health outcomes, particularly in children with asthma or other respiratory conditions.

Perhaps too late for the US to start now given the switch to EVs, but it ought to be kept in mind for the next time a "we can't possibly do anything about this" issue comes up.

tim333• 18 days ago

get you sent straight to jail in Europe

I'm in the UK and no one goes to jail but it's more expensive tax wise to run the more polluting ones. As a result you don't see many.

Surac• 18 days ago

i am under the impression King Donald is missusing his might here

ada1981• 18 days ago

I discovered an interesting glitch in California DOT law. If you register a vehicle in CA, you can do so with an out of state mailing address (there is no check or verification needed).

Doing so automatically exempts you from CA SMOG because SMOG is a county by county law. If your address is out of state, you have no county smog obligation.

I went to get my vehicle smogged and was told I didn't need to.

tempodox• 17 days ago

Isn’t it heartwarming to see Trump lend a hand to uplift his fellow criminals and get the message out that crime pays?

OutOfHere2• 17 days ago

For some reason, he acts as if environmental crimes of any kind are not real. In effect he goes so far as to strongly encourage them.

silexia• 16 days ago

These laws are extremely counterproductive to start with. They require mining huge amounts of rare earth metals and building toxic lakes to manufacture, and they do a poor job of cleaning emissions and reduce engine efficiency. Base diesel engines are much better.

President pardons 9 for Clean Air violations for 'fixing their car'

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