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Comment by snakeyjake | Hacker News Reader

The public safety argument is bullshit.

If lawmakers ACTUALLY cared about public safety, they would fund the distribution of hand-cranked AM radios that could be stored in emergency kits.

This is just legislation purchased, incredibly cheaply, by iHeartMedia, Audacy, and the like cloaked in the delusion that people who failed to evacuate before a hurricane when all other infrastructure was operational will go out to their submerged or destroyed car to listen to the radio.

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I’m not buying your argument. I doubt you can devise and pass legislation that’ll cause more people to have emergency kits with hand cranked AM radios than cars, even if you distributed them for free, and there are scenarios that require emergency communication that don’t involve all cars being destroyed.

That said I’m not saying that the public safety argument is genuine, but you can’t just propose something else you prefer to discredit it.

Yes. It should be the FCC enforcing their regulatory duties against specific car models not the house legislating in general. The amount of interference on the low frequency bands that some electrical cars produce prevents reception of AM. And that was already very illegal. You can't do that but car manufacturers were/are too big to care. The public safety aspect of it is entirely secondary.

Didn't the Supreme Court basically say recently that the FCC and similar Executive Branch groups can't enforce such rules? They must come from the Legislature to have any hope of surviving review.

The way the ruling was made, it will be a case by case basis. If a republican FCC does it, that will be fine and normal but if a democrat does it, it's out of the legislative authority.

Either way, the 5th circuit will stop the rules from going into effect.

That's not right either, you're both wrong. Federal agencies are still allowed to make up regulations not explicitly found in the letter of the law, and courts are allowed to strike down those regulation if they think they're too far outside the spirit of the law. It works the same for both parties, not the nonsense you said.

> It works the same for both parties, not the nonsense you said.

One party has 6 supreme Court justices on the bench who we now know are explicitly working to further Republican causes [1]. The conservative supreme court is making rulings before hearing cases or reviewing evidence/decisions. They aren't interested in legal analysis which was clear with the trump immunity ruling.

So no, not "the same".

[1] https://theweek.com/politics/supreme-court-roberts-maga

The composition of the court is subject to change, as always. In any case the court made Chevron Deference so it can obviously unmake it. Congress is free to amend the Constitution to change the rules, of there is a political consensus, which there isn't.

> It works the same for both parties, not the nonsense you said.

So we aren't actually wrong because it does not, in fact, work the same for both parties. The composition of the court right this moment is such that Republicans win and democrats lose. Divorced of what the law or prior precedence dictates.

You are right, congress can make changes to the court. But don't pretend like the law is being evenly or fairly applied without regard for the underlying politics.

If the FCC can't enforce the prevention of interference with radio broadcasts it is not the FCC. I'm not sure what ruling you're referencing but I doubt it nulls out the core idea of what the FCC does.

They're referring to the recent decision which reversed the Chevron doctrine, which allowed courts to defer to the interpretation of ambiguous regulations by regulatory agencies. The most common interpretation of this decision is that it has the effect of nullifying the ability of regulatory agencies to regulate, and removes the bulk of their former role to Congress.

Here is a lengthy HN thread about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40820949

> The amount of interference on the low frequency bands that some electrical cars produce prevents reception of AM. And that was already very illegal.

Is it illegal if it doesn't interfere with communications outside the car?

If they actually cared about public safety, they would pursue legislation to require analog controls & eliminate touchscreens in vehicles.

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