A bizarre “Eye on America” segment on the beleaguered CBS Evening News left reasonable viewers wondering whether they drifted off to Castro’s Cuba or the former East Germany. The term “regime media”, mockingly bestowed upon the legacies when Democrats are in power, just got disturbingly real.
Watch as CBS platforms and amplifies the concept of paid tattletaling on individuals who allow their vehicles to idle in New York City:
Realize where we are: CBS reports that NYC pays tattletales to snitch on idling trucks. pic.twitter.com/Bzxzlvz0d1
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) June 19, 2025
CBS EVENING NEWS
6/18/25
6:54 PM
JAMES BROWN: He calls himself Streeter. A soldier in the war on idling.
STREETER: Shortly after 6:00, I'm out on my bike looking for idling trucks.
BROWN: Two years ago he gave up his job in marketing to look for drivers running their engines full-time.
STREETER I'm essentially biking six, seven, eight, nine hours a day.
BROWN: In New York City, it's against the law for trucks and non city buses to idle for more than 3 minutes. But the law is rarely enforced.
STREETER: Right there.
BROWN: And that's where the big money comes in for Streeter and others who report idlers. It's called the Citizens’ Air Complaint Program. A person who sees a truck or bus idling records it, reports it, and keeps 25% of the fines, which typically range from $350 to $600. So what are you making- in excess of six figures of doing this?
STREETER: Yeah, it's in excess of six figures, yeah.
I was unaware of the existence of such a program until the airing of this report. The story itself was balanced enough. Featured within were the professional enviro snitch, the Wall Street financier that instigated the creation of the snitch program, and the trucking industry lobbyist present to explain the undue burdens the program creates for his industry.
Appearance of balance notwithstanding, the report is disturbing on multiple levels. First of all: the item still a basic, albeit creative, form of climate activism. Brown’s final line, referencing “idle warriors” who are “going full throttle trying to clean up the air”, drives the point home to anyone who didn’t get it over the preceding three minutes.
In this case, the still-essential trucking industry is cast as the story’s villain. But the true villain is a big (New York) city government driven by the desire to impose what C.S. Lewis called “a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims.” Hence the trucking industry advocate talking about drivers’ unwillingness to enter into New York City (which I’ve heard firsthand from truckers who do not speak lightly on such matters). Overregulation, in this case driven by climate zeal, raises costs and makes it unprofitable for carriers to enter into the city. They’s rather not deal with the hassle.
Second and more disturbing, there is the concept of incentivizing neighbors to betray one another’s unapproved activities to the authorities. Find a Cuban exile, and ask them about the Committees in Defense of the Revolution (CDR)- manned by local residents willing to report “counterrevolutionary activities” (including wrongthink and wrongspeak) to the brutal Castro dictatorship in exchange for God knows what. You’ll find that New York’s “Citizens’ Air Complaint Program” comes mighty close to the loathed CDR.
Of course, reporting perceived climate climes are but the camel’s nose in the proverbial authoritarian tent. Once you’ve encouraged talletaling to the government over one thing, resistance to snitch about other things washes away.
And this is what is most disturbing about this weird report. What appears on the surface to be little more than climate propaganda is in fact an attempt to create a broad permission structure for authoritarian societal control. And that is fundamentally anti-American.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on the CBS Evening News on Wednesday, June 19th, 2025:
JOHN DICKERSON: James Brown has a tattletale in tonight's "Eye on America."
JAMES BROWN: He calls himself Streeter. A soldier in the war on idling.
STREETER: Shortly after 6:00, I'm out on my bike looking for idling trucks.
BROWN: Two years ago he gave up his job in marketing to look for drivers running their engines full-time.
STREETER I'm essentially biking six, seven, eight, nine hours a day.
BROWN: In New York City, it's against the law for trucks and non city buses to idle for more than 3 minutes. But the law is rarely enforced.
STREETER: Right there.
BROWN: And that's where the big money comes in for Streeter and others who report idlers. It's called the Citizens’ Air Complaint Program. A person who sees a truck or bus idling records it, reports it, and keeps 25% of the fines, which typically range from $350 to $600. So what are you making- in excess of six figures of doing this?
STREETER: Yeah, it's in excess of six figures, yeah.
GEORGE PAKENHAM: It’s a public health issue.
BROWN: George Pakenham, who’s spent much of the past two decades working to clean up the air in New York City, helped make this law happen. A former Wall Street banker, Pakenham watched his brother, a nonsmoker, battle Stage IV lung cancer. Then he started wondering about the number of vehicles sitting idle, polluting the air.
PAKENHAM: So I looked at the limo driver, I rapped on the window and said: “what happened to shutting your engine off?” And he did.
BROWN: He took his frustrations to city legislators. In 2017, they passed the law allowing people to report idling vehicles, and other cities are following suit. Los Angeles and Philadelphia are working on similar programs to stop idling. So how much money has New York City made off of this program?
PAKENHAM: Total tally is just under $70 million.
STREETER: Idling is against the law.
TRUCK DRIVER: Oh, is it against the law?
STREETER: Yeah.
TRUCK DRIVER: Oh, yeah?
BROWN: But catching idlers isn't always easy money.
TRUCK DRIVER: You got to delete that right now.
STREETER: Why?
BROWN: Speak for the truck drivers. How are they feeling?
ZACH MILLER: They feel abused, frankly.
BROWN: Abused.
MILLER: Abused. They find this to be a bounty trucker program.
BROWN: Zach Miller is a lobbyist for the trucking association of New York. From the citizen standpoint, they may say- there’s an easy solution: just cut the engine off.
MILLER: They do not understand the intricacies of driving a truck in New York City. It is very hard work. There are trucks that have to operate their liftgate 15-20 times a day. Drive a truck in New York City for a week and then come back to me and tell me that’s an easy solution.
PAKENHAM: Would you like to stand behind a bus for 5 minutes and breathe? I don't think so. I do think anyone would.
BROWN: For now, George Pakenham and the idle warriors are going full throttle trying to clean up the air. For Eye on America, I’m James Brown in New York.
