Daily Archives: 15 November 2022

Two Things

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Former President Donald Trump’s candidates won their primaries—and they lost in the general election. The Republican Party needs to move on from Trump: he was an effective President, and for the most part, his policies were sound. However, his post-2020 election behavior and rhetoric have been nakedly divisive, and his attacks have been directed more at Republicans than at Progressive-Democrats. Trump has made himself counterproductive to Republican and to national interests, and the Republican Party needs to render him irrelevant.

The other thing is that the Progressive-Democratic Party heavily influenced the Republican Party’s primary nominees, getting Progressive-Democrat-favored Republicans nominated on seven occasions. The Progressive-Democratic Party’s general election candidates then defeated all seven.

Republicans need to do two things about this, one of which has a broader, necessarily critical, application. The one is that Republicans need to call out the Progressive-Democratic Party’s interference, identify the campaign ads, and then emphasize their intrinsically (if strictly legal) dishonest nature and the desperate ploys that they are.

The other, broader thing is Republican messaging. Every Republican candidate individually, needs to talk heavily about what his policies—concrete, measurable policies—will be if he’s elected. It’s not enough to speak only about the other guy’s failures, though that does need to be a part of the messaging. It’s watery gruel, indeed, too, to speak only in glittering generalities about the Republican candidate’s own policies and goals. More than that: all of the individual candidate policies need to come from a wholly unified party set of policies so that each of the candidates is fighting for the same thing at a national scale, as well as a local one, rather than irrelevantly of each other or outright at cross purposes with each other.

Bonus thing: as long as early voting is going to be a thing in our general elections, Republicans need to work to get their voters out early, also, if only to mitigate the traditional advantage Progressive-Democrats have in early voting numbers and late counting of in-person voting. This would mitigate the opportunities for shenanigans regarding those early voting and late counting numbers.

This brings up an additional bonus thing: our Constitution’s Article I, Section 4, says this:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Place of Chusing Senators.

That ability of Congress to change or alter States’ election prescriptions is key here. States have, in my not so humble opinion, early voting periods that are far too long and mail-in balloting rules that are too loose. The former encourages voting to occur before candidates have developed their campaigns very much, even before the candidates have debated each other at all. It also gets too many voters committed before any late- or moderately late-breaking events that otherwise would affect a candidate’s viability. The latter is too vulnerable to ballot harvesting, misplaced/misbehaved-on ballots, ballots pushed to voters whether they ask for them or not, and other failures, both honest mistakes and nefariously done ones.

Congress—more likely, We the People—need to consider a Congressional alteration that limits early voting period to a much shorter period, say, one week. Congress—more likely, We the People—need also to consider limiting mail-in ballots to absentee ballots positively requested by a voter and with those ballots requested only with a reasonable excuse for not voting in person (e.g., a military member stationed outside his voting precinct).

Ubiquitous Battery-Powered Vehicles

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These need things; here’s a partial list of Critical Items and some problems associated with their acquisition.

With respect to batteries, the raw materials—lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt, among others—are expensive to mine and destructive of the environment to mine. Both the metals themselves and the mining tailings are highly toxic and expensive to handle and to dispose of.

Refining those materials comes with its own problems:

[The People’s Republic of China] processes some 70% of the world’s lithium and cobalt, and 99% of the manganese, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. [The PRC] also dominates the market for the parts that go into batteries, such as cathodes and anodes, as well as the production of batteries themselves.

And this:

[The] majority of motors used in today’s EVs rely on permanent magnets, which produce a constant magnetic field that helps spin a motor’s rotor and, in turn, power the wheels.
But these magnets require costly rare-earth metals such as neodymium and dysprosium. As with battery ingredients, the dominant supplier is [the PRC], and producing the metals can cause pollution

That makes us dependent on an enemy nation for our economic welfare.

On the other hand, there are such things as AC induction motors. These are a 19th century invention and are ubiquitous in today’s household appliances. However.

[They are] less efficient. That can reduce a vehicle’s driving range unless battery storage is boosted.

That increased battery dependence would make us even more dependent on that enemy nation for the materials. Aside from that, induction motors also take a double potful of copper, and copper mining is destructive of the environment.

And this: the electricity distribution infrastructure needed to for recharging the batteries doesn’t yet exist, and the current grid already is nearly fully occupied just handling today’s household and business loads.

And this: the production of electricity depends on inconstant solar and wind facilities, on fossil fuel (reliable and cheap, but currently under attack by the Left), and on nuclear power (currently hugely expensive to produce, with the building of additional nuclear power facilities even more expensive due to enormously expensive over-regulation).

The root problem (to use a phrase), then, is to get government out of the way of fossil fuel use and out of the way of adding nuclear power reactors to the electricity distribution grid. And expanding the grid to handle the increased load.