Category Archives: political economy

Vulnerability of our Electric Grid

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Much is being made, and justifiably so, regarding the lack of capacity of our electricity distribution grid to support growing electricity demands.

…assessments of the national electric grid’s ability to deliver power during peak demand periods, such as heat waves and cold snaps, have shown increasing risk for blackouts.
…
Environmental groups are pushing to transition home heating from natural gas to electricity, and electric vehicles are also adding to the grid’s thirst for power.
Among this mix of increasing electricity needs are data centers.

That’s not our grid’s only set of vulnerabilities, though. Our grid remains vulnerable to EMP strikes, whether high altitude nuclear or more targeted and localized conventionally driven EMPs. Such attacks would be especially destructive since the wiring in the grid would act as a wave guide and feed the pulse into every electronic device connected to the grid, from home computers to those in our financial and data centers, frying those computers. This is…disappointing…in that it would be relatively cheap to harden our grid against EMP (and relatively cheap to harden those computer assets, too, especially the nationally important ones).

An additional vulnerability is cyber attacks against key control nodes in our electricity distribution grid, a vulnerability that continues to be given short shrift by both the Federal and State governments and by the grid-associated utilities. This vulnerability is amply demonstrated by the multiplicity of denial of service attacks, ransomware attacks, hacking-based data thefts, and on and on.

No CR

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The House Freedom Caucus wants House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) to attach a House-passed border security bill that’s sitting in the US Senate to the next spending bill that Congress must pass to avoid a government shutdown. Freedom Caucus member Bob Good (R, VA):

I think we ought to be willing to have a fight over securing the border. I think we ought to refuse to fund the government if the administration continues to be unwilling to secure the border, then we ought to tie the funding of the government to border security implementation where some funds are held back until the measurables are met, the performance metrics that demonstrate that the border is being secured. And we do it to through Sept. 30 at the FRA levels[.]

No, that’s a typically Republican timid temporization, and as such, it continues to cede the budget—and our border security and support for our friends and allies—to the not-tender mercies of the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Republicans, including the apparently courage-fading Freedom Caucus, need to be willing to engage in a fight over securing the border (et al.) by not having another CR.

Let the Progressive-Democratic Party and Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden eat their government shutdown over their flat refusal to secure our border and to pay for the spending they want for Ukraine, Israel, and the Republic of China, however badly that spending is truly needed.

Of course that means Republicans need to stop being so timid when talking about government shutdowns—when they’re not actively ducking the subject—and they mustn’t hesitate to identify, by name, those Congressmen and Senators who are actively blocking the agreements necessary to conclude the bills.

That’s One Spin

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Battery car sales seem to be falling off in California.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday that Tesla sales fell significantly in the back half of 2023, declining by 10% in the final quarter alone. This sales drop came despite California’s previous pledge to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035.

The LA Times is busily spinning the reason for the fall-off. The outlet is claiming

“controversial pronouncements” from Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

It added

There’s no survey to prove it, but there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest liberal-leaning California car buyers are done with Elon Musk’s abrasive personality and his stands on political issues.

No data; LAT just Knows Better.

And this:

If enough buyers here are truly fed up enough with Musk to influence their purchasing decisions, Tesla’s sales could continue to suffer.

On the other hand, Greg Bannon, AAA‘s Automotive Engineering Director, told the LAT

The government and automakers have spent billions on something consumers may not want.

Of course. Who is this Bannon guy, anyway? It couldn’t possibly be that consumers, even in California, are increasingly becoming less enamored of battery cars.

Mm, mm. Nope.

Metaphorical Payroll

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Now the claim is that a number of the extremely wealthy donors pressured Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden into effecting a moratorium on approvals for new liquified natural gas exports.

Charities controlled by members of the Rockefeller family and billionaire donors were key funders of a successful campaign to pressure President Biden to pause new approvals of liquefied natural gas exports from the US.

And

“They got our attention,” a senior Biden administration official said of the activists’ efforts, describing the campaign as intense.

I beg to differ on the “pressure” part. Joe Biden is the President, not these rich folks. Any pressure he felt would have come from within himself only; no one could force him or threaten him into doing anything.

The only way he would feel any pressure from the Rockefeller family and billionaire donors would be if he were on their metaphorical payroll and feared losing his metaphorical job with them.

‘Course, maybe that’s the case. That is the modus operandi of the richest lobbyists—paying their politicians to do their bidding.

Another Progressive-Democrat State Government…

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…favors illegal aliens over its citizens. New York is opening State government jobs to illegal aliens.

New York is allowing migrants with federal work authorization to apply for thousands of temporary government jobs, [Progressive-]Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul said.

And

I have 10,000 openings in the New York State workforce. These are all legal people.

They’re legal only in a very narrow, legalistic sense. They’re illegal aliens who’ve been—wrongly, I claim—granted temporary work permits.

Hochul also is lowering the requirement to have at least a minimal education, a minimal English language proficiency, and appropriate certifications as criteria for getting these jobs. In sum, she’s extending diversity hire ideology to include illegal aliens.

The larger question, though, is why these jobs aren’t held for the State’s low-paid or jobless citizens and resident aliens—non-citizens present legally?