Punishing Success

Los Angeles has decided that the successful are too successful, and they must be knocked down. To that end, the city’s government has decided to tax the sales proceeds of the wealthy’s homes at 4% on homes sold for $5-$10 million and at 5.5% on homes sold for more than $10 million. This is on top of the real estate brokers’ ordinary 6% fee, and it’s paid by the buyer. Not that that will have any impact on the seller’s ability to sell at a fair price, or anything.

Nanny State in Automobiles

Tesla is recalling a double potful of its cars over autopilot performance.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of dashcam footage and data from a crash in Texas in 2021 shows Tesla’s Autopilot system failed to recognize stopped emergency vehicles.

That sort of thing wants correction, certainly.

However, the larger problem is this:

Tesla will recall more than two million vehicles over concerns its Autopilot system can be misused by drivers[.]

Tesla’s Autopilot system may not have sufficient controls in place to prevent driver misuse, [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] said.

Rebuilding San Francisco?

San Francisco is moving to alter certain requirements and political priorities in order to increase residential housing construction. San Francisco even has changed some actual rules so developers can build market-rate apartments with fewer requirements to provide affordable housing. One project coming out of these moves is this one:

In what would be the city’s most ambitious residential development in several years, local property developer Bayhill Ventures last month announced plans for a 71-story rental tower in San Francisco’s ailing financial district.

Oil Buyback

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden now plans to buy 2.7 million barrels of oil to put back into our oil strategic reserve.

Couple things about that.

We had 630 million barrels of oil in our strategic reserve before Biden took office and started selling it to the People’s Republic of China while claiming he was doing it to slow the gasoline price inflation his spending was causing. As recently as 24 November last, our reserve was down to 351 million barrels. According to my second grade arithmetic, that means Biden had reduced our reserve by 279 million barrels in just those two years and 10 months. My third grade arithmetic tells me that those 27 million barrels he’s buying for the reserve is just 1% of what he’s taken out of it. Which makes buying that oil an insulting effort to distract us with his pretense of refilling our reserve after his dangerous reduction.

Heat Pump Efficacy

I’ve mentioned earlier the level of energy efficacy of heat pumps. Here is an example of the level of fiscal efficacy of heat pumps. The fronted lede:

A two-year project to convert a public housing building to an electrically powered heat pump system is nearing completion on the Upper West Side. The 58-year-old 20-story tower at 830 Amsterdam Avenue (100th Street), part of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Frederick Douglass Houses development, is being retrofitted to provide heating, cooling, and hot water for residents—and to serve as a possible template for converting more of the 2,410 buildings NYCHA maintains citywide.

I Have a Thought

(Yeah, yeah)

The Energy Department’s Office of the Inspector General says that the Department

faces major management challenges ranging from hacking vulnerabilities to foreign espionage and could create “massive new risks to the taxpayer” as it spends tens of billions of dollars in new spending from President Joe Biden’s signature infrastructure initiative[.]

The OIG goes on to say that the fraud risk is similar to the realized fraud from the Federal government’s Wuhan Virus Situation (my term, not OIG’s) spending, where taxpayers now lost an estimated $200 billion government wide.

The OIG also noted that

“Emergency Powers”

Progressive-Democratic President Joe Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act of 1950 as an excuse to pour more of our tax dollars into his global warming foolishness. He’s using the Act to pump $169 million into nine projects across 15 sites nationwide in an effort to accelerate electric heat pump manufacturing. There are some serious problems with this. In no particular order:

Disregard and Pass Their Own

DoD has submitted a budget request that includes $114 million for diversity, equity, and inclusion claptrap [emphasis added].

The Defense Department’s fiscal year 2024 budget request shows the federal agency’s emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion, including “ensuring accountable leadership with continued emphasis and investments in sexual assault and harassment prevention, suicide prevention, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA), and Insider Threat Programs.”
The DOD document shows that DEI is at the forefront of DOD policy.
[The request said] The Department will lead with our values—building diversity, equity, and inclusion into everything we do[.]

And this:

Federal Revenue

The Wall Street Journal is concerned about the IRS exercising its claimed authority to delay implementation of some tax requirements for which Congress had set strict enforcement deadlines. Apart from the question of whether the IRS actually has that authority, the concern centers on how the agency moves might impact revenues for the Federal government.

…the tax agency’s moves frustrate lawmakers’ attempts to raise revenue and plug gaps in tax compliance.

The real question, though, centers on an aspect of Federal revenues about which I’ve written before. This is the claim made in the linked-to article’s headline, and which is repeated in the body of the article:

Customer Choice

New Mexico’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has gotten to be enacted rules mandating battery cars and trucks in New Mexico.

Starting in calendar year 2026, 43% of all new passenger cars and light-duty trucks shipped to New Mexico auto dealerships by national auto manufacturers must be zero emission vehicles. Similarly, beginning in calendar year 2026, 15% of all new commercial heavy-duty trucks shipped to New Mexico auto dealerships by national auto manufacturers must be zero emission vehicles. These percentages gradually increase over time.