Tag Archives: political economy

A Critical Item

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President Joe Biden (D) wants half the new cars sold in the US to be electric, and he wants and 500,000 new charging stations for them, both by 2030. He considers reliable EV charging stations to be critical to getting us switched over to battery cars.

Charging stations are necessary (assuming the switchover itself is necessary; it’s not, but that’s a separate story), but they’re far from sufficient. The important thing here is reliable electricity running to each charging station—electricity from the grid. But that requires hydrocarbon-powered electricity generating plants, and it requires the electric grid, itself barely able to handle current loads—see the rolling blackouts that are routine in California and that have become a risk in Texas—to be upgraded to handle the vastly increased loads imposed by all those battery-powered vehicles, whether charged at the charging stations or in the home garage.

Also necessary, but not sufficient even in concert with the above, is an adequate definition of “fast charging.” If a battery-powered vehicle cannot be charged to the 400-mile range of a full gasoline tank in substantially the same 5 minutes it takes to “charge” that gasoline tank to an internal combustion engine-powered car to a 400-mile range, the battery-powered vehicle will remain impractical.

The true Critical Items, then, are at the origin and near-origin: deregulating domestic oil and natural gas production and deregulated electricity generation so there will be energy to put onto that upgraded grid.

“New Dems are ready to deliver”

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That’s what Congressman Scott Peters (D, CA) claims in his Thursday Fox News op-ed. But deliver on what? And deliver how?

Last year, our country was still recovering from the twin COVID-19 economic and public health crises.

Our economy had been recovering—burgeoning—from the Wuhan Virus’ (and Government’s reaction to it) impact on it since 2020 late summer, and we’d been recovering from the Wuhan Virus situation itself since roughly the same time frame as palliatives and treatment techniques were developed, and then as two vaccines aimed specifically at the virus were developed and approved for emergency use.

Last year—2021, the first year of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s control of both houses of Congress and of the White House—saw exploding regulation, overt shutdown of oil pipelines and of oil and natural gas drilling on Federal lands, and resulting historically high inflation, from which we’re still not even beginning to recover.

The Biden administration and Congress have taken steps to address inflation by improving our supply chains; releasing millions of barrels of oil from our strategic reserves; and rebuilding our roads, ports, and bridges.

In what way, exactly, have our supply chains been improved? We still have freight ships backed up at our ports, we’re still dependent on enemy nations like the People’s Republic of China for raw materials (rare earths and lithium, both raw and processed, to suggest just two), solar panels and panel components, a variety of types of computer chips, oil from OPEC (and potentially Iran and Venezuela), and on and on.

Releasing oil from our strategic reserves? That’s been tried three times now, by the Biden administration, and each has produced only a price drop of a couple of pennies that lasted only a couple of days—and what will Biden release when the reserves are expended? Furthermore, at what cost have these reserves been released? The Trump administration filled the reserves at the cost equivalent of $1.50-$2.00 per gallon of gasoline. Today’s cost is above $5.50/gallon (and rising). And Biden still refuses to allow oil (and natural gas) pipelines to be built and still is slow-walking leases (while canceling some) for oil and natural gas exploration and slow-walking permits actually to drill.

Rebuilding our roads…? How many projects have been started from that infrastructure bill enacted a year ago?

But we can’t stop here, and we won’t.

You need to, or you will be stopped. What you’re doing is destructive of our economy.

This Isn’t Espionage?

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Three US companies—Quicksilver Manufacturing Inc, Rapid Cut LLC, and U.S. Prototype Inc—have been caught shipping technical drawings and blueprints for satellite, rocket, and defense prototypes to the People’s Republic of China, ostensibly for their cheaper 3-D printing capabilities. As a result,

Commerce Department on Wednesday suspended the export privileges of [the] three…for 180 days….

Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement Matthew Axelrod:

Outsourcing 3-D printing of space and defense prototypes to China harms US national security.
By sending their customers’ technical drawings and blueprints to [the People’s Republic of China], these companies may have saved a few bucks, but they did so at the collective expense of protecting US military technology.

Well, NSS.

Nevertheless,

A [Quicksilver] company employee signed a non-disclosure agreement, which included that the work be conducted in compliance with US export control regulations, the [production order from an unnamed US aerospace and global defense technology company] said. Those regulations required licenses that likely would have been denied.
But Quicksilver fulfilled the order that August without seeking a license, and included an invoice that indicated the products had been shipped from China[.]

The companies’ export “privileges” have been suspended for a whole six months.

How is Quicksilver’s behavior in particular not espionage? Why is Quicksilver in particular still in business?

“every company should be free to support what they want”

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That’s part of the typical response of Floridians regarding Governor Ron DeSantis’ (R) veto of the Tampa Bay Rays’ training facility being built with taxpayer money, at least as reported by Fox News.

After vetoing the funding, DeSantis said Friday that he doesn’t “support giving taxpayer dollars to professional sports stadiums” and that “it’s inappropriate to subsidize political activism of a private corporation.”

Most Floridians agree with the first part of DeSantis’ statement that taxpayer money shouldn’t be spent on a private sports facility.  Many—most?—disagree with the last part.

Governor DeSantis wants everyone to be free and have freedoms. I think that every company should be free to support what they want.

Certainly. And companies are. But they should express their views, support the causes they choose, on their own dime. Taxpayer dollars have no business being spent on a private company’s individual activism.

Government Industrial Policy

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This one EU-style. Which fits, since Europe has such long experience with the failure of economies, especially industry-driven, when dictated from the top. See, for instance, France, Germany, Italy of the last century, and France and Germany today.

One company’s (Apple, but the principle is much broader) phone charger, and the cell phones dependent on it, would become illegal throughout the EU if proposed legislation goes through. The legislation is

aiming to set a common charging standard for mobile phones and other portable electronic devices….

And

The planned legislation…is aimed at reducing electronic waste and improving consumer convenience.

Government is dictating to consumers how they will achieve the convenience Government says they want.

Never mind that if consumers want only a single charger across all battery-operated electronics (for instance), if they want a form of convenience (and not the form dictated to them by their Betters), a free market will let them drive their economies in that direction.

Sadly, the EU elitists in charge Know Better, and European citizens do not operate in a truly free market.