That’ll be the Day

Ford Motor Co is going to switch to Alphabet’s Android for the software to drive its cars’ displays, beginning in 2023. I can tolerate that, mostly, even if it is Alphabet.

Here’s the kicker, though [emphasis added].

Ford also intends to work with Alphabet Inc’s Google for cloud services to help the auto maker develop in-car features and manage the reams of data streaming from its vehicles.

And

Ford, GM, and others are now working with Google to offer Android as built-in software, a move that allows owners to download apps directly to their vehicle’s tabletlike display….
Auto makers are mobilizing to offer in-car services to customers that would allow the companies to collect recurring revenue streams….

I don’t need tracking software in my vehicles, and I don’t need mechanisms to suck ever more money out of me via my vehicles.

It’ll be a cold day in a warm place before I’ll let any car of mine connect to the Internet.

Full stop.

Taxing and Spending

Progressive-Democrats are shocked—shocked—that folks want to hang onto their money rather than send in to Government. Thus, when State profligate spending and confiscatory tax rates were exposed by the Federal income tax reform that capped SALT deductions at $10,000, and folks on whom the cap had material effect decided to relocate their incomes, their money, and their lives to other States, Progressive-Democrats squalled most loudly.

The lawmakers say the cap, created in the 2017 tax law, punishes their constituents unfairly and pushes residents to move to low-tax states such as Florida. They are pitching the break as crucial to their states’ economic recovery.

Here’s New Jersey State Congressman Josh Gottheimer (D), for instance:

Folks have been moving away in droves since our state and local tax deduction was gutted. This is key to the health of our economy, key to keeping our state strong.

Never mind that those State governments could readjust their spending and taxing priorities.

No, it’s how dare those Government subjects leave and go where they can better hang onto the money that’s rightfully theirs. It’s that money doesn’t belong to the folks who earned it; that money belongs to those States, and the Progressive-Democrats of those State governments have only to carve out a pittance and toss it back to their subjects.

The arrogance of Progressive-Democrats and their contempt for us ordinary Americans knows no bounds.

Alphabet Strikes Again

Alphabet, through its wholly-owned Google’s wholly-owned YouTube, has censored The Epoch Times, barring the news outlet from its YouTube channel and expelling it from YouTube’s Partner Program, through which The Epoch Times monetized much of its output.

Alphabet claims the news outlet violated its subsidiary’s subsidiary’s “Community Guidelines.” Its YouTube spokesman said,

All channels on YouTube need to comply with our Community Guidelines, and in order to monetize, channels must comply with the YouTube Partner Program policies, which include our Advertiser-Friendly Guidelines. Channels that repeatedly violate these policies are suspended from our partner program.

The spokesman declined to say how the guidelines had been violated, or what output from The Epoch Times had been deemed wanting.

Of course, if Alphabet got specific, it would have to explain its censorship.

Stimulus Checks

Brittany De Lea wrote in FOXBusiness that $1,400 in checks for the next round of “stimulus” spending might not actually be necessary for all of us.

I agree with the point of the article—not all of us truly need the $1,400. However, the unspent money wouldn’t be wasted or lost to the private economy. The money must still go somewhere: ultimately, it will end up in a bank as savings or in a bank as debt payments.

Money put in a bank, for any reason, becomes loanable funds for the bank, and so makes its way back into the private economy. The only thing here is the time lag: the money won’t be a prompt economic boost.

That boost wouldn’t be necessary anyway, if government—at all levels—got out of the way and let businesses reopen and let us citizens go back to work and go back to spending/saving/paying down debt with our paychecks.

Good Union Jobs

But not good enough for President Joe Biden (D).  Recall that Biden ran on “good union jobs,” among other causes, and that phrase—”good union jobs”—became so ubiquitous in his speeches as to resemble a tic.

But not all union jobs—labor is another area where Progressive-Democrats choose winners and losers. When Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline, he killed roughly 11,000 good union construction, construction-related, and ancillary jobs. No matter: Progressive-Democrats, led by Biden, don’t approve of those jobs.

And that doesn’t begin to address the job losses in Canada, jobs that depended on both the pipeline construction and on the subsequent flow of oil.