Tag Archives: economics

Empty Promises

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The Left and their Progressive-Democratic Party politicians have been promising “good paying” jobs in green energy as they try to push our nation off hydrocarbon-based energy onto their “green” energy sources. Here’s an example, in Moapa, NV, of how well kept those promises are.

A coal power plant that once employed as many as 300 people closed near this small town about an hour outside of Las Vegas in 2017. Nevada’s public utility has since transformed the site into a home for batteries that store energy captured by nearby solar panels. The $257 million project received roughly $100 million in federal tax credits because of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
… Construction of the site and installation of the batteries required roughly 200 workers over a year. Maintaining and operating the batteries will require about five.

Never fear, tough.

NV Energy [that Nevada public utility] executives said the federal money will enable the utility to make new investments while keeping energy costs low for consumers across the state. “We can pass that benefit directly onto our customers in a time-efficient way,” NV Energy Chief Executive Doug Cannon said.

Right. And I might know of some beachfront property north of Santa Fe that these folks might be interested in.

Not only is Party doing its best to push us onto expensive, unreliable energy sources, it’s also reducing the number of jobs available in our energy production industry, and farther as the ripples from the sort of failure here spreads.

This is why we’ll never have nice things as long as the Progressive-Democratic Party reigns.

Speaker Johnson’s Job

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House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) has a job to do, and The Wall Street Journal tried to characterize it this way:

…Johnson has to decide whether to cut a government funding deal with Democrats that risks costing him his job.

No. The House’s job, and so Speaker Johnson’s job, is to control the Federal government’s spending. That job, that spending control, most assuredly does not include cutting deals with a Progressive-Democratic Party that is bent on profligate spending. That he’s confronted with so many timid Republicans desperate for the comfort of loyal opposition rather than the hard reality of governing only makes his own job harder. That timidity, no more than spendthriftiness, alters his job not a whit.

If the government partially shuts down, that’s on those obstructionist Progressive-Democrats, even as they’re aided and abetted by timid Republicans.

This Is Why Unions Need to be Busted

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Iowa State Senator Adrian Dickey (R, Packwood) has introduced SF 2374, which is a bill that would

require each public employer to “submit to the [Public Employee Relations Board, or PERB] a list of employees in the bargaining unit” within 10 days of a union recertification election.

Never mind that Iowa’s taxpaying citizens have every right to know what their tax dollars are being used for and who’s being paid with them. Never mind, either, that the bill requires public employers, not unions, to submit lists of eligible employees. Never mind, either either, that unions insist on precisely this information when it’s useful for them; unions just call it card checking.

Jesse Case, Teamsters Local 238 Secretary-Treasurer, says that everything—including strikes—are on the table if that’s what it takes to stop the bill. He’s even proposing some wildly inappropriate, deliberately dangerous, union actions if his union doesn’t get its way:

Let’s say you’re a water treatment person and you get a call at three in the morning that says, “The water supply’s going down,” you’re not obligated to answer that call and that’s not a strike.
It’s not a work stoppage because you’re not getting paid at three o’clock in the morning to answer your phone. In fact, it’s against the law to make somebody answer their phone if they’re not receiving pay.
…
It’s [sic] there’s a blizzard moving in at three in the morning, you can go into work at seven or six or your regular scheduled time—call Senator Dickey to come plow your streets.

The union doesn’t care about the risks to businesses or lives; they want their way. The union doesn’t care that those hours already count as serious overtime, emergency or not, with serious extra pay associated.

These strike threats, these union flu work slowdowns, this you can’t have anything unless we get everything ideology, this legalized extortion—nice business/state/whatever you got there, be too bad if something was to happen to it—is exactly why today’s unions need to be busted.

The Iowa legislature and Governor need to stand tall and pass the bill and apply the consequences to these unions.

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.