Tag Archives: political economy

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?

Eric Adams’ Duplicity

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Or it’s the incompetence of New York City’s Progressive-Democratic mayor, Eric Adams.

After warning that a surge in illegal arrivals to the Big Apple would “destroy New York City” and blaming the influx for prompting budget cuts, New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams reportedly plans to provide illegal alien families with pre-paid credit cards.

A key aspect of Adams’ scheme:

The plan will begin with a $53 million pilot program targeting the migrant residents of the Roosevelt Hotel. Run through Mobility Capital Finance, the pilot plan will provide 500 families with an Immediate Response Card for use on food and infant care supplies.

That works out to $106,000 per illegal alien family. How does that compare with the amounts Adams’ budget commits to the city’s resident—and American citizen—homeless families? How does that compare with the amounts Adams’ budget commits to “ordinary” welfare payments to the city’s resident—and American citizen—families who are at the bottom of the city’s economy?

And this:

The city estimates that roughly 15,000 migrant families currently reside in NYC hotels and the administration plans to expand the program to all of them should the pilot program prove fruitful.

At $106k per each, that accumulates, according to my third grade arithmetic, to $1.59 billion. Beyond that, what logic supports the blatantly unequal treatment that favors those 15,000 families while leaving all those remaining illegal alien families literally out in the cold? Of course, that would run the bill up another billion-and-a-third….

From where does Adams expect to draw those $106k per family in his self-proclaimed environment of City destruction and attendant budget cuts? It’s more of his magical thinking.

Good That Something is Kicking Them in the Behind

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European nations are getting worried about another Donald Trump Presidency. That worry is

prompting some of America’s staunchest allies in Europe to push their neighbors that are more reluctant to spend into further action on defense and security.

To the extent that’s accurate and, if so, it bears serious fruit, that would be good, and ample justification for reelecting Trump.

In a sign that European officials are starting to address their armaments shortages, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on January 23 announced a $1.2 billion multicountry contract for 200,000 155-millimeter artillery shells, a type being heavily used in Ukraine. The shells will be produced in France and Germany and purchased by Spain, Belgium, and Lithuania.

That’s an insultingly puny step that, by itself, can’t be anything more than cynical virtue-signaling. Those 200k shells are a just a day-and-a-half expenditures by both sides combined at Verdun. Verdun was an extreme usage, certainly, but the Ukrainians are facing a much better equipped barbarian army today than the German army was that the French faced then. Those 200k shells might last a week or 10 days on defense; it’s not enough to sustain an offensive.

And what else are the European NATO nations doing?

European leaders are struggling to align against what many see as a severe potential threat to the postwar order and the prosperity that Washington’s security umbrella has brought to the continent. NATO, which turns 75 in April, has allowed Europeans to focus on economic development, confident that the US would repel threats from Moscow or elsewhere.

And

Despite increased European military spending [miniscule as it is—ed.], high-level talks are failing to deliver big results in part because the cost of shifting from US-backed security to a more independent stance would be enormous.

Translation: the European NATO nations are doing little more than continued empty yapping.

And this:

Many European NATO countries say their increases in military spending were prompted more by Russia’s initial 2014 invasion of Ukraine and subsequent hostility than by Trump’s threats. Last year, nine of NATO’s 29 European members met the alliance’s target of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense by 2024, compared with just two in 2014 when NATO set the threshold. About half are expected to hit the target this year.

That’s just disingenuous. Of those seven since 2014 who increased their spending, five of them came during the Trump administration or immediately after, with their budgets already set in the last Trump year. And at that, Germany promptly welched and redid its military spending budget downward. Only two acted in response to Russia’s “subsequent hostility”—itself a cynical euphemism for the barbarian’s 1922 invasion of Ukraine.

These nations’ failure to date is their betrayal of their fellow NATO members—they’re holding themselves incapable of responding materially to an attack on a fellow member. Their failure to date is a betrayal of their own citizens—they’re holding themselves incapable of responding to an attack on themselves.