Tag Archives: politics

So What?

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Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund, is worried that if the incoming Trump administration cuts off subsidies for battery cars, we’ll be ceding battery car leadership to the People’s Republic of China.

Leave aside the fact that our battery car component supply chain (as with so many other of our industry production) remains dependent on the PRC. Pushing battery cars on Americans will increase our dependence on that enemy nation.

Be that as it may, Americans don’t want battery cars. This is demonstrated by the continued need for government subsidies—the tax monies us average Americans remit to our Federal government—in an ongoing effort to con us into buying them anyway, along with outgoing Biden administration efforts to dragoon us into buying these white elephants by raising fuel and emission “standards” to usurious levels intended to ban ICE vehicles.

More than that, satisfying the so-called need for battery cars, the blandishments of left-wing climate Know Betters like the EDF notwithstanding, will not have any material effect whatsoever on slowing the non-existent existential climate crisis that the climatistas are on about.

The subsidies are a waste of our tax money and badly want elimination.

Let the PRC be saddled with—dare I say hobbled by—that transportation dead end and its enormous costs.

“Mistake”

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The Pentagon has finally got around to recognizing the dual nature of businesses domiciled in the People’s Republic of China, and it has listed a number of companies as being dual military and commercial companies. Among them are Cosco Shipping; CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology), which is trying to ram a new CATL battery factory down the throats of a Michigan community whose residents adamantly don’t want it; and WeChat owner Tencent Holdings. I think WeChat ought to be on that list, too, but that’s for another time.

CATL and Tencent in particular are bellyaching about their listing.

Tencent said its inclusion “is clearly a mistake. We are not a military company or supplier. Unlike sanctions or export controls, this listing has no impact on our business. We will nonetheless work with the Department of Defense to address any misunderstanding.”

And

CATL has never engaged in any military-related business or activities….

CATL also says it’ll sue if they can’t have its way.

The claims are…silly…given the already dual nature of all businesses domiciled in the PRC as intelligence gathering and commercial operations under the PRC’s 2017 National Intelligence Law. The whole point of that law is to put PRC companies at the behest of the nation’s intelligence community for espionage and, by extension, at the behest of the nation’s People’s Liberation Army for use of their products and development of related products as guided by that espionage.

Woke-ism

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A Wall Street Journal article centered on Canada’s Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau resigning (being updated, as this article was published very shortly afterward) closed with this:

Liberal lawmaker Wayne Long said the Liberal Party under Trudeau has swung too much to the left on the political spectrum, much like the Democrats in the US.
“I don’t want to use the word wokeism, but we’ve doubled down on things where we’ve come out as a moral authority,” said Long, who isn’t seeking re-election this year. “People are tired of it. It doesn’t mean that they’re right and we’re wrong, but reality bites, and reality sometimes sucks.”

The Liberals still are unable to recognize that their policies are plain wrong and destructive. They’re only willing to say they were unable to sell their stuff to the public. Much like the Progressive-Democratic Party at home.

Self-Driving Cars

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This Luddite remains strongly opposed to letting robots drive me around. However, the software that runs one version of a robot car, that package “guiding” Tesla’s latest iteration of its Full-Self Driving car, version 13.2, is a vast improvement of past efforts, according to BARRON’S.

Absent from the testing, though, at least as publicly reported, is how well 13.2 handles random (and frequent) traffic violations by the cars of other drivers that would endanger the occupants of the FSD or pedestrians or other vehicles. Such violations include the relatively minor, such as speeding; as well as the more dangerous wobbly bicycle(s) and inattentive bicyclists; pedestrians darting, at the last moment even, in front of the FSD in his last ditch effort to cross the road; crossing traffic running the red light or stop sign; oncoming traffic deciding to make a left turn at the last moment; the list is extensive.

Other risks are mostly in the residential neighborhood: the toddler in front of a parked car at the last moment darting into the street and the small pet under that parked car making the last moment dart into the street.

Many of those situations are difficult enough for a human driver to answer, often too difficult and the collision occurs.

Any robot-driven car needs to be able to handle those random situations at least as well as any experienced human driver.

Then there’s the classic moral paradox, usually cast in terms of a railroad exercise regarding which track to be switched to given the certainty of some measure of death regardless of the choice. Those choices occur on roads with cars and trucks, also, and they’re often badly handled by the human drivers involved. What can we expect from robot software?

To repeat: I remain strongly opposed to letting robots drive me around. The software involved is improving, but enough so? What constitutes sufficient improvement? At the least, satisfactory handling of the above situations.

Is She Confused?

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Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, opined in his Res ipsa loquitur blog that US Virgin Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D) is mistaken about our Constitution. She did, after all, have a few things to say during the just concluded vote for a House of Representatives Speaker concerning the status of the USVI (and other territories) in our nation. She demanded, in those remarks, the “right” of territorial delegates to vote on matters before the House.

This body and this nation has [sic] a territories and a colonies problem.

And

I note that the names of representatives from American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia were not called, representing, collectively, 4 million Americans. Mr Speaker, collectively, the largest per capita of veterans in this country.

As Turley noted in the body of his essay,

The language of the Constitution is clear and unambiguous. Absent an amendment to the Constitution, only states may vote on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.

He also cited the relevant clause of our Constitution, Art I, Sect 2:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch in the States Legislature.

Plaskett, a duly qualified and certified lawyer, isn’t at all mistaken; she’s acting quite deliberately. She’s all too typical, too, of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s contempt for and disregard of our Constitution, canonically illustrated by ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) announcement that if Congress would not do as he told it, he would exercise his pen and telephone to bypass or overrule it, and by soon-to-be ex-President Joe Biden’s (D) lack of concern for the unconstitutionality of his student loan “forgiveness” scheme with his serial cancelations of those loans. Party’s attitude is one that reaches back at least as far as the then-Democratic Party’s head, Woodrow Wilson, who insisted that our Constitution was obsolete, in the way, and needed to be put aside in favor of his party’s Technocrat-centered “leadership.”