Tag Archives: politics

States Aim to be Zero-Emissions in their Cars by 2035

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California has decided to ban all ICE car sales in the State by 2035—in the name of only zero-emission cars being allowed to be sold.

Never mind that it’s an impossible task, or that California, Washington, and Massachusetts are deceiving all of us and themselves with their claim of and demand for zero-emissions in cars sold in those States. This is, to use the technical term, a crock. Zero-emission cars are an impossibility, and it will be an impossibility for the foreseeable future of human history.

Mining for the raw materials for the batteries for these cars, and mining for the metals and other minerals that go into making any car, is not zero-emission: it takes energy to do all of that, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

Shipping those raw materials to processing plants takes energy, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

Processing that raw material into the components—batteries, car parts, wiring for the cars—takes energy, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

Shipping those finished components to the final assembly plants takes energy, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

Delivering those finished cars to their dealers for sale takes energy, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

The energy for charging and recharging the batteries in those “zero-emission” cars takes energy, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

Expanding the electric grid and building out a national network—or even just a city-wide network—of charging stations takes energy, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

And getting the raw materials, components, assembly, shipping along the way to get the components for the grid build-out and to get those recharging stations—see above.

And that’s just a high-level view of the energy requirements for producing electric cars. Electric cars are not at all zero-emission vehicles.

Contempt for us Americans

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President Joe Biden (D), leader of the Progressive-Democratic Party is building on the contempt Herb Croly, one of the founders of the modern Progressive movement, held for us average Americans, and he’s following in the footsteps of those modern Progressive-Democrats, ex-President Barack Obama, of Bible- and gun-clinging bitterness of flyover country Americans infamy, and Hillary Clinton, of 10s of millions of us being irredeemably deplorable odium.

At a Bethesda, MD, fundraiser for his Progressive-Democratic Party last week, Biden had this to say about half of all of us Americans:

What we’re seeing now is the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the—I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism.

This is a part of what makes this fall, and the fall of 2024, so important.

I Have Questions

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It seems the US and the People’s Republic of China have reached a secret agreement regarding US audits of PRC companies as a prerequisite for those companies being listed on US stock exchanges. This putative agreement allows the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board inspectors to travel to Hong Kong or mainland China for inspections, and it’s officially signed by the PCAOB, the PRC’s Securities Regulatory Commission, and the PRC’s Ministry of Finance.

I also have an observation: inspecting audit papers is not the same as auditing the company.

My questions:

  • In what way will the inspectors know that the audit papers are accurate reflections of the audit that was done?
  • How much advance notice will be required before access to the audit papers is allowed?
  • Will the inspectors be allowed to make notes/copies of the papers and take the notes/copies with them on departure?
  • In what way will the inspectors know that all of the audit papers have been made available?
  • To which audit papers will access be allowed?
  • Via what mechanism will the inspectors know which audit papers to inspect?
  • In what way will the inspectors know that all of the subset of audit papers allowed actually have been made available?

There are more, but these will do for a start.

Secret agreement because:

Officials from the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and the US Securities and Exchange Commission said they agreed with their Chinese counterparts to not make the language of the deal public.

No coverup there. Not a bit of one.

He Didn’t Have to Kowtow

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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and controlling shareholder of Facebook Meta, said on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast that he was bullied (he said pressured) by the FBI to censor Facebook commentary regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop and the information on it. He also claimed to feel

some regret that the company limited the story’s distribution after it was ultimately verified.

Sure. On the other hand, his behavior empirically demonstrates that he agreed with the idea of Facebook (and his Big Tech competitors/confreres) “filtering” information and deciding for himself what information he deemed fit for consumption by us unwashed average Americans.

After all, he wasn’t actually forced to accede to the FBI’s…pressure. He chose to do that. And he still does it. No, the more likely explanation is that it was straight up collusion, and now Zuckerberg is scrambling to cover his behind in the face of likely Section 230 backlash.

It’s Not Even That

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The Wall Street Journal thinks President Joe Biden’s (D) write-off of $10,000 worth of student loan debt is a “forgiveness coup.”

It has that effect, but I don’t think Biden is operating that deviously. This is nothing more than Biden and his Progressive-Democratic Party syndicate nakedly buying votes for this fall and 2024. It’s the bread part of bread and circuses, with the circuses being staged by his Party supporters in Congress alternately touting his having bypassed Congress to do this and bleating that he didn’t go far enough in the doing.

But at what cost is Biden buying those votes? Purely fiscally, he’s forcing us taxpayers to pony up $300 billion to make good on Biden’s largesse, according to Penn Wharton, and as much as twice that according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Politically, the move seriously angrifies a major fraction of us American citizens and voters. Perhaps chief among these are the majority of us who have no student debt to pay off: we never went to college/university; we went to work, instead, vis., in the trades, without which no house, no office building, no road, no mine or well, no part of our nation’s infrastructure gets built. Or we went to other than Ivy League schools to get quality educations in marketable areas of study, didn’t borrow to do so, and got jobs. Or we went to Ivy League or those Other Than schools, borrowed, and paid off our loans—because we got degrees in marketable areas and so got jobs.

We are the folks Biden and his syndicate are explicitly tapping to cover his forgiveness. We’re the folks who have demonstrated a grand capacity to pay off debt, so Biden is calling on us to use that skill some more.

Morally, it’s costing those bailed-out students the practice of actually keeping their own commitments, and it’s trapping them into the welfare cage of being too used to government welfare to get out of it. Because that’s the easy way out for them, and that’s what this sort of “forgiveness” teaches them.

There’s also the potential financial cost to these bailed out persons: now they have money to buy their first house, start a family, buy a car, …? Who’ll lend them the money? Are they now too great a credit risk, expecting as they might, simply to be able to walk away from that loan, too, when repaying it becomes inconvenient to them? Who’ll be willing to hire them, with potential employers looking askance at their willingness to walk away from inconvenient commitments.

The answers to those last questions will unroll only over the next few years—possibly to no serious effect, possibly to the great detriment of these persons, and thence to our economy.

One other thing is certain: colleges and universities will raise their tuition and other charges to absorb this Progressive-Democrat donation. That will leave none of us in the real economy better off.