Why do you peons hate Mother Gaia? The Plebians are not doing what the Patricians have demanded!

Fresh off the stories of the demands at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the hoitiest and the toitiest get to use their private jets to take their mistresses to a very upscale Swiss ski resort and lecture us about global warming climate change, it seems that the people are just not doing what they’ve been told!

Ford cuts production of F-150 Lightning EV, adds jobs at Bronco and Ranger plant

  • Ford is increasing production of its Bronco SUV and Ranger pickup, while cutting production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning, the automaker said Friday.
  • The announced cut to Lightning production comes a month after CNBC and other media outlets reported Ford would slash planned production of the pickup roughly in half this year.
  • The automaker will be reducing production of the Lightning at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan to one production shift from two, impacting approximately 1,400 employees.

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After 72 uninterrupted years in power, Democrats have kept Philly our nation’s poorest big city

The city of Philadelphia has been governed by Democrats for decades: the last Republican mayor left office while Harry Truman was President of the United States. The Democrats of today, in complete charge of the City of Brotherly Love, have talked a great, great game of taking care of the poor and downtrodden, yet it has to be asked: having talked the talk, have they walked the walk?

Some Philadelphia homeless shelters have gone months or years without being paid by the city

The Office of Homeless Services spent $15 million more than it was budgeted over the last four years, but some nonprofit leaders say during that time, they experienced severe delays in payment.

by Anna Orso | Wednesday, January 17, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST

It was the Monday after Thanksgiving when officials at Gloria’s Place, a West Philadelphia homeless shelter that’s operated for five decades, learned their contract with the city wouldn’t be renewed due to a lack of funding, and the seven families in its care would need to find shelter somewhere else.

That came after Gloria’s Place had for ten months housed dozens of children and adults referred to them by the city — but were not paid the more than $400,000 the city owed them.

Yup, it’s another one of those Philadelphia Inquirer articles limited to subscribers only. I subscribe so that you don’t have to. Continue reading

It was -4.1º Fahrenheit on the farm this morning.

When I arose, at 7:05 this morning, it was -4.1º Fahrenheit outside. No wind is showing, but there’s a possibility that the anemometer is frozen in place; I’ll tap it loose when I go outside.

I have previously noted that we have backup heat here on the farm, with a propane fireplace, something we installed during our 2018 remodeling project, because our primary heat is an electric heat pump. The thermostat for the fireplace was set at 64º F, so that it would come on if the primary heat failed overnight, but shouldn’t come on as long as the heat pump was engaged. Guess what: even though the primary heat was on and working, the fireplace still came on, which tells me that the heat pump was unable to keep up! Heat pumps work by extracting heat from the atmosphere around the outside condenser, but when there’s not a lot of heat to extract, they lose efficiency. Continue reading

In Philly, it seems that squatters have more rights than property owners There's a point at which the more moderate Democrats do little more than enable the far left.

We have previously noted how the left in Philadelphia do not respect people’s property rights, and how no one in the city cannot ever be expected to protect property rights. Naturally, The Philadelphia Inquirer would never report on this story, but the New York Post did:

Philadelphia homeowner is forced to pay $1.2K to get squatters out after cops refused to intervene

By Melissa Koenig | Monday, January 8, 2024 | 2:42 PM EST

A Philadelphia homeowner says he was forced to pay squatters who changed the locks and left the property a mess $1,200 to leave after city officials refused to intervene. Continue reading

SEPTA wants more tax dollars, but just a $1.00 fare increase would wipe out their deficit Shouldn't SEPTA's expenses be paid by SEPTA's riders?

1 dead, 13 injured after 2 SEPTA buses collide at Shelmire Avenue in Philadelphia, July 22, 2023.

The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer, in an effort to persuade the state government to provide more money for the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA, undermined their own argument with just two sentences:

And for many Pennsylvanians, public transit is simply not part of their daily life. Nor is it for about 45% of Americans, who have no access to public transportation at all.

The obvious question is: why should people who don’t use SEPTA, and don’t even have a chance to use public transportation, see more of the tax dollars they pay go to SEPTA? Continue reading

If electric cars are the future, why are investors fleeing companies the build and run EV charging stations?

But, but, but, we’ve been told that plug-in electric vehicles are the wave of the future! From The Wall Street Journal:

Investors Sour on EV Charging Companies

EV charging companies have fallen from lofty valuations as concerns mount about their profitability

by Jennifer Hiller | Boxing Day, December 26, 2023 | 7:00 AM EST

The companies that install and operate electric-vehicle charging networks are in the middle of a building boom, but their share prices are sputtering. Continue reading

St Greta of Thunberg must be appalled! I am wryly amused

Former Democratic presidential nominees Al Gore and John Kerry are surely weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth at the news, but the sensible among us see this as great! From CNN:

The United States is producing more oil than any country in history

By Matt Egan | Updated 5:00 PM EST | Tuesday, December 19, 2023

As the world grapples with the existential crisis of climate change, environmental activists want President Joe Biden to phase out the oil industry, and Republicans argue he’s already doing that. Meanwhile, the surprising reality is the United States is pumping oil at a blistering pace and is on track to produce more oil than any country has in history.

“The existential crisis of climate change”? So many reporters keep using that word; I do not think it means what they think it means. We may have some issues with which to deal with global warming climate change, but we’re not all going to die.

Remember: human beings are the most adaptable creatures on earth, and we live everywhere, from arctic wastelands to steaming jungles to bone dry deserts, and we have done so even prior to our modern, industrialized society.

The United States is set to produce a global record of 13.3 million barrels per day of crude and condensate during the fourth quarter of this year, according to a report published Tuesday by S&P Global Commodity Insights.

Last month, weekly US oil production hit 13.2 million barrels per day, according to the US Energy Information Administration. That’s just above the Donald Trump-era record of 13.1 million set in early 2020 just before the Covid-19 crisis sent output and prices crashing.

As the world’s largest oil producer, that means more American dollars stay in the United States rather than going to Saudi Arabia or Venezuela, and some money from foreign countries comes to the United States. This enriches American companies and American workers, and that ought to be seen as a good thing for the American people.

The US is exporting roughly the same amounts of crude oil, refined fuels and liquid natural gas as Saudi Arabia and Russia. With the Saudi and Russian collusion, on which we have previously reported, to reduce OPEC’s production to raise prices, American production has helped keep those prices down.

“It’s a reminder that the US is endowed with enormous oil reserves. Our industry should never be underestimated,” said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group.

Record-shattering US production is helping to offset aggressive supply cuts meant to support high prices by OPEC+, mainly Saudi Arabia and Russia. Other non-OPEC oil producers including Canada and Brazil are also pumping more oil than ever before. (Brazil is set to join OPEC+ next year.)

Think about what this means. Russia’s economy is dependent upon oil and natural gas exports, and Vladimir Putin wanted to use western Europe’s dependence upon Russia oil and, especially, natural gas as a weapon against NATO countries which are supporting Ukraine with money and military equipment. Without Russian natural gas, a lot of western Europe countries, much of which are at latitudes higher than our lower 48-state border with Canada, the Europeans would have gotten awfully cold during the past two winters, but American production has prevented Russia from being able to effectively utilize their energy weapon.

The climate activists want us to cease oil production, thinking that that will somehow save the world, and perhaps we can eventually develop energy systems which can truly replace oil for energy production, but, right now, that day has not come. And the United States, with its oil, natural gas, and seriously underused coal reserves, has natural resources which can make Americans in general wealthier. The activists just don’t get it: doing what they want would make Americans poorer.

Then again, if liberals actually understood economics, they wouldn’t be liberals anymore.

Philadelphia: nickel-and-diming people

After fifteen years in the Keystone State, my wife and I retired back to our home in Kentucky. Pennsylvania has an individual income tax rate of 3.07%, which is a fairly low rate among those states which have income taxes. Kentucky had an individual income tax rate of 5.0%, but this has been lowered to 4.5% for tax year 2023, and again to 4.0% for 2024.

But, unlike Pennsylvania, the Bluegrass State doesn’t try to nickel-and-dime people to death for every little thing. And thus we come to this, in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A paper bag fee, new protections for building workers, and a send-off for Council President Darrell L. Clarke | Council roundup

The final meeting of Council’s four-year term included a flurry of legislation and speeches praising outgoing Council President Darrell L. Clarke.

by Sean Collins Walsh | Thursday, December 14, 2023 | 3:42 PM EST

Philadelphia City Council on Thursday approved a new 15-cent fee for consumers who need paper bags at retail stores.

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The media don’t like that deep pockets donors won’t tolerate anti-Semitism! Colleges really hate the fact that they are not somehow "above" the real world, but a part of it

If the questions had been whether calling for the genocide of blacks or the killing of homosexuals, there is no way on earth that university Presidents Liz Magill of Penn, Sally Kornbluth of MIT, or Claudine Gay of Harvard would ever have said that such decisions on violations of rules or codes of conduct would ever depend on the “context” of such speech. Nor would Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Inquirer, be telling us that Dr Magill’s “ouster” at the University of Pennsylvania is an attack on free speech, but a horrible racist who just had to go. And while the newspaper’s Editorial Board have not weighed in on the subject, the selection of articles and OpEd columns in the Inky is certainly on the side of allowing open debate on a question once thought completely settled. Continue reading