Category Archives: Economics

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It was never about tolerance; it was always about forced acceptance

We first mentioned Dylan Mulvaney a month ago, when, as Robert Stacy McCain put it, “satire is rapidly becoming impossible because reality has gotten so weird.” Since then, two well-paid executives accepting his ‘reality’ have managed to get themselves fired “leaves of absence“.

Mr Mulvaney managed to keep his mouth shut for a while, as someone told him he realized that opening it would not help his cause.

Well, he’s talking again, but it isn’t helping his case. According to Mr Mulvaney, I should be in jail!

What did he say?

The articles written about me using ‘he’ pronouns and calling me a man over and over again, and I feel like that should be illegal, I, I don’t know, that’s just bad journalism.

He may rest assured, while I always referred to him as male and use the masculine pronouns, I have never called him a man. Nevertheless, Mr Mulvaney believes that “should be illegal.” I’m not certain under what existing laws he believes that it “should be illegal,” or whether he believes that a new law should be passed to make it so, but I’m pretty solidly in favor of this one:

The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.

You’ve heard of the First Amendment, right? That pesky part of the Constitution of the United States which states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What Mr Mulvaney doesn’t seem to understand is that the First Amendment protects his right to claim that he’s actually a girl, or to say that he believes it should be illegal for [insert plural slang term for the anus here] like me to refer to him in ways which do not accept his claim that he’s really a woman. I absolutely support his right to say what he wishes, but I also have the right to say that I believe anyone who accepts what he has said as somehow truthful is dumb as a box of rocks.

Naturally, the vast majority of the professional media have been using Mr Mulvaney’s preferred terms, and, as we have previously reported, The Philadelphia Inquirer decided to double down with a fluff piece on Will Thomas, the male former University of Pennsylvania swimmer who decided that he was really a woman, and was calling himself “Lia.” The credentialed media have been quite diligent in their attempts to ‘normalize’ the cockamamie idea that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

That wasn’t all Mr Mulvaney had to say. This is from the HuffPost, so naturally it’s all favorable to him!

Dylan Mulvaney Breaks Silence In Wake Of Bud Light Partnership Backlash

Story by Ben Blanchet • Friday, April 28, 2023

Dylan Mulvaney said she (sic) has struggled to understand “the need to dehumanize and be cruel” following right-wing outrage over her partnership with Bud Light earlier this month. . . . .

Mulvaney, in her (sic) first TikTok in roughly three weeks, said some of what’s “been said” about her (sic) has been far from the truth and revealed that she’s been “having crazy deja vu” after facing criticism.

“I’m an adult, I’m 26 and throughout childhood I was called too feminine and over-the-top and here I am now being called all those same things but this time it’s from other adults,” said Mulvaney, who later quipped that she (sic) should be accused of being a theater person who is camp.

Well, that last is true enough: he is a “theater person who is ‘camp’.” His schtick is over-the-top campiness, and a total parody of how real girls act, yet he doesn’t seem to see how the whole thing makes him wholly unbelievable, and actually hurts people who are ‘transgender’ and are simply trying to fit in to society as they see themselves. Making a spectacle of yourself hardly seems to be trying to fit in.

If that’s all it was, no one would really care. But the left are pushing laws which require other people to go along with a ‘transgendered’ person’s faux name and requested pronouns and honorifics, some of which have passed, subjecting employers to hostile workplace violations if an employee refuses to lie about another employee’s sex, and can even fine businesses if an employee ‘misgenders’ or ‘deadnames’ a customer.

Translation: at least in New York City, the truth will set you free . . . from your job.

As Erick Erickson put it, “You will be made to care.”

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Bud Light: the choice is between incompetence and stupidity Alissa Heinerscheid's Career Limiting Move has limited someone else's career as well

We have previously noted how Anheuser-Busch executives have realized that the corporation completely f(ouled) up over using ‘transgender’ parody actor Dylan Mulvaney as a spokesthing for Bud Light, and how Bud Light’s Vice President for Marketing Alissa Heinerscheid has taken a “leave of absence” over the controversy.

Well, Mrs Heinerscheid hasn’t been the only casualty. From The Wall Street Journal:

Bud Light Brewer Puts Two Executives on Leave After Uproar Over Transgender Influencer

Alissa Heinerscheid, who oversaw Bud Light marketing, and her boss Daniel Blake placed on leave

By Ginger Adams Otis, Lauren Weber, and Jennifer Maloney | Updated: Sunday, April 23, 2023 | 4:26 PM EDT

Anheuser-Busch InBev SA BUD: (%) said it had placed on leave two executives who oversaw a Bud Light collaboration with a transgender activist. Continue reading →

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Harvard grad enters the unemployment line

We have previously noted the idiocy of Bud Light’s Vice President for Marketing Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid’s choice to use Dylan Mulvaney, the homosexual male who claims he’s a girl, and has been using a “365 Days of Girlhood” presentation — which I refuse to link — which completely mocks stereotypes of how real girls act, as the brand’s spokesthing. Well, now the digested food appears to have hit the air circulation device:

Bud Light’s Marketing Leadership Undergoes Shakeup After Dylan Mulvaney Controversy

Alissa Heinerscheid, who has led the brand since June, takes leave of absence and is replaced by Budweiser global marketing VP Todd Allen

by Jon Springer | Friday, April 21, 2023

Anheuser-Busch InBev has changed marketing leadership for Bud Light in the wake of controversy over the brand sending a can to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney with her (sic) face on it.

Alissa Heinerscheid, marketing VP for the brand since June 2022, has taken a leave of absence, the brewer confirmed, and will be replaced by Todd Allen, who was most recently global marketing VP for Budweiser.

I did suggest, in the previous article, that Mrs Heinerscheid had made a “Career Limiting Mistake.” 🙂 Continue reading →

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People are investing in nice housing in parts of Philly, but if the city doesn’t address rampant crime, such will eventually cease.

Sometimes the real news is found in sections of the newspaper — and yes, I’m a newspaper reader, even if it’s just the digital editions! — in which you don’t expect it. From the Real Estate section of The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Apartment building proposed under the El adds even more transit-accessible housing in Fishtown

The 114-apartment building with a restaurant is planned for Front Street.

by Jale Blumgart | Thursday, April 20, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

A 114-unit apartment project is planned immediately adjacent to the Market-Frankford Line at 1440 N. Front St. on the border between Fishtown and South Kensington.

This is the latest, and largest, project from Archive Development, a new real estate company that’s been building in the Fishtown area since 2020. The project will contain 2,000 square feet of retail space, which the company wants to go to a restaurant.

“Front is one of the only streets in Fishtown where you can truly build with high density,” said Henry Siebert, cofounder of Archive. “We’ve seen it transition from a former industrial street with warehouses to a true, viable commercial corridor. That’s what attracted us.”

Amenities include a seventh floor “sky lounge,” with a kitchenette and a roof deck. It will also include a gym, coworking spaces, a dedicated conference room, and a ground floor garden. There will be five studios, 93 one-bedroom units, and 16 two-bedroom units.

There’s more at the original, but that apartment building better have some outrageous soundproofing. Who would want the sound of the El outside their windows?

Fishtown has been gentrifying for years, enough to have attracted the attention of Forbes:

How Fishtown, Philadelphia Became America’s Hottest New Neighborhood

Peter Lane Taylor[1]I cover luxury real estate, travel, hospitality, and entrepreneurs | May 2, 2018,09:52pm EDT

Every Friday afternoon at 5:30 pm the doors of “the El­”—one of America’s oldest elevated subways—swoosh open at Girard and Berks Street stations, unleashing a stampede of Millennials, yuppies, hipsters, entrepreneurs, and empty nesters onto Front Street.

As fast as the doors close, they scatter east down a maze of narrow streets swirling with trash, bumping shoulders with the occasional heroin addict and scrappers pushing shopping carts piled high with salvaged sheet metal. Nobody blinks.

A half dozen blocks away from their newly-built, half-million dollar townhomes, the lines twist out the doors at Pizzeria Beddia and Frankford Hall, two of Philadelphia’s hottest foodie spots. Across the street, Johnny Brenda’s is already packed—hosting as they have for over a decade one of America’s hottest indie rock bands. Mothers pushing strollers window shop past Lululemon along Frankford Avenue’s buzzing retail corridor fronted with wine bars, coffee shops, couture boutiques, yoga studios, a vintage motorcycle joint, and an Argentinian tango dance school.

Visually the dichotomies are jarring. Culturally the contradictions are even more confusing. Yet when the El disgorges its “New Fish” every afternoon it epitomizes the driving forces behind Fishtown’s warp-speed transformation, and the demographics fueling America’s new urban revolution.

There’s more at the original, including this photo, which I found interesting. Captioned as “An average night at Frankford Hall,” it shows the stereotypical young urban professionals at the Frankford Hall Hofbräu München German biergarten, a full courtyard of exclusively white — from what I could see — twenty-and-thirty-somethings. Philly is, overall, a very racially and ethnically diverse — and I’ve come to hate the word ‘diverse’ — cities, but, as the Inquirer previously reported, “Among the 30 biggest cities, Philadelphia is second only to Chicago in its level of residential segregation between Black and white residents, according to data from Brown University. Between Hispanic and white residents, it’s the sixth-most segregated.” And it’s only going to get worse.

But if Fishtown is gentrifying, an up-and-coming neighborhood, it’s right up against Kensington, Philly’s worst, or at least the one with the worst reputation, one so bad that the Mexican government used video of Kensington in an anti-drug ad campaign. And the 1440 North Front Street project is just 2.1 miles from the SEPTA elevated train station at Kensington and Allegheny Avenues.

Inquirer reporter Jake Blumgart spent a fair amount of space telling readers about the mass transit opportunities in the area, with this paragraph standing out:

Archive Development’s project on Front Street comes amid a construction boom directly adjacent to the Market Frankford elevated tracks. The El has struggled with low ridership, remote work trends, and a surge in antisocial behavior following the pandemic.

LOL! A “surge in antisocial behavior”? That’s a rather mild euphemism for shootings, assaults, and rampant drug use in SEPTA stations, with stations and transit cars filled with discarded needles.

There’s a choice that Philadelphia has to take, one which will determine the path our nation’s sixth largest city will follow. Will the city opt for actual law enforcement, and clean up Kensington and the Philadelphia Badlands, to enable further gentrification, wealth, and potential integration, or will it persist in non-enforcement, in excusing crime and leniently treating criminals, further depressing the depressed neighborhoods?

References

References
↑1 I cover luxury real estate, travel, hospitality, and entrepreneurs
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The Amazoning of our lives

Having spent my professional career in the ready-mixed concrete industry, working Sundays was extremely rare, but it wasn’t completely unheard of. There was one year in which a company doing some serious work at the Ford assembly plant in Norfolk, while the plant was closed from Christmas through New Year’s Day, wanted concrete every day during that period, including Christmas and New Year’s Day. Being the man who always got the strange work assignments, I was the first plant manager asked to do the work. And yes, despite being salaried, I was paid extra for the Christmas and New Year’s Day shifts.

‘Wolf in sheep’s clothing’? How a USPS worker’s fight over Sunday shifts could change your workplace.

Story by John Fritze, USA TODAY • Saturday, April 15, 2023 • 10:56 PM

Washington — Gerald Groff wanted to spend his Sundays at church. His employer, the U.S. Postal Service, wanted him delivering packages.

That simple dispute between an employee and his managers sparked one of the most significant religious cases to reach the Supreme Court in years – with the potential to shift the balance of power between employees and employers over weekend schedules, dress codes and how workers conduct themselves around colleagues.

Mr Groff, the article states further down, sought work with the USPS precisely because, as Vernon Dursley happily said in Harry Potter: The Sorcerer’s Stone, there’s “No post on Sundays.”

This one is a bit personal for us, because our younger daughter worked for the USPS in Versailles, Kentucky, as a temporary worker; she hadn’t gotten the actual civil service job yet. And yes, as she told me while I am writing this post, Sundays were required because the regular USPS workers refused to do them, but the Amazon contract required Sunday deliveries.

Now, why would USPS workers be working on Sundays? Because the Postal Service signed a contract to deliver packages for Amazon in 2013, and Amazon wanted packages delivered on Sundays. While USPS tried to give workers off at least one day a week, our daughter had to work 23 days straight for the Christmas rush in December if 2017.

The appeal raises a basic question with potentially sweeping consequences: How far must large employers go to accommodate the religious needs of their workers? For Groff, an Evangelical Christian who told his boss in 2017 that he wouldn’t cover Sunday shifts because of his faith, the answer became a personal and painful one.

“I lived under a cloud of thinking any day I could report to work…and then be told that I was terminated,” said Groff, a 45-year-old Pennsylvanian who resigned from the Postal Service in 2019. “Two years of just pretty much every day was tough.”

While his supervisors attempted to accommodate Mr Groff’s needs, they couldn’t always do so, and he wound up having missed 24 scheduled Sundays, and disciplinary actions against him started to mount.

For nearly five decades, similar disputes have been guided by a 1977 Supreme Court decision that allows employers to deny religious requests if they present more than a trivial cost. That standard, Groff’s attorneys say, means companies could decline to alter schedules to account for a sabbath or allow an employee’s religious dress in too many circumstances.

In practice, the government argues, the standard is often read by courts to require employers to accommodate such requests.

So, the feds are arguing that the standard does not need to be changed, because it is often read improperly, as requiring employers to do things which would have met Mr Groff’s religious needs. That’s one strange argument!

Groff is asking the Supreme Court to toss that standard. But his critics fear what the court’s conservative majority might come up with as a replacement. And they’re concerned that new standard could lead to workplace discrimination.

“There’s a huge can of worms that this opens up,” said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Letting people shift the cost of exercising their religion onto their co-workers in a way that harms their co-workers is the opposite of equality.”

Whenever you hear something from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, you can count on it: their message will be hostile to the free exercise of religion. Taking Rachel Laser’s statement at face value, one can easily make the argument that other accommodations, such as those for pregnant women, or for handicapped employees which require other employees to work harder or longer, would also be “the opposite of equality.” Would Miss Laser and Americans United state that a company could force a black employee to work on Martin Luther King Day, Juneteenth, or Kwanzaa, because not to do so could burden other employees?

The court will hear arguments in Groff v. DeJoy on Tuesday.

Actually, I expect a narrower ruling, because Mr Groff, who was employed by the United States Postal Service, was being required to work for Amazon as well. More, it will depend on what he was told during his pre-employment interview. Was he told about Sunday deliveries for Amazon, and, if he was, was he told that the USPS would work around his religious faith? Did Mr Groff inform the USPS prior to being hired that he could not work on Sundays?

I’m old enough to remember Sunday “Blue Laws,” or Sunday closing laws, which kept many businesses closed. Things which were deemed essential, such as grocery stores and pharmacies and, of course, hospitals, were exempted. Ira P Robbins argued, in 2022, that Sunday closing laws, while held constitutional by the Supreme Court in McGowan v Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961), they have effectively become obsolete, as exceptions to closing laws increased, some states repealed them, and the public wanted to shop on Sundays. Since McGowan turned on the states wanting to provide a day of rest as a societal good independent of religion, with so much of the public declining to take Sunday as anything other than go, go, go, that argument would fail today.

But perhaps it shouldn’t fail. Does Amazon really need to have things delivered on Sunday, and do people really need to have a Kitchen Aid stand mixer or a bird feeder or a new pair of shoes on Sunday? Did we not find out, during the COVID-19 panicdemic, that certain businesses were not only non-essential on Sundays, but for the rest of the week as well?

I thought that the blue laws were kind of silly when I was a teenager. Now, maybe not so much; we can use a day to slow down.

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Did Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth really not know about the Dylan Mulvaney boondoggle?

When your company does something just boneheadedly stupid, always blame a low-level staffer, even if that low-level staffer holds the title Vice President of Marketing.

My good friend, and occasional blog pinch-hitter, William Teach noted how Anheuser-Busch is trying to backtrack away from the idiocy of using ‘transgender activist’ Dylan Mulvaney as a spokesthing:

Anheuser-Busch CEO Realizes They Really Messed Up, Issues Statement Which Pleased No One

By William Teach | Saturday, April 15, 2023 | 7:00 AM EDT

Brendan Whitworth must have taken a look at the plummeting stock, and, more importantly, the plummeting sales, and decided to do a little damage control:

Anheuser-Busch CEO Issues Statement After Dylan Mulvaney Beer Can Scandal: ‘We Never Intended to Be Part of a Discussion that Divides People’

Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth issued a mea culpa Friday in the wake of the company’s partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, a former gay man who now claims to be a woman.

The move sparked backlash across the nation as the company became the latest to focus on woke social issues — namely, the radical left’s attempts to promote woke gender ideology into society by injecting it into schools and placing it on the forefront of favorite brands in corporate America. According to reports, Anheuser-Busch lost more than $6 billion in market value following its promotional campaign with the transgender TikTok star as tensions rose and boycotts ensued.

On Friday, Whitworth issued a statement, contending that the company “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people.”

Translation: “We were f(ornicating) clueless!”

Anheuser-Busch is headquartered in St Louis, and the Missouri state legislature has been fighting over proposed legislation to prohibit ‘transition’ quackery for minors; did no one there read the St Louis Post-Dispatch? Does no one there pay any attention to the local news broadcasts?

The St Louis Dispatch, rescued from bankruptcy by Joseph Pulitzer in 1878, and merged with John Dillon’s St Louis Post, to become the Post and Dispatch, soon the Post-Dispatch quickly became the city’s most important newspaper, and eventually the largest in the region. It’s a regional newspaper that no one can ignore, and if the paper’s editorial position appears to support ‘gender affirming care,’ the newspaper publishes a fair amount of coverage of the political fight over it. Local television stations also cover the topic.

The leadership of Anheuser-Busch can’t not have known that this is a controversial topic, even if some, or all, of them come down on the side of transgenderism stupidity, even if some, or all, of them swallow the whole idea not just hook, line, and sinker, but all the way up to deep throat the rod-and-reel. But someone in the company decided to make Mr Mulvaney the face of Bud Light advertising.

So far, that decision has been attributed to Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, who said she had a mandate to keep America’s best-selling beer from losing customers, to expand its customer base.

I’m a businesswoman, I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light, and it was ‘This brand is in decline, it’s been in a decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand there will be no future for Bud Light.

Advertisers have been doing that for decades. We began to see ads including minorities in the 1970s, and many, many ads these days show groups of people who are racially integrated, in an attempt to appeal to all races and ethnicities and show growing friendship. The New York Times was reporting on an increase in interracial couples being shown in advertising five years ago.

But Dylan Mulvaney? He’s not just claiming to be a ‘transgender girl,’ but his shtick is actual mockery of the whole notion; rather than trying to fit in as a woman, his act is one which is a wholly over-the-top of every silly stereotype there is. Mrs Heinerscheid, who is a graduate of Harvard University, was either too clueless or too stupid to see that using Mr Mulvaney as a brand spokesthing would cause a backlash, or she just plain didn’t care, and wanted to use her position to push an agenda, when her job is to sell more beer.

I’ve got to ask: did Chief Executive Officer Whitworth really not know about Mrs Heinerscheid’s brilliant idea? It’s not as though a lot of other people didn’t know: television commercials had to be produced, cans with Mr Mulvaney’s picture were made, checks were cut, contracts signed, all of which involves people, a lot of people, people including attorneys.

We don’t know if Mrs Heinerscheid will be, as Mr Teach suggested, promoted to customer, but something like this would seem to fall well into the category of a Career Limiting Mistake. A corporate Vice President, coming up with an idea as controversial as this one, would normally protect himself by taking it up the ladder, crediting himself with the decision but getting feedback from his bosses.

Yet Mr Whitworth is distancing himself from Mrs Heinerscheid’s decisions. That’s kind of what some people would do when something like this blows up in their faces, leaving Mrs Heinerscheid twisting in the wind.

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Shocking! Who could ever have predicted this? Get woke, go broke?

I have said before that I don’t see Dylan Mulvaney as an actual ‘transgender’ woman; his act, “Days of Girlhood,” is so much a parody, so different from how actual girls act, that it’s difficult to take him seriously. Of course, the dummkopf from Delaware did, as President Biden actually sat down for an interview with Mr Mulvaney. Is there any Catholic doctrine that our purportedly Catholic President won’t trash?

Nike hired Mr Mulvaney to sell sports bras when he has “nothing to put in the sports bra, when actually it’s really important women get proper support when they do sport,” 1980 women’s Olympic silver medalist Sharron Davis said.

Anheuser-Busch somehow thought that it would be an absolutely groovy cool idea to use Mr Mulvaney to sell Bud Light beer!

Bud Light Distributors Fear Unemployment After Beer Sales Plummet Over Dylan Mulvaney Partnership

Story by Haley Gunn • Tuesday, April 11, 2023 • 8:30 PM

Anheuser-Busch distributors have begun to fear for their jobs after Bud Light sales in the Midwest and South plummeted following the beer’s new sponsorship with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, RadarOnline.com has learned.

News of Mulvaney’s partnership with the popular beer sparked controversy online. Conservative celebrities like Kid Rock took to social media to post their outrage at the brand. Critics accused the brands partnering with the TikTok star of going “woke.”

Frenzy surrounding Bud Light, which is owned by Anheuser-Busch, reached new heights when a man, who claimed to be an affiliate distributor of the beer, posted his grievances on Twitter.

There’s more at the original.

Budweiser beers had already seen slumping sales, so perhaps this was a ‘Hail Mary’ pass attempt. Whatever it was, it seems to have fallen as flat as an open can of beer:

Also read: William Teach: What A Shame: Anheuser-Busch Sees $6 Billion Loss After Trans Stunt

Anheuser-Busch distributors in the South were “spooked” by the widespread backlash Bud Light received after teaming up with transgender social media star Dylan Mulvaney.

The intense opposition to Mulvaney promoting the beer has been alarming to Anheuser-Busch distributors, which placed fewer orders after the partnership sparked outrage from conservatives who argued the company is pushing “gender propaganda,” according to a Beer Business Daily report reviewed by Fox News.

“We reached out to a handful of A-B [Anheuser-Busch] distributors who were spooked, most particularly in the Heartland and the South, and even then in their more rural areas,” the popular beer industry trade publication wrote.

Beer Business Daily said it assessed the situation “purely from a marketing and sales perspective,” noting that current data are very limited but “it appears likely Bud Light took a volume hit in some markets over the holiday weekend” since rural customers are also most likely to celebrate Easter.

“Whether it lasts or whether the publicity sparks incremental off-setting demand from over the ideological divide in metro areas, remains to be seen,” the publication wrote, adding that it will be difficult for Bud Light to “appeal to the sensitivities of a new generation of drinkers” without offending some longtime customers.

It’s too early to know if the slump in sales will continue, but companies use celebrities and athletes to advertise their products because they are hoping for some form of audience identification with the celebrity or athlete. Nike’s sports bra is pretty much the same as any other manufacturer’s sports bra; will using a flat-chested male-in-drag. While Mr Mulvaney has ‘famously’ had ‘facial feminization surgery,’ at least as of a few months ago had not had been castrated or had ‘bottom’ surgery or breast augmentation done. How does that sell sports bras? Does making Mr Mulvaney the ‘face’ of Bud Light really appeal to the vast majority of beer drinkers as someone with whom they’d want to identify?

I cannot boycott Bud Light, or Budweiser beer, or any of Anheuser-Busch’s other products, because I never bought them in the first place, but Bud Light was the nation’s number one beer by sales. Perhaps other beers which taste great but are less filling, whatever the heck that means, will supplant Bud Light, or perhaps they won’t.

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You will drive an electric car, and you will like it! Suck it up, buttercup, and do as you are told!

A former co-worker of mine liked to use the expression, when telling someone to do something he didn’t want to do, “and you will like it.” That’s how I see the actions of the Biden Administration to force plug in electric vehicles on American consumers. Do Americans really want them? All-electric vehicles — excluding hybrids — were 5.8% of all new vehicles sold in the US in 2022, up from 3.2% in 2021. At least as of now, buying a plug-in electric vehicle is not something most Americans would like to do.

From The New York Times:

E.P.A. Is Said to Propose Rules Meant to Drive Up Electric Car Sales Tenfold

In what would be the nation’s most ambitious climate regulation, the proposal is designed to ensure that electric cars make up the majority of new U.S. auto sales by 2032.

by Coral Davenport | Saturday, April 8, 2023 | 11:00 AM EDT

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is planning some of the most stringent auto pollution limits in the world, designed to ensure that all-electric cars make up as much as 67 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the country by 2032, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Also see: William Teach: Good News: Brandon’s CAFE Standards To Drastically Increase

That would represent a quantum leap for the United States — where just 5.8 percent of vehicles sold last year were all-electric — and would exceed President Biden’s earlier ambitions to have all-electric cars account for half of those sold in the country by 2030.

It would be the federal government’s most aggressive climate regulation and would propel the United States to the front of the global effort to slash the greenhouse gases generated by cars, a major driver of climate change. The European Union has already enacted vehicle emissions standards that are expected to phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. Canada and Britain have proposed standards similar to the European model .

At the same time, the proposed regulation would pose a significant challenge for automakers. Nearly every major car company has already invested heavily in electric vehicles, but few have committed to the levels envisioned by the Biden administration. And many have faced supply chain problems that have held up production. Even manufacturers who are enthusiastic about electric models are unsure whether consumers will buy enough of them to make up the majority of new car sales within a decade.

That last quoted line is the telling one: “Even manufacturers who are enthusiastic about electric models are unsure whether consumers will buy enough of them to make up the majority of new car sales within a decade.” Or, in my former co-worker’s phraseology, you will buy one, and you will like it!

What’s that you say? A plug-in electric car is not really a good choice for you? Suck it up, buttercup, and do as you are told!

Not your choice? I’ve said it many times before: the left are pro-choice on exactly one thing!

Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is expected to announce the proposed limits on tailpipe emissions on Wednesday in Detroit. The requirements would be intended to ensure that electric cars represent between 54 and 60 percent of all new cars sold in the United States by 2030, with that figure rising to 64 to 67 percent of new car sales by 2032, according to the people familiar with the details, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not been made public.

Now, how does that work? The most obvious way would be to force manufacturers to produce 60% or more of their new vehicles as plug-in electrics, but production of them does not mean that they would sell in such percentages. What happens if Ford produces 6 million plug-in electric and 4 million internal combustion engine vehicles, but American consumers choose to buy out the 4 million ICE vehicles but only a fraction of the electrics sell? Ford would have to cut the price of the electrics to the bone, perhaps below manufacturing costs. How long can the company sustain such losses?

A 2019 Chevy Dolt Bolt electric vehicle caught fire at a home in Cherokee County, Georgia, on Sept. 13. Source: Cherokee County Fire Department. Click to enlarge.

Electric vehicles have their problems, the most obvious is charging them. If you live in a decent house, with a garage or secure parking space and ample electric service to install a charger, you can recharge overnight. But with urbanization, something the left want to see increase, a lot of people don’t have that garage or secure parking space. Here in the wilds of eastern Kentucky, I’ve seen plenty of homes with just 100 amphere electric service, and while it would be possible to have an electric car charger on one of those, you’d lose the ability to use an electric range or electric heater or clothes dryer while you were charging your Chevy Dolt. The only realistic way to charge at hole is to have 200-amphere electric service installed, and if you don’t have it, that means a licensed electrician to do the work.

Rapidly speeding up the adoption of electric vehicles in the United States would require other significant changes, including the construction of millions of new electric vehicle charging stations, an overhaul of electric grids to accommodate the power needs of those chargers and securing supplies of minerals and other materials needed for batteries.

Rapidly speeding up the adoption of electric vehicles in the United States would require other significant changes, including the construction of millions of new electric vehicle charging stations, an overhaul of electric grids to accommodate the power needs of those chargers and securing supplies of minerals and other materials needed for batteries.

All of which the Biden Administration plans on doing, but all of which also requires that private companies decide to make such investments. Can anyone build a commercial charging station before the electric grid to support it is in place?

It was December of 2021 in which I last stopped at the Wawa at the junction of PA-61 and I-78 in Pennsylvania, where there were six Tesla electric car charging stations, none of which was in use, and twenty-four — if I remember correctly — gasoline pumps, all of which were in use, with a line for next at some of them. Imagine: 24 vehicles not taking 5 to 10 minutes apiece to fuel up and go, but spending 45 to 75 minutes each recharging. It might be great for Wawa, selling more coffee and sandwiches, but perhaps less great for the people having to spend that time there. And if your Tesla is getting near a flat can, and you are stuck in line waiting for a charging station, you might get rather annoyed.

The trips I used to have to make between Pennsylvania and the Bluegrass State? I’m a pretty steady — and perhaps slightly heavy-footed — driver, and could make the trip in around 9½ hours, including one stop for fuel in West Virginia. If rather than my gasoline-powered 2010 Ford F-150 with a 36-gallon fuel tank, I had a 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning, I’d have to make two hour-long charging stops on the 624 mile trip, and I’d still arrive with less than a 50% charge.

The 9½ hour trip just became 11½ hours, if not more. And I’ve had the privilege of paying $60,000+ for the truck! F(ornicate) that!

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Helen Gym Flaherty apparently thinks that money grows on trees And she wants to do everything she can to improve public safety except the most obvious: actually enforce the law!

As Robert Stacy McCain noted in “Chicago Votes for More Crime,” when the Windy City Democrats nominated police-hating Brandon Johnson to become their next Mayor, the bad things that happened under Mayor Lori Lightfoot would just get worse.

When Jazz Shaw refers to the city’s “carjacking epidemic,” it’s no exaggeration. As recently as 2014, Chicago had barely 300 carjackings a year. Last year, there were more than 1,600 carjackings in Chicago, to go along with 737 murders and 2,937 people wounded from gunfire.

In crime-ridden Philadelphia, you’d think that people would take notice of that, and some did. Philadelphia’s Working Families Party tweeted how happy they were that Mr Johnson won in Chicago, and wanted Philly to be next by voting for Helen Gym Flaherty.

Who are the Working Families Party? On their About page, they pretty much tell us that they are full socialist without saying that they are full socialist, but I will admit to being amused that the photo they used[1]Also here, in case they delete it. as an illustration of who they are was of almost entirely young people, mostly Asian, in front of a Chinese restaurant in New York City, in the summer[2]Or so I judge by their shorts, sandals, and crop tops., all wearing silly face masks.

And so we come to Mrs Flaherty. The Philadelphia Inquirer, which, to their (slight) credit, endorsed Rebecca Rhynhart rather than the far-left Mrs Flaherty, had this on the Working Families’ favorite:

Philly mayoral candidate Helen Gym’s education plan includes a $10B ‘Green New Deal’ for schools

Gym said Thursday the city could borrow money to finance some capital costs and that she favors directing a higher share of property taxes to the School District.

by Anna Orso | Thursday, April 6, 2023 | 7;40 PM EDT

Philadelphia mayoral candidate Helen Gym on Thursday unveiled an education proposal that includes guaranteed jobs for teenagers, free SEPTA passes for all city students, and a $10 billion plan to modernize school buildings.

Gym, who stood with supporters outside Edward T. Steel Elementary School in Nicetown to make the announcement, called her public-education focused capital plan a “Green New Deal for Schools” and vowed to implement a 10-year facilities improvement plan. She also said she would add more librarians and counselors to schools, overhaul the high school selection process, and base school budgets on need, not enrollment levels.

Ahhh, yes, the Edward T Steel Elementary School. City Councilwoman Kendra Brooks, a Working Families Party member, tweeted:

I met @HelenGymPHL over a decade ago when my daughter’s school was going to be privatized. We were a few moms saying we want something greater. We DESERVE something better.

That’s what her education plan is about. That’s why I’m standing here today because since day one, she’s been fighting for communities like mine. And winning.

To this day, Edward T. Steel Elementary is a public school.

Why yes, it is. In the still public Steel Elementary, which is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 8% scored at or above that level for reading. Maybe keeping it public didn’t work all that well?

Another respondent had the charts. But perhaps having a campaign rally touting public education in front of a clearly failing public school wasn’t the brightest idea, unless Mrs Flaherty was assuming that the people who would be most likely to vote for her aren’t particularly bright themselves.

Her announcement was another sign that the former City Council member and longtime public-schools activist is running in part on her education background by proposing a laundry list of schools improvements that teachers and advocates have been urging for years. . . . .

The proposal didn’t include an overall price tag, but $10 billion in capital costs alone would represent an enormous expense. Under the current administration, the proposed capital investment for the entire city for the next six years is $13.2 billion.

My compliments to reporter Anna Orso for researching that and pointing it out. Where would the city get the money?

Gym said Thursday the city could borrow money to finance some capital costs and that she favors directing a higher share of property taxes to the School District, which currently receives 55% of local property tax revenue. Doing so would, in turn, decrease cash flow to the city’s coffers.

“The point is that we’re not going to get there if all we say is what we don’t have,” she said. “I know the city has to get down to business to do it, but it needs a plan, it needs a vision, and we need somebody who’s been relentless about fighting for this from day one.”

As we have previously noted, Philadelphia’s population has dropped by 2.28% between the April 2020 Census and the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2022 population guesstimate. More, 3.34% of the 36,539 souls lost during that time period, 1,222 people, were lost to murder! If Mrs Flaherty’s proposals were put into effect, the obvious result is that more better-off people would move out of the city due to the higher taxes which would necessarily be imposed to pay for all of her ideas, whether paid for by direct taxation or in the debt service she would impose. Philly’s poverty rate, 23.1%, is double the U.S average, while the city’s median income, $49,127, is just three-quarters of the national average. Mrs Flaherty’s plans, if they push out more of the higher earners, can only exacerbate that problem, and make paying for her plans even harder.

But her plans, along with those of the Working Families Party are pretty much in line with their complete lack of understanding of economics. Perhaps they believe that money can be created out of thin air, since that’s what our federal government seems to be doing, but Philly isn’t the federal government.

The city’s teachers union, one of Gym’s biggest backers, quickly endorsed the plan Thursday, with Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Jerry Jordan saying in a statement that Gym’s plan also prioritizes safety — including through guaranteed after-school programs — and has “thoughtful and proactive measures to address a real crisis in our city.”

Well, of course the teachers’ union endorsed Mrs Flaherty! Government employees all, they, too, have no concept of economics, and they, too, seem to think that the public trough is ever-full and never-ending. It was the teachers in Kentucky which caused former Governor Matt Bevin to lose his re-election bid, because he tried to do something really radical like reform their pension system before it went broke.

But in reading Mrs Flaherty’s website Issues page, clicking on her “Safety in every neighborhood” section, I read that she would “Declare a State of Emergency on Gun Violence,” “Protect, Uplift, and Empower Philadelphia’s Young People,” have “Community-Driven Interventions and Effective Policing,” “Reduce Violence with Clean and Green Neighborhoods”, and “Provide Real Support for Victims of Violent Crime and their Families,” spending gobs of money in these things, but never once said anything about reducing the number of vacancies in the Philadelphia Police Department, the people who actually enforce the law, the people who do their best to get criminals off the streets. Mrs Flaherty strongly endorsed and campaigned with, George Soros-sponsored “restorative justice” District Attorney Larry Krasner, later saying, “I support reducing the prison population by 50% from 2019 levels. We must center transformative and restorative justice practices in Philadelphia.” She wants to do everything ti increase public safety other than getting criminals off the streets! The Philadelphia Tribune reported:

She also vowed to overhaul the Philadelphia Police Department, “so that they are more responsive and interactive with neighbors, so that we are dealing with young people, and helping and support young people, who are currently in the path of violence right now.”

So, nothing about more police officers, just ‘progressive’ reform. Yeah, that has worked so well other places.

In addition to reverse the slashing of hours at recreation centers and public libraries, she said she wants public schools to be open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., referencing the high amount of gun violence involving students that happens before 6 p.m. Gym also pledged to remove 10,000 abandoned cars from city streets and sealing 50% of the city’s vacant lots.

So, spending more money, money that the Jim Kenney Administration couldn’t find. It’s not like Mayor Kenney wanted to close libraries and recreation centers; he just didn’t have the money to do otherwise. Of course, having the recreation centers open didn’t decrease violence, and the city could open only 50 of its 65 pools because they couldn’t find enough lifeguards.

Let’s face it: there are no good candidates for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, but there are some who are worse than others, and Helen Gym Flaherty is the worst of the worst.

References

References
↑1 Also here, in case they delete it.
↑2 Or so I judge by their shorts, sandals, and crop tops.