Democrat Car Bans Could Change the 2024 Election. Why Won't Republicans Talk About Them?

By Daniel Greenfield September 20, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog 

9 Democrat-run states, California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington, have moved to ban cars by 2035.

The Biden administration has exploited EPA emissions standards to accomplish the same thing.

The green push to ban cars and force everyone to buy electric vehicles is a core part of the program and also highly unpopular with families struggling with high prices and inflation. Electric vehicles are far more expensive and much less reliable than cars and most can’t afford them.

59% of Americans oppose a ban on cars while only 40% support it. But, in worse news for banners, support for the ban has consistently fallen over the last years by 7% while opposition to it has increased. Republicans and Independents are obviously stalwartly opposed, but even among Democrats, opposition has grown until a third of Dems is opposed.

On a state by state level, opposition remains strong even in states whose Democrat governors unwisely chose to sign on to a 2035 car ban date. In Maryland, 60% opposed Gov. Wes Moore’s car ban while in New Jersey some 58% are opposed including 42% of Democrats. In Washington, 48% opposed Gov. Jay Inslee’s car ban while 38% backed it. Of those who opposed it, 31% were strongly opposed.

In Virginia, which was put on track to a car ban by following California’s illegal emissions mandates, 58% oppose a gas car ban while only 33% support it. Tellingly, while 42% strongly oppose a car ban only 12% strongly support one. Even among Democrats, support and opposition are nearly tied 44% to 43%. In Minnesota, 65% oppose a car ban while only 29% support it. (47% strongly oppose the ban while only 9% strongly support it.)

Nationwide, support for car bans is strongest among urban voters. And yet even there, ban backing never quite tops 50%. In suburban areas, support drops down to 31% and rural areas falls all the way to 24%. That stands to reason because to whatever extent electric vehicles are viable, it’s only in the core density of major urban areas. Outside them, they’re unusable.

Polls also shows support for a car ban is tied to income. Even the cheapest electric vehicles are out of the price range of most Americans. That’s why opposition to car bans climbs for families making less than $40,000 and even those making up to $80,000. The proposed car ban means families being unable to replace their minivan. It means mothers who can’t drop off their kids at school and fathers who can’t drive to work.

A car ban is an extinction level event for American families. If it goes through, 53% of Americans won’t be able to buy a car. Imagine how much their lives will change.

Pro-ban politicians act as if there will be a smooth transition from cars to electric vehicles.

The reality is that electric vehicles are not viable in any way, shape or form. America’s biggest car companies have spent and lost billions trying to make electric vehicles.

Ford is losing $32,000 on every electric car it sells. In 2023, it lost $3 billion on its EV boondoggle. Ford claimed that it will make 2 million electric cars by 2025 (at which point it would then lose $64 billion) but it only sold 61,575 electric vehicles in 2022. GM shut down the Chevy Bolt, its cheapest electric vehicle after losing $7,400 on every one it sold. It promises to profitably sell 1 million electric vehicles in 2025, but it only sold 44,000 at a loss in 2022.

The math on electric vehicles simply does not work. Many people point to Tesla. But the truth about Tesla is it made money through the fines that California imposed on makers and buyers of cars. In 2022, Tesla made $1.78 billion from carbon credit sales. Companies that make actual cars have to buy the credits from Musk’s Saudi company and pass on the cost to consumers.

While subsidizing electric vehicles for the rich by fining working class car owners worked well enough for Tesla, it’s not a pathway to shifting the entire country over to electric cars. What will really happen by 2025 is that the vast majority of Americans will be cut off from the market. They’ll be left trying to keep old cars and used cars on the road for as long as possible.

Why aren’t politicians talking more about this? Some are operating in the D.C. bubble and don’t recognize the profound impact this will have on the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Others see a 2035 deadline as being so far in the future that it doesn’t need to be dealt with now. And still others are constantly reacting to a passing parade of crises and outrages.

Car bans are far from the only issue out there, but it could have a deciding impact in 2024.

Democrats have committed to a policy that is wildly unpopular outside their small base of urban college graduates who idealize 15 minute cities navigated by bike shares. And they’ve done so with limited pushback from a Republican party that is schizophrenic and feckless in its inability to focus, to make a coherent case and to message on the things that actually matter to voters.

The car bans are an act of cultural, social and economic warfare by an urban elite against the rest of the country. If successful, they would make life all but impossible in rural areas, and increasingly challenging in many suburban areas. They would tear apart families, wreck jobs and push struggling people underwater.

Politicians have gone from two cars in every garage to no cars in the garage at all.

It’s hard to think of any single policy to devastating in its scope and so likely to outrage the working class voters that Republicans are trying to court as car bans. And yet Republicans are failing to talk about them because they are as detached as Democrats from the consequences.

Republicans assumed that they would win in 2022 by passively profiting from the miserable economy. The midterms proved that to be a profound miscalculation. If Republicans want to politically profit from the poor economy, they have to do more than put up stickers pointing a finger at Biden. They have to connect the economic misery directly to Biden’s policies.

Car bans could be a deciding factor in 2024, but only if Republicans and moderate Democrats talk about them. Otherwise another disastrous radical policy will bury much of the country.

 

 Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.  Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

 

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50 is the New 70 degrees Fahrenheit

April 9, 2023  By Mark C. Ross  

Gee, record snowfall practically everywhere.  Many have been enduring well-below-normal spring temperatures.  When is that atmospheric heat-trapping going to kick in?  If I had mastered Photoshop, I'd have put together a picture of Al Gore driving a snow plow...with palm trees in the background.  But reality is disturbing enough.

Many reporters covering the ongoing devastation being wrought by tornadoes bend over backwards to tie the phenomenon to global warming.  It so happens that this is tornado season — when cold Arctic air masses collide with warm, moist air masses coming up from the Gulf of Mexico.  The death and destruction on the ground is happening because of where the twisters touch down, which is a largely chaotic process.

H.L. Mencken is credited for saying, "Nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public."  Until I looked this up, I thought it was P.T. Barnum.  Careful research, don't you know................To Read More..... 

Opportunity in the face of tyranny April 11, 2023 We're living in a new America. The fraudulent indictment of former president Donald Trump underscores the truth that the swamp no longer hides its hostile motives or pretends to favor the rule of law and the Constitution over tyranny.  Since Joe Biden entered the Oval Office, the socialist far-left Democrats have openly attacked American values and societal norms. Under the guise of saving the planet, a false religion was created that would use the vitality of impressionable youth to divide the nation — sons against their fathers and brother against brother.

From the corrupt editorial pages of their dishonest newsprint bibles, the Democrat left preached the fallacy that man is the destroyer of the planet, which is to be worshiped as some deity.  And that radical energy measures that produce pain, poverty, and death to third-world populations, not to mention the economic collapse of the United States, are the repentant price for past climate offenses.

Young Americans were taught that there was no sacrifice too great to be paid by the unwashed.  Still, they were not told that such economic and physical calamities were not to be encountered by the Democrat priests and priestesses of the false climate theology...............

Joe Biden's King Canute Environmentalism - Are we watching a replay of King Canute commanding the waves to recede? That thought occurred to me while reading about the Biden administration's latest step in advancing the president's 2021 goal of having half of all new autos be electric by 2030. The analogy isn't exact -- current thinking is that Canute knew his courtiers were wrong when they said he could stop the incoming tide. And the king was apparently in his 30s, with no sign of cognitive impairment, at that moment by the seashore. But consider it anyway. The analogy was prompted by the Environmental Protection Agency's order last week regulating tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions of model year 2027 to 2032 cars, SUVs and pickup trucks. It was clearly intended to force automakers to produce electric vehicles so that they'd account for two-thirds of sales in 2032 -- roughly 10 times the 6% share they accounted for in 2022.................

 

America's Coming Energy Crisis

April 15, 2023 By John Kudla

President Joe Biden and the apocalyptic climate cult within the Democrat party believe that climate change is the greatest threat to the country.  That's right, the greatest threat is not nuclear war, not unlimited unlawful immigration, not inflation, or out-of-control spending.  Instead, it's the slow warming of the atmosphere, which they believe is caused solely by burning fossil fuels.

In 2021, Biden signed an executive order that decreed that all federal contracts for goods and services to be carbon-neutral by 2050.  Some states and businesses are following Biden's lead.  California and six other states intend to ban the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.  California also wants to ban the sale of gas-powered water heaters and furnaces by 2030.  Now the Environmental Protection Agency has piled on.  The agency is proposing vehicle pollution limits for 2032 that are so strict that they will force roughly two thirds of new vehicles sold to be electric................To Read More....

Biden Bans 53% of Americans From Buying Cars

By Daniel Greenfield April 11, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog

The New York Times reported that the Biden administration will abuse EPA regulations to eliminate most real car sales by 2030. The plan is to force 67% of car sales to be electric by 2032. Most Americans won’t be able to afford them, but they’ll have no other options.

Even the cheapest electric cars, which are still far more expensive than their real car counterparts and are just one battery problem away from turning into mostly unusable junk, are out of the price range of the majority of Americans who need an income of $80,000 to make an EV auto loan work. That’s fine in Washington D.C. where the median income of $83,567 is the highest in the nation, but will entirely price much of the country out of the new car market.

53% of Americans earn less than $75,000. Some of the 16% who earn from $50,000 to $75,000 may be able to make an electric vehicle purchase work if they squeeze, cut back on food and clothes for the kids, but the remaining 37% will be completely locked out. And, unable to own a car, they’ll have even bigger monthly payments or, with no transportation, be unable to work.

The new poor will be anyone who can’t afford an electric car. And that’s 53% of Americans.

This isn’t class warfare: it’s class genocide. The Biden administration is moving to reserve car ownership privileges for the Tesla class while eliminating working class ownership and the social mobility and the economic possibilities that come with it under the guise of environmentalism.

Steadily raising emissions standards has pushed the price of a new car toward $50,000. Obama’s emissions standards raised the cost by thousands of dollars, and California, as one of the largest markets in the country, further distorted costs for car buyers nationwide. Prices rose steadily and, when combined with runaway inflationary government spending, shot up wildly.

The average cost of a non-luxury car last year nearly hit $45,000. Since people only have so much money to spend, sales also dropped by 9% and millions fewer cars were sold. Even as America’s population has continued growing, its car sales have been falling.

Who is going to be shut out of Biden’s new banned car market?

The median income of 47 of the 52 states fall below the amount needed to buy an electric car.

The Biden administration is fixated on racial equity, but its ban on cars cuts off the vast majority of black people, Latinos and for that matter white people from car ownership. With a median income of $46,400, black people would either have to dedicate a fifth of their pre-tax incomes to car payments or spend most of their annual salary on a car. With a $55,321 median income, Latinos won’t have an easy time of it and even with a $74,932 median income, white people will be left behind. The new equity will mean that hardly anyone will be able to afford to buy a car.

American automakers, having long ago lost the battle to Asia, instead decided to use government regulations to end competition around price and quality. GM and Ford have squandered billions on green vehicles. Ford alone reported a $3 billion loss on electric cars. And yet the automakers are retooling for a marketplace that has no connection with consumers.

Ford expects to sell 2 million electric cars in 2025. That’s up from 61,575 last year. How do you go from selling tens of thousands of cars to millions? Either the cars are going to get a whole lot better and cheaper, or the automaker expects customers to have no choice in the matter.

The carmaker didn’t even sell 2 million cars in 2023. How does it expect to sell 2 million of a type of vehicle that few want or can afford? The answer is government regulations.

Eliminate people’s ability to buy anything other than an electric car and there’s your business model. And yet the bulk of electric car sales are happening in the luxury segment while the cheapest electric cars are subsidized and still often sell at a loss. But that’s true of a lot of electric vehicles which can lose money no matter how overpriced or subsidized they are.

The Ford/Soros investment in Rivian fared poorly with the trendy electric pickup truck manufacturer spending $220,000 to make vehicles it sold for $81,000.

Numbers like these don’t work, no matter how you subsidize them. They only start working when the business model not only sheds affordable cars, but also private car ownership.

Dan Ammann, the former president of GM, claimed that “the human-driven, gasoline-powered, single-passenger car” is the “fundamental problem” in a post titled, “We Need to Move Beyond the Car”.

Western automakers are moving beyond the car as a product to the car as a service. Self-driving technology combined with apps means car access rather than car ownership. Everyone will ‘Uber’ or ‘Lyft’ while spending far more money on transportation and getting a lot less out of it. And most of all the freedom of being able to go anywhere will be gone. You will not just get into a car and go anywhere you want. Like free speech, that will no longer be an option.

But as the World Economic Forum pledged, “We will own nothing and be happy.” Trust them to keep at least half of that promise.

Much like private home ownership is being steadily eliminated, private car ownership is also on the chopping block. By the 2030s, the plan is that the vast majority of America will not own cars, they will pay money to access them until they aren’t even allowed to do that. The electric cars will consume a growing portion of monthly earnings and will have very limited range. A younger generation may view a time when Americans owned their own cars the way we look back at the days when people could buy guns in hardware stores, smoke cigarettes, and hurl lawn darts.

What begins with 53% of Americans will eventually encompass the vast majority of the country.

By then car ownership will be mostly pointless anyway. Some will try to keep used cars going, but insurance regulations and clean air standards will force them off the road. The Biden ‘infrastructure’ bill already has the government monitoring where you drive and included a measure to allow it to turn off your car. California’s failed experiment in solar and wind has led to brownouts and bans on charging cars. Much as drought emergencies lead to bans on watering your lawn, the perpetual power emergencies will outlaw pleasure drives. Even if you own a car, it will only be yours in name only. And that will make surrendering it all too easy.

The blow of depriving 53% of Americans of car ownership will be initially softened with subsidies and environmentalist virtue signaling. Older generations, best able to afford cars, will be the least affected, while younger generations, least able to afford cars, are already dropping out of the market. By the time their children come of age, they will not even know what they missed.

Americans have let the government strip so much of their freedom and future. Will the majority of the country allow the Biden administration to take away their cars?

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

No Meat or Cars for You, Says the World Economic Forum

Another year, another meeting of our lizard overlords.

By Andrew Moran January 22, 2023 @ Liberty Nation News

Years ago, the World Economic Forum totalitarians devised a formula for the commoners’ eternal happiness: owning nothing and having no privacy. In 2023, Klaus Schwab and the rest of the James Bond villains in Davos, Switzerland, proposed various methods to increase the plebs’ pleasure and facilitate servitude to the New World Order, be it paying for the war in Ukraine for the next 15 years or forcing one billion people to stop consuming meat. Thankfully, a glance at the Twitterverse suggests a collective “how dare you!” uttered by the same people the real-life SPECTRE wishes to enslave.

Tony Blair: Digital Vaccine Libraries Now!

  The next blueprint of fascism might be the international digitization of vaccine records. During a discussion about containing the next outbreak and preventing another pandemic, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair advocated for digital libraries that can store people’s vaccination status worldwide. He urged all nations to establish a “proper digital infrastructure” to determine who did and did not inject vaccines into their systems, adding that health care digitization is critical. “In the end, you need the data: you need to know who’s been vaccinated and who hasn’t been,” he said.

Al Gore Becomes Roland Emmerich

Former Vice President Al Gore should direct a doomsday film since his imagination keeps producing many apocalyptic scenarios for mankind. While on stage at the World Economic Forum, Gore became unglued and warned that the planet will soon endure “rain bombs,” “boiling oceans,” an “open-air sewer,” and a daily climate crisis equivalent to “600,000 Hiroshima bombs.” Gore also alluded to “xenophobia” and “political authoritarian trends” as contributors to Mother Nature’s destruction.

“That’s what’s boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers, and the rain bombs, and sucking the moisture out of the land, and creating the droughts, and melting the ice and raising the sea level, and causing these waves of climate refugees,” Gore shrieked.

The Nobel Prize and Oscar winner told the audience that he has been “sounding the alarm” for the last two decades and concluded that humanity is “failing” on this issue, despite the trillions being spent worldwide and a wide array of climate-related policies and taxes being imposed on the population.

Joe Manchin Slams ‘Open Press System’

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is ostensibly not a fan of the First Amendment, telling the World Economic Forum that “the problem we have is the open press system and basically all the platforms.” Manchin averred during a panel that social networks “personify the extremes,” although they are not the majority. After his comments went viral, he appeared on the Fox Business Network a day later and backtracked his remarks, apologizing and clarifying that he “didn’t explain it properly.”

The Spirit of John McCain Lives

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin suggested that Western governments need to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia for “as long as it takes, even if the war lasts 15 years. The 34-year-old world leader thought that a Russian victory would send the wrong message to nations worldwide that they could invade other countries and succeed. “I think the only message that we need to send is that we will support Ukraine as long as needed,” she said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “One year, two years, five years, ten years, 15 years.” This sounds much like former Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who argued for fighting in Iraq for 100 years.

The Great Reset of Your Diet

You will stop chewing the fat and instead eat replacement meals in 20 years and be happy! This idea is no longer confined to the digital pages of the World Economic Forum website. Instead, it was a concept delivered again by Jim Hagemann Snabe, the chairman of Siemens AG. At a panel talk called “Mobilizing for Climate,” Snabe recommended one billion people to stop eating meat because it would reduce carbon emissions.

“If a billion people stop eating meat, I tell you, it has a big impact. Not only does it have a big impact on the current food system, but it will also inspire innovation of food systems,” he averred. “I predict that we will have proteins not coming from meat in the future, they will probably taste even better. So why are we trying to mimic meat if we can have a better taste? They will be zero carbon and much healthier than the kind of food that we eat today.” No mention of eating beetles and drinking cockroach milk? Come on, man!

No Cars for You!

Saudi Arabian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Adel Al-Jubeir, predicted that there would be no cars in the future. But this is not necessarily a ban on automobiles. Instead, according to Al-Jubeir, “it’s called different types of transportation … based on renewable energy.” As usual, these leaders will own cars, fly on private jets, and ensure that they never ride on public transit with the public.

Respect the World Order

Slovenia Foreign Affairs Minister Tanja Fajon demanded that countries submit to the globalist agenda by declaring their “respect” for “the world order.” In a discussion about global fragmentation, Fajon shared her fellow globalists’ disdain for states that are fighting back against internationalist rules and embracing the “national interest.” In the end, Fajon told the world that “we have to take into consideration The World Order.” Yeesh. All that was missing from this inane diatribe was Benito Mussolini’s hand gestures.

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman summarized the annual retreat in the remote Swiss town by calling it an “echo chamber … where everybody’s basically repeating back to each other what they’ve heard from the last person.” Indeed, it is a yearly gathering of globalist gobbledygook, leftist lamentations for individualism, and authoritarian announcements for the future. Speaking of tomorrow, the World Economic Forum made a bold prediction: It is time to fear an imminent and damaging cyber attack in the next few years. So, let the polycrisis begin, and bow down to the Schwabinator.

Read More From Andrew Moran

The Basic Math Problem that Undoes Global Warming Hysteria

August 15, 2022 By Maker S. Mark

If someone proposes a solution to an "existential problem" that has no chance of success, should we be forced to take the problem seriously? If the climate alarmists truly believe there is a climate emergency, then they should be able to answer the first basic question about "the plan."  Are the numbers in the plan even remotely achievable?  Remember: based on their screeching, we have only twelve years before we all die from "man-made climate change."

To answer that question, let's break part of the plan into the most basic math problem: can we replace 25%, 50%, or 75% of the cars on the road in ten years?  To understand the theoretical possibility, we will simplify this to how many years will it take to replace all vehicles on the road in the U.S...........

Unserious people, who can't do this basic math, definitely cannot comprehend the complex science involved in studying the climate.  The numbers don't lie.  Their solution will not solve the "man-made climate problem" without a magic wand to replace every vehicle in the U.S. in one or even two generations. .......To Read More...

 

The End of Private Car Ownership

Daniel Greenfield July 13, 2022 @ Sultan Knish Blog

The term "pedestrian" has a derogatory meaning because peasants walked while nobles were "equestrians" and rode horses. The industrial revolution eliminated this class difference, as it did so many others, by making car ownership available to the masses until eventually Herbert Hoover was able to boast that "Republican prosperity has reduced and increased earning capacity” to "put the proverbial 'chicken in every pot' and a car in every backyard to boot."

Democrats have spent two generations trying to get those cars out of every backyard.

Biden is trying to bring back Obama's mileage standards that were estimated to raise car prices by 20%.The goal is to "nudge 40% of U.S. drivers into electric vehicles by decade’s end."

Will 40% of Americans be able to afford electric cars that cost an average of $54,000 by 2030?

Not likely. Nor are they meant to. Biden’s radical ‘green’ government, which includes Tracy Stone-Manning, the former spokeswoman for an ecoterrorist group as the head of the Bureau of Land Management, isn’t looking to nudge drivers into another type of cars, but out of cars.

Gas prices are a way to price Americans out of car ownership under the guise of pushing EVs.

Biden's Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm responded to American concerns about high gas prices by urging them to buy electric cars. Granholm, who had promoted a green energy tycoon who spent years in prison for fraud, who had served on the board of directors of an electric battery company, and made millions divesting stock in an electric vehicle manufacturer, is a fan.

"Most electric vehicles are now cheaper to own than gas-powered cars from the day you drive them off the lot," Granholm tweeted.

That isn't actually true, but actual cars have become more expensive to own, largely because of efforts by the Biden administration, and by various states, including California. That hasn’t however made electric cars any more affordable for ordinary Americans.

The average price of an electric car shot up to $54,000 in May. Car prices in general have risen in the Biden economy, but electric cars are naturally expensive. The raw material costs for an average electric car are up to over $8,000. That’s compared to $3,600 for an actual car.

When your raw material costs are that high, electric cars will be inherently unaffordable.

The Obama administration pumped billions in taxpayer money into battery and electric car manufacturing, the majority of which failed, on the theory that enough government subsidies would lower battery costs. Not only was much of that money lost, but currently electric battery costs hover around the $160 kilowatt-hour mark. Green boosters cheer that's far down from over $1,000 per kWh a decade ago, but that still adds up to the reality that an electric car capable of traveling for even short distances needs a battery that alone costs thousands.

The Nissan Leaf, which approaches $30,000 once the reality of MSRP in the current sales market is taken into account, is one of the cheapest electric cars around, and has a range of only 149 miles. Replacing its battery can set back car owners $6,500 to $7,500. And that’s even when you can manage to find one or someone willing to replace it. In less than 3 years, Leafs lose 20 miles of range. By the fifth year, they have lost 30 miles. And it’s all downhill from there.

The Nissan Leaf was initially a hit, but car manufacturers quickly realized that anyone willing to overpay that much for substandard performance had money to burn. The electric car market is now thoroughly dominated by luxury vehicles subsidized by taxpayers. And the Leaf went from 90% market share to less than 10%. The EV market is now a taxpayer-funded status symbol.

The dirty truth about the "clean" car market is that it consists of traditional car companies and Tesla frantically trying to unload a limited share of luxury electric cars on wealthy customers to cash in on the emissions credits mandated by states like California. Tesla makes more money reselling these regulatory credits to actual car companies than it does selling cars. Taxpayers and working class car-owners pick up the bill for the entire luxury electric vehicle market.

A market that they are shut out from by design.

The "green" vision is not a world in which everyone has their own electric car. It's one of collective transport, of buses, light rail, and car-pooling through shared rides and roving self-driving cars. The only vehicle the average consumer is supposed to own is a bicycle.

While the Biden administration is still pretending that it’s out to “encourage” electric car ownership by making actual cars too expensive for much of the country to afford, others are saying the quiet part out loud.

"Car-lovers will doubtless mourn the passing of machines that, in the 20th century, became icons of personal freedom. But this freedom is illusory," an Economist article predicted.

“There will be fewer cars on the road—perhaps just 30% of the cars we have today,” the head of Google's self-driving car project predicted.

"The days of the single occupancy car are numbered," Brook Porter at G2 Venture Partners, a green energy investment firm, thundered in an article titled, The End of Cars in Cities.

Dan Ammann, the former president of GM, claimed that "the human-driven, gasoline-powered, single-passenger car" is the "fundamental problem" in a post titled, "We Need to Move Beyond the Car". He has since gone to work for Exxon-Mobil.

Predictions are cheap, but car bans are expensive and all too real. The European Union voted to back a ban on the sale of non-electric cars by 2035. California is also pushing for a similar 2035 ban on the sale of new actual cars in the state. Officials noted that the ban would push more than half of mechanics out of work and leave much of the state unable to afford cars.

Canada has its own 2035 car ban. Last year, Governor Newsom and Governor Cuomo, along with 10 other governors, urged Biden to impose a 2035 car ban on all Americans.

Electric cars aren’t actually “cleaner”. The mining processes that produce “green” technologies are as dirty, if not dirtier, and trade dependence on oil for dependence on rare earth metals, and dependence on the Middle East for dependence on Communist China. The one thing that they decisively accomplish is to make it impossible for ordinary Americans to own cars.

And that is what environmentalists really want. But not just them.

The vision of a nation in which private car ownership is a luxury good, in which cars have been priced out of the reach of most people through environmental measures that concentrated on gas-powered vehicles, and then added more taxes and fines for the waste” and “inefficiency” of an individual owning a vehicle is not very far away.

The technocratic sales pitch is that ride-sharing and self-driving cars will make car ownership unnecessary. Why own a big clunky machine when you can own nothing and be happy?

The reality is that car ownership offers mobility and independence. That is exactly what the leftist radicals making social policy want to eliminate. Gas prices are not Putin’s price hike, they’re the green dream. And that dream isn’t to put you in a Nissan Leaf. It’s the Pol Pot dream of dismantling civilization and rolling back the industrial revolution.

Once the dark age norms of their dark enlightenment are restored, peasants will go back to being pedestrians and only the progressive philosopher kings will ride.  

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. 

Thank you for reading.

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About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield is a journalist investigating Islamic terrorism and the Left. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center

 

Biden promises he's going to take 'millions' of cars off roads

'This is not hyperbole; this is a fact'

  By Bob Unruh  October 22, 2021

It seems for a lot of Americans, that short drive from home to office may no longer happen very often.  Nor might the family drive to grandma's.  Or a trip to a football or basketball game. Instead they'll apparently walk to a train station, get on and ride, then walk from the train station to their destination.  It's because President Biden is going to take "literally, millions of automobiles" off the road.

His comments came this week while he was promoting his big-spending, big-government agenda, and were captured by CNS News.  The report explained that "in his mind," if he gets Congress to approve his multi-trillion dollar spending packages, much will be solved.

"When the almost-79-year-old president finally got around to the main point – explaining the two 'infrastructure' bills Democrats want to pass simultaneously – he returned to the topic of train travel, which in his mind will take 'millions' of cars off the road," the report said...........To Read More....

 

California’s zero-emissions auto bill would price out the middle class

March 22, 2018 by CFACT, 1 Comment

Proposed legislation in California to ban internal combustion engines in new automobiles would make new cars exclusive toys for the wealthy, price and salary data show. A review of zero-emission vehicle data shows even the least expensive options cost two-thirds of the average American salary.

Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) has introduced legislation that would ban the sale of automobiles with internal combustion engines starting in 2040. The bill expands on Gov. Jerry Brown’s goal of having 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on California roads by 2025.

Zero-emission requirements, however, would price many – and perhaps most – people out of the new-car market. The smallest and least expensive zero-emission vehicles, such as the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, have a base-model price of approximately $30,000. For context, the median American worker’s salary is approximately $44,000 per year. Similar conventional engine vehicles like the Nissan Versa and Chevy Cruze sell for less than half that price. Moreover, the Chevy Volt’s battery range, for example, is only 51 miles, after which the owner must either engage in a lengthy recharge or switch to the vehicle’s gasoline backup (which would be banned under the proposed bill).

Many Americans already cannot afford the $14,000 or so to purchase a new, small, fuel-efficient vehicle like the Chevy Cruze. Escalating entry-level new car prices above $30,000 would make it extremely difficult for even the middle class to purchase new cars.

The Growing War on Cars and Continued Misuse of Gasoline Taxes

By Terri Hall l March 5, 2018

Americans should be celebrating the lower cost of driving between 2016 and 2017, but the tolls and taxes being imposed by government threaten to erase any gains motorists might have enjoyed.

According to a recent report by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Transportation Economic Trends of 2017, the number of miles traveled by Americans went up 7.9% since 2014 (17.3% since 2000) with a slight 2.2% drop in the overall cost of private transportation (including a .5% drop in the cost of buying a new or used vehicle and an 11.5% decrease in fuel costs). However, taxes on vehicles increased 2.1%, parking fees and tolls (imposed by government) rose 2.8%, and car maintenance and repair went up 1.7%. With car insurance spiking 6.2% and housing costs soaring 6%, these cost increases effectively erase any cost savings motorists experienced.

Several developments compound the frustration of motorists who can’t seem to cut a break. Many cities across America tilt left, politically, and they’ve declared war on cars and use gasoline taxes collected from motorists in order to erect impediments to driving through a variety of traffic calming and social engineering gimmicks.

For instance, in San Antonio, the city just broke ground on a 3-mile, $7.2 million bike lane and sidewalk expansion, which includes a 10-foot, two-way buffered bike lane, wider sidewalks and a 5-foot brick buffer (that looks like its own walking path) to protect bicyclists and pedestrians from autos. This is valuable space that could be used to expand the roadway for auto capacity that’s getting squandered on buffered bike lanes and walkways that less than 1% of travelers use to get around.........To Read More....

The War on Drivers: A review of the bureaucratic paperwork, questionable environmental regulations, and other nonsense.

With all of this hot air about the EPA's overeaching, via court decisions, regarding the regulation of CO2, and all the hyperbolic horsepucky spewed out by people like Barbara Boxer, I thought this was timely, even if it was written 12 years ago. It still fits like a glove. RK

By Alan Caruba

Like most Americans, I had always been vaguely aware that the cost of owning a car, buying a new one, and the general use of cars nationwide, had been rising for years. There were, in addition, new obstacles and restrictions being imposed.

This became evident once again in December 1998 when the Environmental Protection Agency began to institute hefty fines on owners of the nation's gasoline stations and others who store fuel, as The New York Times reported, "in potentially leaky underground tanks..." The key word here is "potentially." According to the EPA, an estimated 400,000 tanks, which may or may not be leaking anything, remain after that agency had taken action to either ban the use or require the replacement of some 600,000 tanks.

The significance of this for drivers is that an estimated 70,000 gasoline stations are still deemed out of compliance, something that can cost between $100,000 and $200,000 to achieve. Many small communities throughout the nation will simply lose access to their only gasoline station. Already across the nation, many dealers have elected to stop providing gas and depend solely on auto repair for income. For countless Americans, particularly in rural areas, filling up is going to become a major problem.

Over the years, motorists have had to accept traffic that slows to a crawl thanks to HOV lanes and even mandatory car-pooling regulations. These costs and annoyances had crept up on all Americans in incremental stages, each seeming to come from the need to "clean up the air", "become more energy effficient", and "increase the use of mass transit."

It didn't seem to matter that, preceding and during the decades this was occurring, the movement of people and businesses to the suburbs had increased dramatically or that, for most people, average commuting time to work by car was barely ten to twenty minutes. It didn't matter that most suburban-based moms spent most of their trips chauffeuring their children or husbands around. Work commutes for women, for example, constitute only 18%, dwarfed by personal trips at 46%, necessitated by day-care, school, going to the market or dry cleaners, and other everyday tasks.

It didn't seem to matter that, by 1998, most major cities such as Cleveland, Boston, and Chicago, had achieved the biggest percentage drop in average days per year that violated federal air standards. The air is getting cleaner.

Slowly, I became aware of a virtual war on drivers (and truckers) being orchestrated by the Federal government which, in turn, imposed mandates upon the States.

Then, while reading Al Gore, Jr's book, Earth In The Balance, I became aware of the astonishing agenda behind the problems drivers were incurring. He wrote that "it ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five year period." (Emphasis added) Or, to put it another way, by the year 2018!

"We now know," Gore wrote of cars and trucks, "that their cumulative impact on the global environment is posing a mortal threat to the security of every nation we are ever again likely to confront." (Emphasis added) This is nuts!

Gore, however, was simply putting in print one of the most fundamental goals of the worldwide environmental movement which, in the United States, gained governmental status when the EPA was established in 1970 and, worldwide, through the granting of "Non-Governmental Organization" status by the United Nations to countless environmental organizations. They, in turn, literally create international policy through UN-sponsored treaties such as the recent Kyoto treaty on climate control which would impose huge energy use restrictions on the U.S. while exempting nations such as China and India.

Consider what occurred under the Clinton-Gore administration. Despite the fact that the air has been showing extraordinary improvements since the 1970's laws went into effect, the EPA actually imposed tighter rules for emissions of "smog causing gases and soot from cars and light trucks beginning in 20004," as reported in April 1998 by The New York Times.

But why? Eric Peters, an authority on transportation issues, in a December 22, 1998 article that appeared in The Washington Times, pointed out that, "Since at least the mid-1980's, new cars and trucks have been equipped with an impressive array of computer-controlled anti-pollution hardware that is largely self-policing," adding that "current model year cars and trucks are equipped with systems that surpass the computer power of the Lunar Module."

Despite this, State by State, car and truck owners must submit to intensive inspections which literally test themselves every time the ignition key is turned! Moreover, less than five percent (5%) of all currently registered vehicles are cars older than model year 1980. Those older cars, even if they did pollute, would contribute an infinitesimal amount.

Ironically, the catalytic converter, an invention that has sharply reduced smog caused by auto emissions, was deemed "a growing cause of global warming" by the EPA, according to a New York Times article in April 1998! The article reported that, "This spring, the EPA published a study estimating that nitrous oxide now accounts for about 7.2 percent of the gases that cause global warming." Unreported, as is always the case with The New York Times, was the fact that there is no global warming. The earth hasn't warmed at all for the past fifty years. The global warming theory was discredited in 1998 by the man who first introduced it to Congress in 1988.

In short, it doesn't matter how energy efficient and non-polluting cars are or will be, the EPA quite simply will always raise the bar, even if it means condemning the very technology that makes cars operate to produce cleaner emissions.

More ominous, because the vast bult of all goods manufactured and sold in the U.S. is moved by truck, was the EPA announcement, also in April 1998, that "exhaust from the (diesal) engines probably causes cancer in humans." The feds are now gearing up to include the nation's trucking system in its war on drivers. This is madness.

It doesn't end there. By the summer of 1998, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was advocating replacing all light trucks, i.e. pickups, minivans, and sport-utility vehicles, with cars because it would, they said, save 2,000 lives each year. More people drown each year just taking a swim. The NHTSA had earlier proposed putting safety belts and other devices on golf cars! The lunatics are running the asylum!

What really is happening on our highways and roads? Well, in 1997, the death rate on the nation's roads fell to a record low. The U.S. Department of Transportation concluded there were 1.6 deaths per 100 million miles traveled. Mind you, this occurred despite efforts to get Americans to use trains and other mass transit. For example, the future of Amtrak is even more shaky. Since its inception in 1970, the number of miles traveled by car has risen by two thirds to more than 2.6 trillion.

In December 1998, New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman publicly celebrated the end of a long fight with the EPA which ended the imposition of HOV lanes on two major thoroughfares. The State's largest circulation newspaper, which had championed an end to the HOV's, reported that "traffic was moving better on Route 80 than it has in years. Same for most of Route 287." This in a State with the highest population density in the nation and where more cars are owned than there are people.

The EPA's coersive threat to deny New Jersey taxpayers their own money to improve their own highway system had been thwarted. Now, we have to do this in every State in the Union. And we have until 2004 to rescind the new EPA clean air restrictions.

We need to understand that the air is getting cleaner, that cars not only pollute far less, but monitor their own emissions, that raising speed limits has not led to more deaths, that just about everything the EPA and other federal agencies have been telling us is a lie.

Mostly, however, we have to understand that, at the highest levels of government, aided and abetted by the worldwide environmental movement, there has been and continues to be a war on drivers.

© 1999 Alan Caruba.

All Rights Reserved.

Alan’s work has a sense of timelessness about it, so anyone perusing these articles in the future will find them equally insightful as they were when originally written. For Alan's latest thoughts go to his blog, Warning Signs. For his past works go to The National Anxiety Center. I would also recommend reading his last book, Right Answers.

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Observations From the Backrow, 3/31/11

By Rich Kozlovich

European Union to ban cars from cities by 2050
Cars will be banned from London and all other cities across Europe under a draconian EU masterplan to cut CO2 emissions by 60 per cent over the next 40 years. Top of the EU's list to cut climate change emissions is a target of "zero" for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU's future cities……"That means no more conventionally fuelled cars in our city centres," he said. "Action will follow, legislation, real action to change behaviour."……he wants to bring everywhere to a grinding halt and to plunge us into a new dark age, he is on the right track……The man is off his rocker."…….

"Curbing mobility is not an option, neither is business as usual. We can break the transport system's dependence on oil without sacrificing its efficiency and compromising mobility. It can be win-win," he claimed….."The EU must be living in an alternate reality…..

My Take – Did anyone ever read Orwell’s Animal House? Maybe everyone should! These are the decisions of bureaucrats attempting to stop anthropogenic global warming. In other words….unelected, unaccountable bean counters and greenie activists in positions of power want to destroy everyone’s freedoms and the economy by imposing their views on how life should be lived…by everyone else….. in order to fight something that doesn’t exist. No sane person could possibly think that this will not impact society negatively? I wonder if these people have children and grandchildren. If so, do they not think that they will also be negatively impacted by these decisions? If so….then I have to ask…...are they sane?

I would like to bring to your attention, Alan Caruba’s series on PBA.
Alan has ompleted three parts of what will become a six part series and plans to have it all done by June. Please check out Caruba’s Corner; Green Myths and Other Lies section of this blog for any number of insightful articles. Alan has given me permission to reprint all of his work involving environmental issues and organize it by topic. That will take some time as Alan is a prolific writer.

STALL, BABY, STALL
It's unbelievable (literally) the rhetoric on "America's Energy Security" President Obama is once again giving lip service to a "new energy proposal"; but let's remember the last time he trotted out a "new energy proposal" - nearly a year ago to the day. The main difference is today we have $4 a gallon gas in some places in the country. This is no accident. …..Through a process of what candidate Obama once called "gradual adjustment," American consumers have seen prices at the pump rise 67 percent since he took office. Meanwhile, the vast undeveloped reserves that could help to keep prices at the pump affordable remain locked up because of President Obama's deliberate unwillingness to drill here and drill now.

We're subsidizing offshore drilling in Brazil and purchasing energy from them, instead of drilling ourselves and keeping those dollars circulating in our own economy to generate jobs here.

My Take -I always love the line….”there is no quick fixes”. I hear the same thing about bed bugs. “There’s no silver bullet!” The rhetoric is always the same. And so is the outcome. The job doesn’t get done.

Bed bugs are becoming a plague and gasoline is working its way up to five dollars a gallon by summer. No, there are no quick fixes, because no one is picking tools that work. It’s like an auto mechanic complaining that he can’t get the job done because he has to bend over to pick up his wrench.

They claim that we’ll create good paying green jobs. Didn’t happen and it will never happen. For every green job created 2.2 jobs is lost….and this whole business as to what constitutes a green job is highly subjective, and even the greenies can’t exactly decide what a “green job” really is. Then again….why should that surprise anyone. They will create clean energy. That won’t happen without bankrupting and blacking out the nation. They will stop putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a result of anything mankind is doing. Not without destroying the economy….or killing all of humanity.

No, there are no quick fixes and there is no silver bullet….and it is by design. Of course, what they are proposing has been accomplished elsewhere.

And Harry Reid calls people “radical”. I wonder which side of the line Harry would live on?

Against All Energy Anywhere
By Alan Caruba
One of the great afflictions of the environmentalists—Greens—everywhere is a profound lack of understanding of the role that energy plays in whether a nation prospers or just limps along, barely keeping the lights on.

A classic case is the communist paradise of North Korea that is almost completely dark at night while just across the 38th parallel, South Korea is ablaze with light, energy, and a thriving economy.

Morons Who Hate Oil
By Alan Caruba
It may seem harsh to call people who actively spread lies about oil “morons”, but that assumes they do so out of ignorance as opposed to those who do so for some crazed “environmental” reason that is so out of touch with reality it invites scorn.
According to the Congressional Research Service, America’s combined energy resources, oil, coal, and natural gas, are the largest on Earth!

It is insane that Americans will be paying $4, $5 or more for a gallon of gasoline and it is insane to believe environmentalists when they tell you the Earth is running out of oil “by the end of this century.”

Scientist Predicts New Ice Age
On the heels of the pronouncement by one of the gurus of global warming that any decrease in the earth’s temperature could be a thousand years away, another scientist has stepped forward with the warning that a new Ice Age could be right around the corner. Professor Tim Flannery, the head of Australia’s Climate Change Commission, sparked the latest scandal in the global warming community when he recently declared, "If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow, the average temperature of the planet's not going to drop for several hundred years, perhaps over 1000 years."........Thus, Kukla’s theory of a new Ice Age is utterly different from the Holdren/Ehrlich’s “new Ice Age” of the 1970s, or the “global warming” scare which has predominated in the circles of scientific apocalypticism in recent decades. If Kukla is right, the Ice Age will come according to its own schedule, and there’s nothing that the human race can do about it—except, of course, for enjoying the brief warming that precedes the big chill.

My Take - At Least he sees the lunacy of all the greenie scares about new ice ages and global warming. Here at least is a scientific basis for his fears. There has been a lot of disucssion regarding the potential for the sun's latest cycle causing a Dalton Minimun.

I would encourage everyone to read James A. Marusek's articles, "The Mighty Ohio", 
Solar "Grand Minama" Threat Analysis and, "The Sun is Undergoing a State Change", .


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