To the average left-wing, summer-of-love, we’re good, they’re bad leftist, the world is a conundrum; They blame right-wingers for the problems they themselves create. They accuse Donald Trump and his supporters of racism, yet bear within their party anti-Semitic racists freely supporting a second holocaust against Jews. Many other examples could be given, but that is not their real problem; it is that they are not able to set priorities in the instance where the priorities do not contradict themselves. Environmental dogma reaches a point of absurdity when bird-killing windmills are prioritized over the creatures themselves. Emotion driven people change their fad at their convenience because it would be boring otherwise. Every problem is bound up in their morality-determined world. Each issue has a moral imperative attached to the extent that they stumble as they fall over their own feet and fail their cause.
Sometimes the average right-winger just has to take his good news the way he can get it. According to the Washington Examiner,[1] “Biden has expressed ‘immense frustration’ that his administration has few completed infrastructure projects to boast about on the reelection trail while 70% of voters give him poor marks on his handling of the economy.” The reason is classic Democrat circular firing squad style. According to the Examiner:
“States are . . . largely allowed to spend the money as they see fit. But this usual system was not good enough for Biden, who didn’t trust Republican governors to spend the money in ways that promoted a carbon-free transportation system. Instead, his infrastructure bill channeled money through grant programs run by federal agencies, . . . This was a device to allow Democrats in Washington to send money directly to Democratic cities and counties while cutting off Republican governors.
But these were all new grant programs without any functioning rules guiding how local governments could apply and how the federal government would decide which local governments got what. The creation of those regulations took at least a year and even then, local governments still had to apply under new rules and the agencies had to reward the money. All that took time as well.”[2]
So, after three years of the Biden administration, electric car owners have few charging stations to use on their long-distance road trips. And if the trip is in winter, each trip is likely to take even longer as the batteries performance declines (possibly as much as 41%) in cold weather, which in turn requires more stops and additional time on the road.
California is helping the Biden administration with its holy war against fossil fuels. In a Bloomberg story article recently, Chevron announced it was taking a $3.5-$4-billion-dollar write-down of its assets as a result of policies in California and environmental liabilities incurred from operations in the Gulf of Mexico. The article goes on to say:
“The charges “primarily” stem from California regulations that “have resulted in lower anticipated future investment levels,” the company said in a filing Tuesday [January 2, 2024]. Chevron’s production in the state has dropped 15% since the Covid-19 pandemic and now accounts for just 3 percent of its worldwide output.[3]
Using environmental laws to penalize fossil fuel companies is the trick of choice for the leftists running America’s governments. Like the EV chargers that aren’t built, California deprived Californians of the jobs and money Chevron would produce, but staggering environmental costs (and rising interest rates) undermine entire projects.
Extreme environmental laws, along with high taxes, also inhibits home building and businesses from being started or expanded. Restrictive environmental laws prevent even the governments that want to produce allegedly green products from doing so.
Chevron responded to the California challenges, saying:
“The comments come as California lawmakers consider limiting the profits in-state refiners can reap. The most-populous US state already has the nation’s toughest fuel standards as well as a carbon cap-and-trade program that critics say forces consumers to pay more at the pump.”[4]
The goal here is to drive up the cost of fossil fuels, stigmatize the fossil fuel industry, and reduce the value of their corporate stock. Consequently, California experiences energy blackouts and requests its citizens to charge their cars at night when the load is lighter.
Equally pernicious, are the attempts to coat environmentally friendly statutes with woke “. . . secure environmental justice for historically marginalized communities”[5]
While elements of aid to impoverished communities of color may be justified, the vaguely stated goals of the environmental justice {EJ] plan under Executive Order 14008 gave voice to hateful rhetoric by leftists like Richard Moore, co-chairman of the White House Environment Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC), who used the opportunity to attach allegations of “climate injustice, environmental racism, and environmental genocide”[6] aganst American minorities. This hateful rhetoric suggests an administration fulminating irrational personal issues instead of reasoned strategy to solve problems.
In fact, the implementation of the executive order gets in the way of itself by mandating raising union wages and satisfying community activists “that most effectively reduce emissions.”[7] Other requirements undermine noble goals. For example, replacing lead water pipes in old homes requires more time and resources to get the job done, and less time with stake-holder consultations. Other obstructions include requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act’s debilitating review process. Permitting requirements represent an additional hurdle and, “These policies would also raise new hurdles to private industry, restricting job opportunities particularly in poor communities.”[8]
Mixing social justice goals with environmental improvements will end up diverting funds to left-wing activist groups while risking failure to legitimate and needed infrastructure improvements. Once again, the Biden administration undermines its own causes with its emotional tantrums concerning social goals versus tangible improvements in the lives of people. For communities of color, they will receive just enough benefits to retain the appearance of progress, but not enough to move the needle into new territory. Minority communities deserve government that solves the problems of poverty, poor educational attainment, and personal insecurity within their communities. So far, over fifty years of affirmative action has not done the job. Government in the end will not succeed in its desire for an equal outcome for all of Americas citizens until government gets out of the way of those in minority communities who can lead their people out of their insulated world.
Note the following:
Orsted, a commercial windmill company has cancelled its contract with the State of Maryland to install wind-power windmills in the Atlantic Ocean on the grounds that it is no longer commercially viable as a result of market conditions, including inflation, high interest rates and supply chain constraints.
Note also:
Orsted announced that it had cancelled its Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2 twin projects. This project was on behalf of New Jersey. Earlier an energy firm, Equinor and British Petroleum discontinued its contract with New York State for the Empire Wind 2 project.
The empire of contradictions, hypocrisy, and bureaucracy march on as the Biden Administration’s clumsy government can’t get out of its own way. If a Trump Administration is formed in 2025, it is unlikely that much of the Biden Administration will exist for long. Americans will be able to return to peace and prosperity.
[1] Washington Examiner, 1/2/2024, pg. 1
[2] Ibid
[3] Bloomberg, Energywire, https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2024/01/03/chevron-sees-up-to-4b-hit-from-calif-policies-former-gulf-assets-00133498
[4] Financial Post, Chevron Slashes California Spending on ‘Adversarial’ Fossil-Fuel Policies, https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/chevron-slashes-california-spending-on-adversarial-fossil-fuel-policies
[5] National Review, December 2023, Not Green, Not Just, James B. Meigs, pg. 19
[6] Ibid, pg. 20
[7] Ibid
[8] Ibid