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Opinion

Biden Promised To Build Half A Million EV Charging Stations. So far, There Are A Grand Total Of 8.

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By STEPHEN MOORE

 

The Biden administration has spent tens of billions of dollars on green energy and yet last year the U.S. and the world used record amounts of fossil fuels.

That would seem to be prima facie evidence that this “great transition” to renewable energy has so far been an expensive policy belly flop.

The evidence is everywhere. Americans aren’t buying EVs anymore than they were before Biden was elected. The car companies even with record federal subsidies are losing billions of dollars making EVs that people don’t want. Wind and solar still account for less than 15% of American energy, and across the country hundreds of communities are saying “not in my backyard” to ugly and spacious solar and wind farms. And of course gas prices at the pump and electric bills are 30% to 50% higher, even though we were promised that the green revolution would save us money.

A case in point is the scandalous mismanagement of how these green energy programs are being implemented.  Consider the $7.5 billion federal program stuck inside the Biden 2021 Infrastructure bill — a law that Biden touts as one of his great achievements. That bill promised half a million EV charging stations installed all over the country.

Instead, there have been a grand total of… drum roll please…”seven or eight installed.” To be fair, that was through last month. They might be up to nine now.

When Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was confronted recently on CBS’s “Face the Nation” about what happened with all the money, he hemmed and hawed and replied: “In order to do a charger, it’s more than just plunking a small device into the ground, there’s utility work, and this is also, really, a new category of federal investment.”

Uh huh! Sure. Installing an electric charger for a Tesla in your garage is very complicated business. It’s like trying to Build the Taj Mahal (which may not have cost $7.5 billion).

Here’s another mystery. Why can’t Pete give us an exact count on the progress when the number is small enough to use his fingers?  What is for sure is that at this pace they may get 500 built by 2030 — not the 500,000 promised.

Thank God our celebrated transportation secretary renowned for riding his bike to his office in Washington wasn’t in charge of the Normandy landing.

Then there is the question of where the $7.5 billion of taxpayer money has actually gone. At their current rate of production the final program’s price tag could inflate to more than $1 trillion.

If Trump were president, he’d have long ago summoned Mayor Pete to the Oval Office and greet him with those two words that made him famous: “YOU’RE FIRED.”

Instead many Democrats are quietly talking about throwing Joe Biden off the ticket and one of the front runners to take his place is none other than the highly accomplished Pete Buttigieg.

But there are some serious lessons to be learned from this monumental screw-up.

First, though Biden loves to chat up how much money the government is “investing” — where are the signs that any of these trillions of dollars of borrowed money have improved our lives. This EV charger scandal is just another reminder that the government generally doesn’t “invest” tax dollars — it mostly wastes them.

Second, competence matters. At the Committee to Unleash Prosperity we released a study finding that more than 90% of the Biden top economic and finance team has NO experience running a business. We have an energy secretary who knows nothing about energy and a transportation secretary who knows nothing about transportation. They are either lawyers, academics, politicians or government employees.

They are not bad people. They just don’t know how to run anything — and it shows.

Finally, why do we need the government to build EV charging stations? One hundred years ago the government didn’t build gas stations. They just magically sprouted up all over the roads that crisscross America because entrepreneurs responded to the demand. So two or three brothers would scrap together some cash, buy a small plot of land on I-66, build a service station with four to eight hoses connected to a tank, put up a tall sign posting the gas price and drivers would pull in and fill er up.

All of this “infrastructure” without a single penny or instruction manual from Washington.

Can you imagine if Biden had been president in the 1920s and proclaimed that the government will build 500,000 gas stations? They still wouldn’t be built and we’d all be waiting in long gas lines.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.  

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Daily Caller

Suspect In Savage Knife Attack That Roiled Britain, Triggered Speech Crackdown Had Al-Qaida Manual At Home

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Nick Pope

The 18-year old suspect in a vicious July knife attack that left three young girls dead in the U.K. before triggering riots and a government crackdown on speech was in possession of an al-Qaida manual, according to Reuters.

Axel Rudakubana, who faces three murder charges and ten counts of attempted murder for the savage attack against a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, now faces additional charges for possessing an al-Qaida training guide and producing ricin, a highly toxic substance, Reuters reported  on Tuesday. Large riots broke out across the country following the attack as rumors spread that the perpetrator was a migrant, a radical Muslim, or both, prompting the liberal British government to crack down on speech on the internet.

The riots that followed the vicious attack rocked the U.K. for several days, with outraged crowds surrounding mosques, burning cars and attacking a hotel known to host migrants, according to Reuters and The New York Times. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a member of the Labor Party, quickly attributed the unrest to “far-right thuggery.”

U.K. government officials subsequently warned people to “think before [they] post” and announced  that law enforcement personnel would review social media platforms to look for speech deemed to be inflammatory and likely to spark violence.

Citizens were warned against “publishing or distributing material which is insulting or abusive which is intended to or likely to start racial hatred,” in the words of Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions of England and Wales. “So, if you retweet that, then you’re republishing that and then potentially you’re committing that offense [incitement to racial hatred].”

“We do have dedicated police officers who are scouring social media,” Parkinson added. “Their job is to look for this material, and then follow up with identification, arrests, and so forth.”

More than 1,000 people were arrested for their involvement in the riots, and more than 30 were arrested for social media posts that authorities claim fueled the rioting, according to the BBC. Of those arrested for social media activity, at least 17 faced criminal charges for their posts.

“These are telling details and are important for Rudakubana’s trial,” British conservative pundit Douglas Murray wrote of the new revelations about the materials in the suspect’s possession. “But the authorities must have known this months ago – indeed, within hours of getting into Rudakubana’s house – meaning that people who were heavily criticized for spreading ‘fake news’ about the potential motive of the attacker now turn out to have said something that seems likely to have been true.”

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Joe Rogan Responds To YouTube Censorship of Trump Interview

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From Reclaim The Net

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Joe Rogan has accused YouTube of making it difficult for users to find his recent interview with former President Donald Trump, saying that the platform initially only displayed short clips from mainstream media instead of the full episode. Rogan sarcastically remarked on YouTube’s actions, saying, “I’m sure it was a mistake at YouTube where you couldn’t search for it. Yeah. I’m sure it was a mistake. It’s just a mistake.”

In episode 2200, Rogan explained that even though his team contacted YouTube multiple times, the episode remained difficult to find. X CEO Elon Musk intervened, contacting Spotify CEO Daniel Ek about the issue. (Spotify exclusively licenses The Joe Rogan Experience but allows the show on third-party platforms like YouTube.)

Watch the video clip here.

Rogan noted the explosive viewership once the content was available, with the episode racking up “six and a half million views on mine and eight plus million on his.”

Emphasizing the episode’s broad reach, Rogan expressed frustration with the initial suppression, stating, “You can’t suppress shit. It doesn’t work. This is the internet. This is 2024. People are going to realize what you’re doing.” He pointed to the significance of this episode’s reach, asking, “If one show has 36 million downloads in two days, like that’s not trending? Like what’s trending for you? Mr. Beast?”

Describing the power of YouTube’s algorithmic influence, Rogan claimed the algorithm worked against the interview’s visibility, only showing clips instead of the full conversation. According to him, when YouTube initially fixed the issue, users had to enter highly specific keywords, like “Joe Rogan Trump interview,” to find the episode.

Rogan argued that YouTube’s gatekeeping reflected an ideological stance, remarking, “They hate it because ideologically they’re opposed to the idea of him being more popular.” He suggested that major tech platforms, such as YouTube and Facebook, which hold significant influence, often push agendas that favor specific narratives, stating, “They didn’t like that this one was slipping away. And so they did something.”

In a telling moment, Rogan noted the impact of the initial suppression, explaining how “the interactions…dropped off a cliff because people couldn’t find it.” He claimed that this caused viewers either to give up or settle for short clips, leading to a dip in views before the episode gained traction on Spotify and X.

 

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