Epstein and whiplash — poor Democrats

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From billions to thousands, it's bullshit all the way down, and all was predictable nd in fact predicted

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EV CARnage in Auto Industry

One hundred and forty billion dollars in writedowns from automakers in just the past three years, and all connected to the manufacture of electric vehicles.

You know, that next 'big thing.'

..."Each charging port will deliver up to 11.2kW, offering drivers up to 30 miles of range per hour of charging."

...for the whole thirty miles you get after an hour of sitting there.

[INSERT: eyeball roll]

You're screwed in the current polar vortex if you have to take public transportation as the alternative in some of the woker areas that have also gone electric.

Not that I haven't been warning anyone for three years...

Electric buses are proving unreliable this winter for Vermont's Green Mountain Transit, as it needs to be over 41 degrees for the buses to charge, but due to a battery recall the buses are a fire hazard and can't be charged in a garage.

Spokesman for energy workers advocacy group Power the Future Larry Behrens told the Center Square: “Taxpayers were sold an $8 million ‘solution’ that can’t operate in cold weather when the home for these buses is in New England.”

“We’re beyond the point where this looks like incompetence and starts to smell like fraud,” Behrens said.

“When government rushes money out the door to satisfy green mandates, basic questions about performance, safety, and value for taxpayers are always pushed aside,” Behrens said. “Americans deserve to know who approved this purchase and why the red flags were ignored.”

General manager at Green Mountain Transit (GMT) Clayton Clark told The Center Square that “the federal government provides public transit agencies with new buses through a competitive grant application process, and success is not a given.”

And From Issues and Insights:

Are EVs The Biggest Boondoggle In Human History?

When Stellantis last week announced it was writing down $26 billion, the CEO of the car company that now owns Chrysler, Antonio Filosa, said it was “part of a decisive process we started in 2025 to once again make our customers and their preferences our guiding star.”

Which begs the question: What was Stellantis’ guiding star before if not its own customers?

For that matter, who or what has been guiding General Motors (which announced a $7.6 billion writedown last month), Ford ($19.5 billion), and other automakers that’ve written down a total of $140 billion in just the past three years?

Anyone who has followed the auto industry over the past decade knows the answer. All of these losses are the result of automakers chasing the phantom known as “zero emission” cars.

Remember that until just recently, we were treated to a constant barrage of stories about how EV sales were skyrocketing, and car companies were winning plaudits for going green.

Just five years ago, GM promised to go all-electric by 2035, and just two years ago, its chief executive, Mary Barra, said “we believe in an all-electric future.” Honda, Volvo, Ford, and others laid out plans to be 100% “zero emission” within two decades.

It was all supported by Big Environment, which brayed that EVs were the only way to save the planet from “climate change.”

But none of it worked out as planned.

And keep in mind that the $140 billion in combined auto industry losses is just the tip of the iceberg. Those are just the costs incurred by shareholders and employees of these companies.

Taxpayers have forked over hundreds of billions in federal and state tax dollars in subsidies that were designed to “kick start” the EV car market. They paid thousands toward the cost of each EV sold. They paid companies to build battery factories. They paid for charging stations.

Fuel economy standards imposed another hidden subsidy for EVs. The only way automakers could meet increasingly stringent federal fuel economy standards, commonly known as CAFE standards, was to sell more EVs. For each EV sold, they’d get an oversized credit toward the miles-per-gallon average of all cars sold in any given year.

If they still couldn’t hit those CAFE standards, they’d buy “credits” from companies such as Tesla, which banked more than $11 billion selling its fuel-economy credits.

When the Texas Public Policy Foundation ran the numbers in 2021, it found “nearly $22 billion in federal and state subsidies and regulatory credits” that year alone.

Those families trying to buy a decent car were the ones who ultimately paid all these costs.

Joe Biden’s criminally misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” included more than $1 trillion in additional subsidies. Biden dumped $7.5 billion into the production of charging stations, which resulted in fewer than 400 charging ports being built.

There is some welcome news here. What the experience with the EV debacle shows is that consumers are still in the driver’s seat – no pun intended.

No matter how much environmentalists shrieked, no matter how much regulators bullied, no matter how much money politicians threw at EVs, they couldn’t overcome the will of car buyers, who want the kind of affordable, reliable transportation that gas-powered cars provide.

And, thankfully, the Trump administration has been pulling the wiring out of the various federal EV subsidy schemes.

Even so, there must be a reckoning. There needs to be an effort to tally all the wasteful spending imposed by the EV mania. Because, when all is said and done, it could prove to be the most expensive boondoggle in human history.

And then all the politicians, industry “experts,” regulators, environmentalists, and everyone else who had a hand in selling EV snake oil should be held to account for these costs.

That’s especially true of automakers who, rather than standing up for their consumers, eagerly bent the knee to the Climate Industrial Complex.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

Related Articles

Ford’s Felonious Failure December 17, 2025 In "Electric Cars"

EVs Aren’t The Edsel Of The 21st Century — They’re Far Worse December 6, 2023In "Electric Cars"

Joe’s Never, Never Land Auto Plan February 2, 2021 In "I&I Partner"

And:

Bloomberg News

August 17, 2023 at 7:00 PM EDT

China’s Abandoned, Obsolete Electric Cars Are Piling Up in Cities

A subsidy-fueled boom helped build China into an electric-car giant but left weed-infested lots across the nation brimming with unwanted battery-powered vehicles.

If you need an explanation — and I know you don’t — why Democrat politicians and NGO are so fiercely fighting Trump, look no further than this

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U.S. Economy Added 130,000 Jobs in January, Doubling Expectations

The United States economy added more jobs than expected, especially in the manufacturing sector, according to newly released numbers.

The January jobs report was delayed, but it was worth the wait, as job numbers almost doubled economists’ expectations of around 70,000 jobs for last month. Fox Business and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the Department of Labor (DOL) data showing that January’s added jobs were 130,000.

The growth is focused on the private sector, which is good news because it is the private sector that drives economic growth. In fact, federal employment is at its lowest level as a share of the workforce since 1966. While economists expected private payrolls to grow by 70,000, the actual number is 172,000 for January. Government payrolls lost 42,000 jobs at both the state and federal levels combined.

Well of course he was, just as you know the race of a criminal when they won't mention it

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“Gun Person in a Dress”

Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, ID’d as transgender ex-student behind Tumbler Ridge mass shooting

'Gun PERSON' Rampages Thru Canadian School - 10 Dead, 25+ Wounded

It’s a horrible, horrible tragedy, and in a town of just 2,400, everyone must have been affected terribly. But I do grow weary of these refusal of the media to call out and identify transvestites when these mass-killings and assassinations occur. Although trannies comprise something like just 0.015% of the population, they’ve been responsible for quite a number of these insane acts in recent years; that might cause one to wonder whether there’s some mental problem going on with transgenders, so the press won’t allow it.

UPDATE: David Strom has a good article up on HotAir about this topic, beginning with the “ragic” ICE arrest of a well-meaning illegal who just happened to have brought 50 lbs of meth into the country and ending with our trans shooter.

Lies by Omission

  • It's hard to give a precise estimate of how much of the propaganda being pushed on us is outright hoaxes, such as the "Bait Boy" story, and how much is pushing stories that are shaped by omitting relevant facts, creating an impression utterly at odds with reality. 

  • I'd say it is about 25-75, meaning 25% hoaxes and 75% lies by omission. 

  • By the latter, I am referring to the vast number of horror stories of ICE or the Border Patrol arresting American citizens, harassing "journalists," assaulting people, or detaining innocent "fathers" or model citizens who turn out to be gang members. Take a video clip out of context, hide the identity and crimes of the arrestee, and claim that "protesters" are peaceful when they are actually assaulting officers. 

  • You know the drill. The media did both with Renee Good, first by claiming that she was just a model citizen dropping off her kid at the day care (Somali?), and when it came out that she was impeding law enforcement officers and rammed into an agent, claiming that she had done nothing wrong. 

  • It was a two-fer. Both a hoax and after the hoax couldn't be maintained, a "missing context" piece of propaganda. 

  • Liz Collin provides another great example of "missing context" in Pravda—the case of a drug smuggler who brought in 50 pounds of Meth. 

  • Our County Attorney and much of the legal establishment are outraged that ICE detained this man in the Hennepin County Government Center, because it is a sanctuary for illegal alien meth smugglers whose only crime is trying to kill Minnesota drug addicts. Perhaps he is a father, or is just doing this to give a better life to his 8 kids from different moms, or votes Democrat. Who knows?

  • The media dutifully reported the outrage, of course. 

Here’s the “female” subject:

New listing in Shorelands (Bad link before)

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5 Greenwich Cove Drive, $4.295 million. Completely renovated in 2024, it looks very nice. Shorelands is a popular neighborhood and rightly so, if you don’t mind neighboring houses so close that the people inside can see what you’re having for breakfast; many don’t mind.

As part of the renovations here the house was jacked up into the sky and the first floor now meets the (ridiculous) 16’ minimum height above sea level line that was mandated by our P&Z a decade ago after Al Gore promised impending doom.

So the house itself won’t flood, although the crawl space might, but Shorelands always floods; always has, melting icebergs or not. Do as the natives do and keep an aluminum or inflatable dingy stashed and you’ll be able to reach dry land easily, in time to catch the train or the opening school bell.

Foreclosure listing on Old Round Hill Lane

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8 Old Round Hill Lane, to be exact, newly listed at $8.995 million. The owners purchased it for $10.1 million in 2008 from an individual who’d paid $9.5 million in 2005. The couple divorced in 2014, but they both signed on to an $18 million mortgage (down to $4 million + now), so they’re together again, if only in Stamford Superior Court. (A familiar place — Ms.Lampert has kept the halls of justice busy ever since and, 12 years later, is still at it. (NTTAWWT).

I wrote about this property’s legal woes back in September, and May 9, 2025, and before that, July 29, 2014.

Foreclosure was initiated in June 2024, and the court case file makes for interesting reading (interesting to me, in any event). One motion filed by the estranged husband of the co-defendant was ultimately denied, but its description of the (alleged) condition of the house might give a prospective buyer pause; certainly, a contract contingency calling for a thorough home inspection would be well advised. The house is offered “as is”.

On again, the Democrats are bewailing the loss of their slaves.

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Democratic State Leaders: Sanctuary Cities Must Be Exempted from Civil Rights Laws

Every legislative session Democrats impose new costs on employers, from an ever- escalating minimum wage, to mandatory paid 3-month personal leave, and so on, and now complain that their illegal under-the-table workforce is no longer available to exploit. Cry me a river.

Numerous Democratic leaders say their high-migration, low-wage sanctuary city economies are crashing because President Donald Trump is requiring them to comply with national labor laws.

“We are now expected to absorb the fiscal consequences of [federal] enforcement activities,”  the treasurers of 16 states wrote to President Trump. “This is not acceptable.”

Not to worry, Greenwich Invisibles, Connecticut’s Treasurer has heard you, and is among the signatories.

Damn it, these people are ours, bought and paid for, just like our politicians. How dare you!