Commentary
For the past dozen or so years, I have been writing about those wimps heading up our auto and truck manufacturing firms who didn’t stand up and fight when the government insisted that they meet the mileage required by its Café standards.
More on the cozy arrangement between automakers and your government later.
I’m sure those who bowed to the extortion of the Black Lives Matter movement are having second thoughts. They thought they could fork over big bucks, and the movement would leave them alone.
General Motors announced a $10 million program to advance inclusion and racial justice efforts. Now Black Owned Media companies, in full-page advertising in the biggest circulation newspapers, are going after GM’s Chairman and CEO Mary Bara because too little of GM’s ad budget goes to black media.
Now the top dogs at Delta Airlines, Coca Cola, Merck, American Express, Microsoft, Apple, and others are selling out Americans and blatantly lying about the content of the Georgia-passed voting reform bill. Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian clearly hadn’t read the legislation. He falsely mentioned measures in the bill that are so “egregious” that it will suppress the vote, but failed to cite them. Actually, the bill expands voting opportunities for Georgians.
Just as GM thought they would be off the hook if it contributed to the BLM cause, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly A. Strassel comments, “Corporate CEOs may think this virtue signaling will spare them the left’s boycotts or Democrats’ punitive legislative measures. That’s a sucker’s bet given the Democrat plan to siphon $2.3 trillion from corporations to fund new spending.” And, a hike to 28 percent for corporate taxes.
I think Bastian and the other CEOs will regret getting involved in this partisan battle, especially because they have the facts. It makes them look like political amateurs; which they are, of course.
In a disgusting statement that he repeated several times, President Biden called the legislation “un-American, and sick.” He, too, peddled a patently false narrative, revealing that he or his handlers hadn’t read the legislation either. It earned him four Pinocchio’s by the leftist Washington Post.
Then, as if it needs another black eye, Major League Baseball’s management and the Players’ Alliance supported the movement of the All-Star Game from Atlanta because they say the legislation “disproportionately disenfranchises the Black community.”
OKAY … Back to the automakers and the government.
Caving to the Café standards resulted in a wave of look-alike crossovers and lighter vehicles when what the public wanted was the bigger SUVs and pick-up trucks. In what other industry do companies allow the government to tell them what the public wants? The public is smart enough to seek out the product they want.
The same thing is happening now with the pressure to build electric cars, and the automakers are obliging. Buying one entitled you to a $7,500 tax credit.
Now, even though you may not own or wish to buy an electric car, President Biden wants you to help pay for his $174 billion plan to spur the development of electric vehicles, which includes retooling factories and paying for the installation of 500,000 EV charging devices by 2030.
Meanwhile, you may recall that I wrote of Elon Musk’s concern about the energy supply needed charge the vehicles. Sufficient alternative energy – solar and windmills – will not be available by 2030, and Biden wants to curtail fossil fuel production.
PONDER THIS … Why is it that those same CEOs, who are big believers that we can control climate by reducing emissions – an unachievable task – cannot see how reducing fossil fuel production will impact the charging of electric vehicles.
Remember Obama’s Cash for Clunkers program in 2009? Americans were eligible for a $3,500 to $4,500 voucher if they traded in an older gas-guzzling vehicle for a newer, fuel-efficient one.
The automobile dealers were naturally supportive of the program; it brought customers to their sales lots. The $1 billion funds for the program ran out and Congress forked over another $2 billion.
Even the left-leaning Brookings Institute had to concede that the environmental impact of the program was minimal. And, while the Democrats like to say they’re looking out for lower-income Americans, Brookings said the program mainly benefited wealthier and more educated Americans.
BIDEN WOULD DISAVOW any role in the $787 billion Obama-Biden stimulus for shovel-ready jobs in 2008, but we all remember his boss, sitting with his Jobs Council chairman, GE’s Jeff Immelt, laughing while he conceded that there were no shovel-ready jobs.
Keep that moment in mind as you hear more about Biden’s blue sky New Green Deal jobs program.
Now, more than ever … may God continue to bless the United States of America.
