Let’s Not Follow California’s Example

On Thursday, California Air Resources Board approved a regulation banning new sales of gas-powered vehicles. On Saturday, Red State posted an article about one of the consequences of that law.

The article reports:

On Friday, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and legislators in the Republican-controlled lower chamber vowed to take action to block the CA rules from coming to fruition in their state. Governor Youngkin addressed Virginians in a statement.

“In an effort to turn Virginia into California, liberal politicians who previously ran our government sold Virginia out by subjecting Virginia drivers to California vehicle laws. Now, under that pact, Virginians will be forced to adopt the California law that prohibits the sale of gas and diesel-fueled vehicles. I am already at work to prevent this ridiculous edict from being forced on Virginians. California’s out of touch laws have no place in our Commonwealth.”

In a statement, House Speaker Todd Gilbert added:

“House Republicans will advance legislation in 2023 to put Virginians back in charge of Virginia’s auto emission standards and its vehicle marketplace. Virginia is not, and should not be, California.”

The article notes that the law putting Virginia on California’s standards is set to take effect in 2024, but the California law banning gasoline vehicles does not take effect until 2035, so there is some time to work this out.

The article also notes that can manufacturers will no longer be making the Dodge Charger and the Dodge Challenger. Meanwhile, there is no an electric Mustang. I object.

Lied To Again

There is a container backup at American ports. There are various places on the Internet where you can look at the ships waiting to be unloaded. The Biden administration claims that the backup is due to the coronavirus. Actually there is another part of the story.

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse reported the following:

Hundreds of requests for details on the specifics of the container shipping backlog.  So, I spent 3 days calling sources, digging for details and gathering information on the substantive issue at hand.  The epicenter of the problem is not what is being outlined by financial media, corporate media and politicians who have a specific interest in distracting from the issues at hand.  This has nothing to do with COVID-19.

The issues being discussed today relate to events that happened a long time ago.  As a matter of fact, it was so predictable that Amazon, Walmart, UPS, FedEx, Samsung, The Home Depot and Target all had taken actions years ago -long before COVID- because they knew this day would come.  It was not accidental that those companies showed up at the White House to discuss the issue, because there’s now a full court press to hide it.

There is one very specific regional issue driving the problem.  Read on:

The trucking issue with California LA ports, ie the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and the Port of Long Beach (POLB), is that all semi tractors have to be current with new California emissions standards.  As a consequence, that mean trucks cannot be older than 3 years if they are to pick up or deliver containers at those ports.  This issue wipes out approximately half of the fleet trucks used to move containers in/out of the port.  Operating the port 24/7 will not cure the issue, because all it does is pile up more containers that sit idle as they await a limited number of trucks to pick them up.  THIS is the central issue.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. There needs to be a balance between environmentalism and progress. Some of our state governors have not learned this lesson yet.