Automobiles — besides education, there may not exist another topic on which Democrats are more out of touch (and out of their minds) than the future of American transportation.
Much of the Left, especially the cultural Left, reviles the individualism and autonomy that cars offer. According to them, everything would be much better if we packed ourselves into collectively subsidized tubes and were moved around in set and scheduled directions that a switchboard operator could control. Everyone would be safe and together — like a preschool field trip to the environmental preserve where the children are attached to one another in a line by a rope.
Combine this “happier as one” instinct with a fixation on climate alarmism, and its attendant demand for performative sacrifice, and we get President Biden’s continuation of Barack Obama’s crusade against tailpipes (Cash for Clunkers and constricting Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards). Today, the public was apprised of Biden’s new EPA rule — note that this is an executive action taken outside of Congress and an egregious abuse of power — which is slightly less deranged than the rule’s original form. The original slashes three of the tires of American transportation, while the revision slashes two and then keys your ex’s name on the top of the trunk. What joy.
The details as reported by National Review’s Zach Kessel:
Electric vehicles are fine. . . . Some are excellent. But forcing Americans to buy them or their bastardized form, the plug-in hybrid, is unnecessary and therefore wrong. Americans want inexpensive new vehicles, and everything the regulatory structure is doing at the moment is increasing costs for the producer and the consumer. Subsidizing EVs to compete with internal-combustion-engine vehicles is stealing from the future to reward yuppie liberals today — it’s student-loan forgiveness with a license plate. Stop it.
The next Republican administration should seriously consider removing all automotive-emissions-rulemaking authority from the EPA and returning it to Congress. Democratic administrations and the environmentalist yahoos in the executive branch can’t be trusted on this question. They have too many reasons to spite the means by which Americans explore this great land, visit their loved ones, and conduct business.