1) Did Bidenomics Drive Trucking Company Yellow Over the Cliff?
Yesterday, Yellow, one of America’s oldest and largest trucking companies, announced the cessation of operations. Some 30,000 jobs may be imperiled – two-thirds of which are filled by Teamsters. There are many reasons for the collapse, but for sure Bidenomics helped close operations.
Trucks run diesel and Biden’s war on fossil fuels drove up wholesale diesel prices 166% in Biden’s first year and a half, and the price is still up 35% since his inauguration. Diesel prices are on the rise again.
Meanwhile, the record spending/borrowing binge under Bidenomics has also caused interest rates to spike, thus increasing corporate borrowing costs. The Wall Street Journal reports that Yellow was heavily laden with debt from multiple mergers and acquisitions, and today’s higher rates made it prohibitively expensive to roll over or restructure that debt.
Finally, Yellow was facing a militant Teamsters Union whose workers have been shafted by high-inflation real wage reductions under Biden. Surges in inflation are highly correlated with labor unrest and strike activity. A costly strike seemed inevitable given that Biden worships at the altar of big labor bosses. Yellow couldn’t afford the big payday the Teamsters won last week in the UPS agreement.
So now everyone loses. The shareholders, the workers, and the customers who depended on deliveries from reliable trucking companies. But Bidenomics is apparently a success.
Even though California is infested with crime, high taxes, homelessness, fiscal chaos, and massive outmigration of businesess and people, somehow half of Californians approve of the job Gov. Newsom is doing versus 35% who disapprove.
Newsom could be a big problem for the Republicans. Let's hope they stick with Joe.
4) Hero of the Week: Nevada’s Governor Joe Lombardo Saves School Choice for Low-Income Kids
Despite all the success in expanding school choice in the states this year, teacher unions were able to nearly kill Nevada’s modest Opportunity Scholarship program that funds some 1,400 low-income kids going to private schools. Lombardo, the new GOP Governor, has proposed expanding the program from $7 million to $50 million, but Democrats — who have a nearly two-thirds majority in the legislature — did the opposite. They killed the small experimental program although The Gov did win an expansion of public charter schools.
But Lombardo, a former two-term sheriff of Las Vegas, refused to leave any scholarship kids behind. Last week, he redirected $3.2 million in unspent federal COVID-19 aid dollars to fund the scholarships.
“No Nevada student deserves to lose their Opportunity Scholarship,” he vowed.
Democratic Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager is furious at the move, calling the scholarships “handouts to more wealthy students to go to unaccountable private schools,” a preposterous line given that the scholarships only go to low-income families.
Governor Lombardo not only promises another school choice battle next year but to make it a key issue in the 2024 elections in which a few GOP gains could give the governor the leverage to expand the program.
5) Biden’s Mandate Will Make It Impossible To Meet Fuel Standards To Kill Gas-Cars
Some of our readers have told us they think we’ve been scare-mongering by saying that Biden wants to abolish cars.
Well, decide for yourself, because here’s the latest move by Biden’s climate crazies. The Biden Department of Transportation and EPA will mandate that auto companies meet an impossible target of 58 miles per gallon for their fleets by 2032, up sharply from the 49 miles a gallon now required in the model year 2026. The auto companies say this target will be nearly impossible to meet without making cars so expensive that few can buy them.
Is there a hidden motive here? The American Accountability Foundation has uncovered an email thread from 2020 in which acting NHTSA head Ann Carlson, then a leftist California professor (she’s a perfect fit for the Biden admin) saw higher fuel requirements are a back door way to impose a
“ban on [gas] engines.” These new rules, she wrote, would “help California achieve the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone pollution, something very difficult to achieve as long as conventional vehicles remain on the road.” She admitted it was “impossible” for California to achieve its climate goals without “moving away from the internal combustion engine.”
Now she’s brought her looney California ideas to Washington.
Republicans in the Senate who want to save the American auto industry should reject Carlson’s nomination to head NHTSA.
