We’ve noted many times that America continues to globally dominate the high-tech/social network sector of the economy, and the Europeans are nowhere in this race for tech supremacy. Envy is an ugly thing.
A chilling front-page story from the Wall Street Journal exposes a new Euro strategy of strangulation through regulation as a way to steal tens of billions of dollars from America’s leading trillion-dollar-plus tech companies and American shareholders:
Meta Platforms, Apple, Alphabet’s Google, and other largely U.S. companies will start facing the first of new European Union tech rules set to come into effect soon marking THE LARGEST EXPANSION OF DIGITAL REGULATION YET (emphasis added).
Fines for breaching the online content rules can go as high as 6% of a firm’s global revenue and as high as 20% for repeatedly breaking the digital competition rules. The EU has the power under the digital-competition law to force the breakup of companies.
What’s reprehensible about this story is that here at home, Biden regulators at the FTC and in the Justice Dept. are cheering on this shake-down of American companies located in Silicon Valley and other tech centers.
The Biden Administration should be defending America’s tech supremacy, and instead, they are joining forces with our Chinese and European rivals.
2) Bidenomics Means Not Being Able To Afford A Car
New car prices are up 25 percent under Biden. As recently as 2018, there were a dozen new car models that sold for less than $20,000. In 2023, there was only one: the bare-bones Mitsubishi Mirage, which is scheduled to go out of production in two years. The average new car now costs a whopping $48,000. The average USED car now costs over $27,000 or almost as much as the average new one did just a few years ago.
Let’s put this into terms that President Biden, who cherishes his 1967 Corvette Stingray, can understand: Last year, Biden got behind the wheel of a Corvette Z06 at the Detroit Auto Show. The price tag for that car starts at $106,000. That’s nearly $25,000 more than the previous-generation Corvette.
Making matters worse, the average new car loan now has a monthly payment of over $750, with an interest rate of 9.5%. For used cars, the average car interest rate is 13.7%.
We’ve noted often that the left hates cars, so maybe this is a nefarious plot to make them so expensive everyone has to take mass transit.
3) Biden's New Student Loan Bailout Scheme More Expensive Than the One the Supreme Court Vetoed
Joe just refuses to take no for an answer even when the Supreme Court keeps swatting him down. Under the latest Biden plan more than a million student loan borrowers would pay zero according to Biden's own estimate.
The Biden administration says the plan will cost taxpayers $138 billion, while the Penn-Wharton budget model's median estimate is that it will cost taxpayers $475 billion over the 10-year budget window. That's another half-trillion-dollar inflation bomb.
Will Republicans in Congress block this half-trillion-dollar spending plan in the appropriations process?
Will Missouri and the other states that sued to stop the last student loan bailout stop this one too?
Or will Biden get away with making millions of Americans who never had an opportunity to go to college pay off other people's student loans?
4) Canada Is Eating Our Lunch When It Comes To Skilled Immigrants
Joe Biden’s inhumane border policy has let more than 1.6 million migrants into the U.S. Illegally. Meanwhile, the number of foreigners waiting years for a green card to work legally in the U.S. is now over nine million. Only about one in 10 people who register for the annual H-1B lottery get a visa.
No wonder our neighbor Canada is taking advantage of our paralysis. Last month, Canada offered a three-year work permit to anyone holding a U.S. H-1B visa, the most common entry permit for immigrants working in the tech sector. The program drew 10,000 applicants in its first 48 hours, a sign of just how much the U.S. visa system is a morass.
Admitting skilled immigrants is a key to more economic growth. We need more trained healthcare workers, scientists, engineers, carpenters, mathematicians, and electricians.
The left loves to use children as political pawns, so here’s the latest craziness.
Last week, we reported on how a rogue judge ruled that Montana violated its constitution when it approved fossil fuel projects without taking climate change into account. Who were the plaintiffs? Children, as young as five years old.
State judge Kathy Seeley ruled that 16 youngsters had thus had their right to “a clean and healthful environment” violated.
But only now have we read Judge Seeley’s bizarre 103-page opinion. Among the alleged “harms” she cites from the youngsters:
“Olivia expressed despair due to climate change.”
“Badge is anxious when he thinks about the future that he, and his potential children, will inherit.”
“Grace … is anxious about climate change.”
“Mica gets frustrated when he is required to stay indoors during the summer because of wildfire smoke.”
Oh, the horror! By the way, just who is it that’s causing these kids all this “anxiety?” The climate crazies. Maybe they are the ones who should be found guilty of child abuse.
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen called the ruling “absurd” for allowing “an ideological judge” to “earn herself a spot in their next documentary.”
