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Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today. Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.
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- The news that Chinese electric-car company BYD had overtaken Tesla as the world’s top EV maker came, appropriately enough, just as the Year of the Dragon got underway.
- Yet as BYD gobbles up global market share, America should beware the three heads of this dragon – spying on Americans, potentially disabling U.S. vehicles on the road, and undercutting the domestic EV industry.
- Spying: Americans were concerned in February 2023 about a Chinese spy balloon moving from Alaska to Montana to the East Coast. The balloon, 200 feet tall and weighing over 2,000 pounds, contained solar panels and equipment to collect sensitive information. Chinese EVs could be equipped with even more powerful spying equipment. They could go anywhere, including military bases, power plants and cellphone towers.
- Disabling vehicles: Just as General Motors’ Onstar program advertises that it can stop or disable stolen vehicles, America should not give the CCP power to stop or disable EVs driven in America.
- Undercutting U.S. EV incentives: The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act contained over $1 trillion in clean energy initiatives to fund EV and battery manufacturing plants and consumer tax credits to develop a domestic EV industry. But CCP subsidies for Chinese EVs can undercut these programs and American EV production, contrary to congressional intent.
- America should ban the sale of Chinese EVs – both those made in China and those made in other countries such as Mexico.
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- Special counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Biden’s “willful” retention and disclosure of classified documents details the memory lapses of “an elderly man” that occurred when the commander in chief was interviewed.
- Many are asking what, if anything, can be done about this potential problem, which could endanger the safety and well-being of the entire nation?
- The 25th Amendment was passed to establish procedures to deal with a president’s removal from office, including through death, resignation or impeachment, as well as due to disability, whether physical or mental.
- Section 3 provides for the vice president to take over as “Acting President” if the president on his own sends a “written declaration” to the Senate and the House that “he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
- Even if one assumes that there is a substantive medical issue with Mr. Biden, it is clear that he has no intention of voluntarily ceding control to Vice President Kamala Harris.
- Section 4 is the provision of the 25th Amendment that applies when the “Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or such other body as Congress may by law provide,” they may send written notice to the Senate and the House that the president is “unable” to do his job, and the vice president becomes acting president.
- We are living in dangerous times where we need a president who has the ability to competently and effectively protect the nation and handle the duties of what many believe is one of the hardest jobs in the world.
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- Millions of young Americans seem to have given up on their economic future, turning instead to “doom spending.” Rather than save up for a house, to start a family or for retirement—which they view as fruitless—they’re spending more than they earn without a plan to get ahead.
- The problem is becoming systemic. A recent study by Intuit, the company that makes TurboTax, found that 96% of Americans are concerned about the economy today. In response, 27% of Americans, about 90 million, have simply given up and turned to doom spending.
- Like many problems, this one started in Washington, D.C.
- To finance perpetual government deficit spending, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates artificially low for almost two decades, creating money for the politicians to spend. That devalued the dollar and imposed a hidden tax of inflation, which sapped the value of savings and gutted the real return on investment, while simultaneously incentivizing spendthrift behavior. It also grossly distorted prices and created misallocations of capital.
- At this point, horrendous fiscal and monetary policy have created two whole generations of Americans who have largely given up.
- So long as the uniparty in D.C. keeps spending like there’s no tomorrow, America’s youth will believe there’s no tomorrow for them.
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