Shame: Hertz To Dump Huge Segment Of Their EV Vehicles

By William Teach January 12, 2024 – 7:15 am

Look, if you want to get an EV, feel free. Once again, I’ll say I’m not against one. One would work for me 90% of the time, since I’m mostly puttering around town. But, it should be my choice. I’d rather get a hybrid (I’m hoping Honda brings the HRV hybrids to the US when my lease is up in April 2025). Anyhow, can you guess why Hertz is dumping them?

High cost of fixing. Weren’t we told that maintenance is lower for EVs? From the article

Popular car rental service Hertz announced it will get rid of 20,000 electric vehicles from its fleet because of the high cost of fixing them.

The company decided to sell after discovering the vehicles were more expensive to repair after a collision than gas-powered cars.

“Expenses related to collision and damage, primarily associated with EVs, remained high in the quarter, thereby supporting the company’s decision to initiate the material reduction in the EV fleet,” Hertz said in a statement.

The stock market recoiled at the news of the sale, with Hertz shares falling 5% Thursday morning.

Hertz still offers dozens of EV options, from Teslas to BMW’s i3. Even after the sale, the company should have thousands of EVs available. Last year, the company bought around 160,000 EVs for use from Tesla and Sweden’s Polestar.

EV vehicles are typically much more expensive than gas-powered cars to maintain, especially after a crash, with estimates showing a $1,000 difference.

They may have bought them, but, they never entered the fleet, which analysts show to be around 60K, with quite a few articles showing that dumping 20K is a third of their EV fleet

(CNN) Hertz, which has made a big push into electric vehicles in recent years, has decided it’s time to cut back. The company will sell off a third of its electric fleet, totaling roughly 20,000 vehicles, and use the money they bring to purchase more gasoline powered vehicles.

Electric vehicles have been hurting Hertz’s financials, executives have said, because, despite costing less to maintain, they have higher damage-repair costs and, also, higher depreciation.

The falling prices of EVs is also causing major issues for Hertz’s resale segment

“The MSRP declines in EVs over the course of 2023, driven primarily by Tesla, have driven the fair market value of our EVs lower as compared to last year, such that a salvage creates a larger loss and, therefore, greater burden,” Scherr said.

Simply put, people are generally willing to pay a certain amount less for a used car than for a new one. As the price of new car goes down, that also pushes down what people are willing to pay to buy a used one.

Hertz expects to take a loss of about $245 million due to depreciation on the EVs, an average of about $12,250, per vehicle the company said in an SEC filing.

Yeah, $245 million isn’t chump change. And, are people wanting to rent EVs? Perhaps the small segment who already has one, but, if they’re just handing you the keys it’s not that easy. It can be hard enough for people to drive a different car than what they have with all the technology. It took me a while to figure out a Tesla, and jumping into other manufacturer vehicles and demonstrating them I can only know so much.

Read: Shame: Hertz To Dump Huge Segment Of Their EV Vehicles »

Posted in Economy, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

North Carolina Divests From Unilever, Parent Company Of Jew Hating Ben & Jerry’s

By William Teach January 12, 2024 – 7:00 am

If Unilever wants to let one of their companies run wild with Israel and Jew hatred while also supporting a State Department designated terrorist group, there are consequences

North Carolina latest to scoop retirement funds from Ben & Jerry’s over ice cream brand’s Israel boycott

North Carolina closed out last year by becoming the most recent state to divest its public employee pension from the corporate parent of Ben & Jerry’s over the ice cream company’s boycott of Israel.

North Carolina is a swing state in politics. Other states to pull retirement funds over Ben & Jerry’s boycott of Israel span the traditional political boundaries and include Arizona, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Texas.

“We are where we are. We don’t pick which laws to apply and who to apply them to,” North Carolina State Treasurer Dale Folwell, a Republican, told FOX Business in an interview this week. “I wish I never heard of this subject and wish we didn’t have to do what we had to do.”

Folwell announced last month that the North Carolina Retirement Systems — which provides retirement benefits for more than 1 million members, including teachers, firefighters, police officers and government employees — is withdrawing $40 million from Ben & Jerry’s and affiliates. This includes its parent company, Unilever PLC, a U.K.-based company. (snip)

In the face of the BDS movement — short for boycott, divest and sanction — the North Carolina legislature passed a law in 2017 that prohibits “the North Carolina Retirement Systems or the Department of State Treasurer from investing in any company engaged in a boycott of Israel.”

Ben & Jerry’s is welcome to their free speech, North Carolina will not stop it, but, that doesn’t mean NC or the other states have to keep their money in a the company or their parent when they are taking the side of a terrorist organization and all the supporters in Gaza, people so dangerous and extremist that no Arab nation will take them in.

Read: North Carolina Divests From Unilever, Parent Company Of Jew Hating Ben & Jerry’s »

Posted in Dhimmitude, Israel, Liberal World | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Bummer: “efforts to tackle climate change face a democracy challenge”

By William Teach January 11, 2024 – 3:00 pm

Time Magazine wonders if democracy is good for Doing Something about ‘climate change’. The very fact that they are asking this tells you all you need to know, even as Warmist Justin Worland soft-peddles that what we really need is authoritarianism, which is humorous considering Democrats keep yammering about our Democracy Being At Stake

It’s the World’s Biggest Election Year. Is Democracy Good for Climate Change?

This year is the biggest election year on record. Voters in more than 60 countries—including four of the five most populated—will go to the polls in 2024.

And in all of them, climate change is unavoidably on the ballot. Last year was the hottest year on record; this year is expected to be even hotter. The actions that countries take in the coming years will determine the trajectory of future emissions. Yet, despite this reality, climate change remains largely on the electoral campaign backburner.

These two facts side by side—the urgent need to address climate change and the widespread apathy toward the issue in a critical election year—point to an important reality: efforts to tackle climate change face a democracy challenge.

The critical timing of this election year, when nations must rapidly accelerate climate action to keep any hope of meeting the Paris Agreement’s goals alive, offers a lens into the knotty challenges of building democratic support for climate policy. Democracies move on public sentiment, and the best time to galvanize public support is around elections. This year, climate change remains a relatively low priority for the average voter in most places across the globe, seemingly less pressing than immediate economic concerns.

See, and that’s a Big Problem for the Cult of Climastrology, namely, that citizens may say they care about doing something about climate doom, but, in practice, it’s a low-hanging issue, and they do not want all those things like higher taxes and restrictions on their own lives.

For many politicians, the easy solution is to kick the can down the road until after their next election. But doing so also poses a threat to democracy. The challenges created by climate change—unchecked migration, economic stagnation, and the loss of homeland, to name a few—are precisely the kind of developments that have historically fomented authoritarian sentiments.

Letting tons of 3rd world people with 3rd world attitudes into the U.S. unfettered is because of a slight increase in the global temperature since 1850? Yes, this is a cult. Poor economic conditions? This is a cult.

Both elections speak to the core of climate change’s democracy challenge. Climate change, as urgent as the scientific reality may be, feels less urgent to voters than their economic challenges. And elected officials respond to that to win elections.

How dare they listen to the citizens!

In Europe, where voters will elect members to the European Parliament in June, climate change is running up against a different sort of democracy problem. For decades, the E.U. has taken a leading role combating climate change, in large part because the public supported it. The bloc implemented a carbon pricing mechanism in 2005, for example, and more recently created a Green Deal program designed to bring down Europe’s emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. But fear has grown that some citizens feel recent measures have gone too far. Last year, German industry created an uproar over the bloc’s aggressive electric vehicle regulations, and Dutch farmers launched a revolt over policies that target high-emitting fertilizer. The high cost of energy, primarily due to ripples from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have created political tensions across the continent. Many in Brussels fear that those concerns have contributed to the recent spike in right-wing populism that has long been simmering on the continent. In the Netherlands, most obviously, voters last fall dumped the longtime prime minister in favor of a far-right candidate.

Stupid peasants!

Climate change’s democracy challenge has come up time and again in my reporting over the years. No one has the silver bullet to fix it, but there is a common thread among those who think about it: something needs to be change so that the policy timeline in democracies can match the urgency of the climate crisis.

In other words, the peasants need to listen to their Elites, and just do as their told.

Read: Bummer: “efforts to tackle climate change face a democracy challenge” »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach January 11, 2024 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil gun used for ‘climate change’ caused wars, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Right Scoop, with a post on the president of an LGBTQ org arrested for committing sex crimes with children.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 8 Comments | Trackback URL

SCNY Parents Outraged After Kids Put On Remote Learning So Illegals Could Be Housed In School

By William Teach January 11, 2024 – 10:30 am

You heard about Sanctuary City New York deciding to house a lot of illegal aliens in a school ahead of the winter storm early in the week, meaning the kids had to be on remote learning, right? And Now

Outraged parents, pols worry decision to boot NYC students from school for nearly 2,000 migrants will set troubling precedent

Parents and pols are outraged that students were booted from a Brooklyn school to make room for nearly 2,000 migrants during Tuesday’s storm — and warned it could become part of the city’s playbook as officials stumble to keep pace with the runaway migrant crisis.

“We never know what’s going to happen with the weather,” state Assemblyman Michael Novakhov (R-Brooklyn) said outside James Madison High School.

“They can be moved here again depending on the weather conditions,” Novakhov said. “If the weather is bad again are migrants supposed to be moved to this school again? Because schools are not the place for migrants — as simple as that.”

The backlash stems from a last-minute decision by Mayor Eric Adams to bus hundreds of migrant families from a controversial tent shelter at Floyd Bennett Field to the school 5 miles away — with asylum seekers forced to nap on a gym floor before being rustled back to the shelter just hours later.

There are a lot of people complaining, and rightfully so

“The writing was on the wall the minute the city started being inundated with migrants,” said one mother who only gave her name as Maria. “It’s disgusting. It should not be put on us taxpayers.”

Her teen daughter, a student at the school, added, “I do believe they are putting the life of people who are here illegally and not documented over my life. I am a 15-year-old girl at the school who wants to get her education and better her life, and she can’t come to school today because the day was interrupted by people who aren’t supposed to be here.”

Here’s the question: how many of the parents complaining voted Democrat? How many of them believed in unfettered illegal immigration until it hit their own lives and city, till their kids were displaced from their school? Will this happen again for the storm Friday?

But, hey, most support the right to shelter

A recent poll found that 79% of New Yorkers still back the city’s “Right-to-Shelter” mandate that guarantees housing to anyone in the Big Apple — showing board support for the idea, despite the ongoing migrant crisis that has strained the city’s resources.

The poll, first reported by Gothamist, found that 29% of people who answered the poll “somewhat support” the right-to-shelter-law, while another half said they “strongly support” the mandate. The survey was conducted by HarrisX, and used responses from around 1,000 adults.

Well, don’t get mad when your kids are displaced for illegal aliens. Don’t complain when they are put in your neighborhood.

Read: SCNY Parents Outraged After Kids Put On Remote Learning So Illegals Could Be Housed In School »

Posted in Democrats, Illegal Immigration | 25 Comments | Trackback URL

State Court In Delaware Nixes Lawsuit Against Big Oil

By William Teach January 11, 2024 – 7:00 am

The fossil fuels companies should refuse to sell to the State of Delaware. It still boggles my mind that the lawyers never offer an arguement of “if fossil fuels are so bad, why is the state/company/city/group/county/individual using them?”

State court delivers major setback to Delaware in climate change lawsuit against Big Oil

A top state court in Delaware partially dismissed a lawsuit the state’s government filed against several of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies over their greenhouse gas emissions and impact on global warming.

Judge Mary Johnston, of the Delaware Superior Court, ruled that the state’s claims seeking damages from Big Oil defendants for alleged injuries stemming from out-of-state or global greenhouse gas emissions and interstate pollution are preempted by the federal Clean Air Act and are, therefore, beyond the limits of state statute. While other claims can be pursued, the ruling Tuesday significantly diminishes the case’s weight.

“We are pleased with the Delaware Superior Court’s decision holding that the ‘claims in this case seeking damages for injuries resulting from out-of-state or global greenhouse emissions and interstate pollution, are pre-empted by the’ Clean Air Act and ‘beyond the limits of Delaware common law,'” Theodore Boutrous, Jr., a lawyer for Chevron, one of the defendants, said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

“The global challenge of climate change requires a coordinated international policy response, not a series of baseless state and local lawsuits,” he added.

Companies like Chevron aren’t really helping their case when they recommend federal and international actions. They should say “if you don’t like them do not use them.”

In addition to the court’s findings that out-of-state emissions were beyond its scope, it further dismissed the state’s claims that oil industry defendants — which include Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, the American Petroleum Institute and dozens of other energy companies — have misrepresented the dangers of their fossil fuel products, including through tactics such as “greenwashing.”

And you know the people who are filing the suits are using plenty of fossil fuels themselves.

Read: State Court In Delaware Nixes Lawsuit Against Big Oil »

Posted in Global Warming | 9 Comments | Trackback URL

UN High Court To Consider If Israel Is Engaged In Genocide

By William Teach January 11, 2024 – 6:45 am

Will the court also be taking up the case of a group designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations launching an attack on civilians, which included rape and taking children and babies as hostages?

A legal battle is set to open at the top UN court over an allegation of Israeli genocide in Gaza

A legal battle over whether Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza amounts to genocide opens Thursday at the United Nations’ top court with preliminary hearings into South Africa’s call for judges to order an immediate suspension of Israel’s military actions. Israel stringently denies the genocide allegation.

The case, that is likely to take years to resolve, strikes at the heart of Israel’s national identity as a Jewish state created in the aftermath of the Nazi genocide in the Holocaust. It also involves South Africa’s identity: Its ruling African National Congress party has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule, which restricted most Blacks to “homelands” before ending in 1994.

Israel normally considers U.N. and international tribunals unfair and biased. But it is sending a strong legal team to the International Court of Justice to defend its military operation launched in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.

“I think they have come because they want to be exonerated and think they can successfully resist the accusation of genocide,” said Juliette McIntyre, an expert on international law at the University of South Australia.

South Africa post-apartheid has long been a Jew hating nation. It’s also a shithole that’s falling apart. What’s in it for them?

In a statement after the case was filed, the Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry urged the court to “immediately take action to protect the Palestinian people and call on Israel, the occupying power, to halt its onslaught against the Palestinian people, in order to ensure an objective legal resolution.”

It’s simple, as we’ve known all along: release the hostages and all Hamas members surrender. Don’t attack Israel and its citizens. Don’t be terrorists. It’s not for nothing that no Arab nation is willing to take Palestinians in, and Egypt has a wall between Gaza and itself.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken dismissed the case as “ meritless ” during a visit to Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

“It is particularly galling, given that those who are attacking Israel — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, as well as their supporter Iran — continue to call for the annihilation of Israel and the mass murder of Jews,” he said.

Let’s not forget that none of those terrorists groups, including Hamas, are a part of the Geneva Convention, and, if they didn’t want to be on the losing side of a war, they shouldn’t have started it.

Read: UN High Court To Consider If Israel Is Engaged In Genocide »

Posted in Israel, RoP | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Surprise: Only 13 EVs Qualify For Tax Credit

By William Teach January 10, 2024 – 3:00 pm

Well, this will certainly help force citizens into buying cars they cannot afford that do not give them the range they need and are problematic for them to charge

For consumers shopping for an EV, new rules mean fewer models qualify for a tax credit

U.S. consumers looking to get a tax credit on an electric vehicle purchase have fewer models to choose from under new rules that limit the countries where automakers can buy battery parts and minerals — a potential blow to efforts to reduce planet-warming emissions from autos.

The Inflation Reduction Act signed into law in 2022 expanded tax credits ranging from $3,750 to $7,500 for purchases of new and used EVs, an effort by the Biden administration to stoke demand toward its goal that half of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2030. But qualifying for the credits depends on requirements related to their battery makeup and minerals that get tougher each year.

As of Jan. 1, new rules favor U.S. domestic materials and manufacture. The rules largely target battery components from nations “of concern” — mostly China, but also Russia, North Korea and Iran.

China dominates crucial parts of EV battery supply and production, even as automakers race to establish key mineral and components efforts elsewhere. As a result, only 13 of the more than 50 EVs on sale in the U.S. are eligible for the credits so far this year, down from about two dozen models that qualified in 2023.

Thirteen.

The Tesla Model Y SUV, Chevrolet Bolt compact car and Rivian R1T pickup truck all still qualify. But even different trim levels and variants of the same model now qualify differently; certain Teslas are no longer eligible.

Neither are the Chevrolet Blazer SUV and the Cadillac Lyriq, from General Motors; the Ford Mustang Mach-E; or the Nissan Leaf.

And it will take a while for manufacturers to comply. But, what the AP doesn’t mention is how hard it is to get those materials from acceptable nations, especially the U.S., where enviro-weenies will sue to block any mining.

One positive development for EV buyers this year is that qualifying vehicles can have the credits applied at the time of purchase, as long as the dealer fronts the cost. That means buyers can more easily afford the purchase. More than 8,700 U.S. dealers have signed up to do so, the Treasury Department said last week.

General Motors is also taking $7,500 off its models that lost eligibility, and other deals are available across the market — even as automakers continue to lose money on EVs.

How many dealers are willing to take the upfront hit, and simply wait on the federal government to reimburse them? Mind you, dealers are not owned by the manufacturer. They may have signed up, but, will they follow through? And, if GM can just take $7,500 off before a consumer even comes in, how much profit is built into the vehicle? Or, are they just taking even more of a lost? Seriously, if Americans really wanted EVs at this time no tax credit would even be needed. No coercion.

BTW, the tax credits are very complicated: if a dealer takes the hit, does this affect the tax filings of the purchaser?

Read: Surprise: Only 13 EVs Qualify For Tax Credit »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 19 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach January 10, 2024 – 1:00 pm

…is snow that will soon disappear for good, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Diogenes’ Middle Finger, with a post on Hillary not being a lizard person.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 12 Comments | Trackback URL

Biden Wants Democrat Run Colleges To End Junk Fees

By William Teach January 10, 2024 – 10:30 am

Biden has been on a kick of trying to end junk fees from all sorts of companies. Now he’s going after those charged by colleges, which are primarily run by Democratic Party voters

Colleges charge tons of junk fees for food and books. Biden may force them to scale back.

The Biden administration is considering slapping new regulations on colleges to curb hidden fees for things such as food and textbooks.

The changes are part of a bundle of reforms the Education Department is debating this week during a fresh round of policy discussions. The talks are largely centered on heightening federal scrutiny of the higher education industry ? a priority President Joe Biden has indicated is a piece of his efforts to bring down the soaring cost of college and ease the student loan debt it causes.

Under some of the proposed changes to federal law, universities would be barred from pocketing some of the leftover money they get for low-income students whose school meal plans are paid for using federal financial aid.

At many colleges, students use special meal funds ? called “flex” accounts ? to help cover part of their food expenses (at grocery stores, for example). Money in those accounts can come from the federal government, which helps colleges with financial aid programs. But students don’t always use all their “flex” money by the end of the year, and in some cases, schools end up keeping the difference.

That’s not fair, the department is arguing. The agency says schools should give money back to students who need it.

That doesn’t look like a junk fee, that looks more like colleges stealing money from students and taxpayers. Unless the colleges can show that they are using the federal money for other students

A separate change would prevent most colleges and universities from automatically charging students for books and supplies. Under the current rules, schools can include fees for books and supplies as part of required bills for “tuition and fees,” even when students can find materials at cheaper prices from other sources.

“The department is concerned that lack of disclosure and transparency limits students’ ability to find less expensive materials or assess if their school is offering the most affordable arrangement,” the proposed rule says.

Textbook affordability advocates lauded the move. The current state of automatic billing programs means that in some cases, students are charged for resources they could have acquired for a better price, according to Daniel Williamson, the managing director of the education nonprofit OpenStax.

“Getting charged for something you can get for free, that’s the definition of a junk fee,” he said in an email.

That is pretty shady. How much does it cost students?

Other critics warned the proposal could end up raising prices for students in other ways. Robert Nelson, the president of the National Association of College and University Food Services, said although his organization hasn’t taken a stance on the plan and is still studying it, it could end up hurting students’ bottom lines.

So, what they and others is saying is if the Brandon regime ends these junk fees then the Democrat run colleges will raise their prices and screw the kiddies, many of whom are working towards silly and worthless degrees for way too much money?

Realistically, these are just periphery issues for why colleges (mostly run be Democrat voters) are so costly, and will not do much to resolve it. But, really, this is just an election year scam to buy votes from the youts.

Read: Biden Wants Democrat Run Colleges To End Junk Fees »

Posted in Joe Biden | 4 Comments | Trackback URL
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