“General Motors just rolled out a car that’s perfect for the moment. It’s the 2027 Chevrolet Bolt — a relatively cheap, all-electric subcompact that will let you drive right past gas stations, and dodge those high prices from the war in Iran. But if you want a Bolt, you’d better act fast, because they won’t be on dealer lots for long. GM has already confirmed that production will end next year. The plan is to convert the Bolt’s factory in Kansas City back to manufacturing vehicles with internal combustion engines. … a big part of the story is Donald Trump. Since taking office, he has launched an all-out assault on EVs — by working with Republicans in Congress to eliminate tax breaks for vehicle production and purchases, and by using his regulatory powers to gut federal and state emissions standards that favored fuel efficiency.” [editor’s note: No, those were good moves. But the US government should stop its similar subsidies, etc. to Big Oil as well, and let the market decide – TLK] (03/22/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Eliot Wilson
“The Government’s approach to the UK’s steel industry has always looked like a cross between inveterate, unshakeable optimism and the panicked thrashings of a drowning man clutching for a flotation aid. An extremely charitable observer would argue that the Government had always had a very clear aim: to preserve Britain’s steel industry in order to safeguard employment in the sector and to provide resilience in manufacturing a product vital for growth and security. A more cynical mind might counter that someone who makes a wish as a penny is flipped down a well has a very clear aim. Without a practical, sustainable and realistic plan to achieve that aim, such airy, wouldn’t-it-be-nice ambitions are politically worthless at best.” (03/22/26)
“For many years, Congress has maintained a bipartisan consensus on warrantless surveillance. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has allowed the U.S. government to surveil foreign nationals abroad since its passage in 2008, and as the Prospect has reported time and time again, domestic intelligence agencies have amassed troves of communications data, including from American citizens, through the program. The National Security Agency (NSA) and FBI do not need a warrant to access this data, regardless of whether it comes from a foreign national or U.S. citizen. Section 702, which must be reauthorized by Congress periodically, is set to expire on April 20. The House is expected to vote on it in the coming weeks. Historically, lawmakers’ attempts to meaningfully reform the program have failed.” (03/23/26)
“The Covid period was a turning point in our lives. We saw how the system that rules us truly operates and that of which it is capable. We experienced the apotheosis of the corporatist planning state, as close to dystopian-level totalitarianism as we ever knew. We observed how the media, tech, elected and unelected government, and the medical industry all work together when the stakes are high. And we observed and experienced just how completely controlling this cartel can be once it is unleashed on the entire population.” (03/22/26)
“Over the last two weeks, the Department of Defense has initiated two wars: one against a nation with a long history of conflict with the United States; the other against one of the fastest-growing new companies in American history: Anthropic, the frontier artificial intelligence lab behind the popular Claude model. The DOD has effectively declared both Iran and Anthropic to be enemies of America, and though the weapons the DOD is using in each conflict differ dramatically — explosive missiles versus bureaucratic legal statutes — the department has made clear in both cases that its objective is to severely damage, if not totally destroy, the enemy. … Why this fight started and how the government has chosen to wage it are two separate questions, and conflating them is one of the major mistakes most coverage of this conflict has made.” (03/21/26)
“The war on Iran is temporarily producing the same result that actual US ‘energy independence’ — usually promoted as proposed autarky in the production/sale of oil — would deliver without ‘armies crossing borders.’ Almost all oil and gas produced in the US comes from ‘tight formation production’ — horizontally drilled wells and hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) to extract the stuff from shale . That’s more expensive than just drilling a vertical well and pumping the black gold out, as is done in the Middle East. That’s a ‘competitive disadvantage’ for US oil companies. The only way for US oil production to be profitable is for the price per barrel to be kept artificially high through ‘protectionist’ measures … or war. The US producers can only profit by increasing YOUR costs. At the level of the individual American, on the other hand, a certain amount of ‘energy independence’ — autarky! — makes a good deal of sense.” (03/21/26)
“The biggest victims of immigration restrictions are the would-be migrants, who are consigned to a lifetime of poverty and oppression simply because they were born in the wrong place, to the wrong parents. But the horrific experience of the second Trump administration highlights how restrictionism also poses a grave threat to the liberty and welfare of native-born citizens. While some of the harms caused to natives are specific to the policies of this administration, many are inherent in the very nature of exclusion and deportation, and they occur even under more conventional presidents. The ultimate solution is to end all or most immigration restrictions, or at least to severely curb them.” (903/20/26)
“Much turmoil in the Middle East today is attributable to this overlooked fact: Jewish European descendants of people who had freely chosen to leave ancient Judea/Palestine established a project, Zionism, in the late 19th and early 20th century with the intention of displacing the descendants of Judeans who had chosen to stay. This is a dispute, in other words, between Canaanites who remained — from whom the Palestinian Muslims and Christians descended — and the Canaanites who willingly departed — from whom the Ashkenazi Jews descended. … For both Jewish and Christian Zionists, the alleged Roman exile of the Jews from Judea in the first century CE is a key part of the Zionist property claim, on behalf of all Jews the world over, to the land of Israel. But exile did not happen.” (03/20/26)
