Going postal, B'gosh

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The company behind the United States Postal Service's all-electric mail trucks has said it would be prepared to switch to gas vehicles. 

Oshkosh Corp., which provides the so-called 'Duck' mail trucks, has said it is prepared to U-turn if USPS cuts back orders for EVs under the second Trump term. 

Trump, who takes office on January 20, has long criticized funding brought in by the Biden administration to transition to an electric mail fleet. 

President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provided $3 billion over a decade for the Postal Service to become all-electric, including both trucks and charging stations. 

USPS said in October last year that it plans to buy more than 100,000 mail trucks through 2028, of which at least 62 percent will be EVs. 

Oshkosh has received its first order from USPS for 50,000 electric trucks, valued at $2.98 billion.  

But John Pfeifer, CEO of Oshkosh, said the company would be prepared to make the switch back to gas if necessary.  

'We'll do what they want us to do - supplying either gas or electric,' he said in an interview at the CES trade show in Las Vegas, Bloomberg reported. 'A new Congress could come in and repeal, I guess, part of the IRA that hasn't been spent.'

Before finally bowing to overwhelming pressure from Congress and professional enviro grifters, the USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy fiercely opposed converting the entire truck fleet to electric due to the huge cost not only of buying the vehicles themselves, but also the necessary upgrading the electrical service to the nation’s 35,000 post offices. Congress has printed $3 billion to pay for converting half the fleet, leaving the rapidly failing USPS (when was the last time you mailed paid a bill by mail? Sent a letter?) to come up with another $3 billion to buy the rest of the trucks, and billions more for those electrical upgrades and charging stations.

It’s understandable that Trump will see this as an irresistible target for elimination, and Oshkosh is smart to realize this.

Get 'em outta here!

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Woodrow Wilson: the root of (almost) all evil

Glenn Reynolds:

I’VE CALLED FOR ABOLISHING THE CIVIL SERVICE BEFORE. MORE JUSTIFICATION HERE:

Here’s a portion of Reynold’s article he refers to: well worth reading in its entirety.

Rethinking the Civil Service

Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Oct 15, 2023

….. Prior to the adoption of the Pendleton Act in 1883, government employment operated according to the “spoils system,” which meant that hiring in the executive branch was controlled by the Executive.  When a new administration came in, everyone’s job was up for grabs, at least potentially.  This “rotation in office” had several advantages, which were widely appreciated at the time, and propounded by presidents from Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln.

“Jackson argued that one serving in government for too long would inevitably lose sight of the public interest and come to use office for personal gain. He also maintained that government was or could be made simple enough for men of ordinary ability and experience, so ‘more is lost by the long continuance of men in office than is generally to be gained by their experience.’”[i]

Contrary to popular belief, though, the arrival of a new president didn’t mean that everyone left.  Even Andrew Jackson, upon taking office, replaced only about 10% of the federal work force with his own people.  Every president understood the value of continuity, and hiring new people is hard work.

But under the spoils system, the fact that the president could replace anyone mean that everyone worked for him.  And that meant both that everyone was responsible to the president, and that the president was responsible for everyone in the government, and everything the government did.  This is consistent with the Constitution’s vesting clause, which provides that “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”  If the executive branch does it, it’s an executive power, and if it’s an executive power it should be controlled by the president.

Contrast this to a “professional” civil service, in which the president does neither the hiring nor the firing, except with regard to a comparatively small number of senior officials.  The civil service doesn’t think of itself as working for the president, really, and will happily drag its feet when it doesn’t like the president’s priorities.  And when the bureaucracy misbehaves, or fails to perform, the president can, at least to a degree, blame its recalcitrance for the trouble or lack of results that occurs.

Congress is also let off the hook, yet simultaneously weirdly empowered.  Congress can blame “the bureaucracy” for bad things, even when those things result from laws that Congress has passed.  Then it can turn around and “help” constituents by intervening with the bureaucracy it has rendered dysfunctional, earning gratitude that may be deserved in a narrow sense, but not in terms of the big picture.

Under a spoils system, on the other hand, nobody gets off the hook.  If the bureaucracy misbehaves, the president can fire the misbehavers.  If Congress is unhappy with what bureaucrats do, they can demand that the president fire them, and make an election issue out of it if they want.

So why did we wind up with a civil service?  As is typical, the fantasy of a neutral, efficient, expert civil service was laid next to the reality of a messy functioning government.  But, as is also typical, the fantasy in practice turned out to be considerably less appealing than as proposed.

The big objection to abolishing the protected civil service is that government by “expertise-driven civil service”would be gone.  The response to this objection is twofold.  First, we don’t have an “expertise driven civil service.”  At least the record of our civil service in addressing problems has been pretty unimpressive, and not particularly marked by expertise.  From government nutrition guidelines, which were based on politics and bad science, to the Covid fiasco, to energy policies and education, it’s hard to think of very many significant areas where neutral, technocratic expertise has carried the day.  Looking on this record, I’ve commented in the past on the “suicide of expertise,” and I think it’s pretty obvious now that the expertise has often been a sham.  (Or, even when it existed, has been subordinated to politics:  Released emails, etc., have revealed that Anthony Fauci et al. knew that what they were telling the public wasn’t true, and in fact were saying the opposite in private, but lied to the public anyway.)

The modern civil service system (post-Pendleton Act) – like so many calamities of the 20th Century – sprang from the brain of Woodrow Wilson, a political scientist before he was president, who wrote of the importance of separating politics from administration.  In his view, cool, technocratic administrators would execute the policies chosen by politics – though with the suggestion that politics should generally defer to their expertise.  That theory may have seemed beguiling in the late 19th Century, but by the 21st Century it has become clear that that’s not how any of this works.

All of this would be true even if the civil service was nonpartisan, or at least divided along partisan lines that resembled those of the nation at large.  This is, of course, not the case at all.  The civil service is effectively a left-liberal monoculture, with its primary loyalty being to the Democratic Party.   (And donations from federal employees heavily favor Democrats).  The politicized behavior of the Department of Justice, FBI, IRS, and other federal agencies during the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations has made that obvious.

So the question isn’t whether we’re going to have a nonpartisan, expert civil service or a partisan nonexpert one.  The question is whether we’re going to have a calcified, one-sided partisan nonexpert service or a partisan nonexpert service that changes its composition and is subject to democratic supervision….

Burn, baby, burn

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How California eco-bureaucrats halted a Pacific Palisades fire safety project to save an endangered shrub

There are over 3,000 species of milk-vetch in the world: this is the story of one of them

California’s eco-bureaucrats halted a wildfire prevention project near the Pacific Palisades to protect an endangered shrub.

It’s just the latest clash between fire safety and conservation in California that is coming under scrutiny following the devastating outbreak of the Palisades Fire — the most devastating blaze in Los Angeles history, which has consumed the very same area.

In 2019, the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) began replacing nearly 100-year-old power line poles cutting through Topanga State Park, when the project was halted within days by conservationists outraged that federally endangered Braunton’s milkvetch plants had been trampled during the process.

The goal of the project was to improve fire safety for the Pacific Palisades area by replacing the wooden poles with steel, widening fire-access lanes in the area, and installing wind- and fire-resistant power lines — all after the area was identified as having an “elevated fire risk,” according to the LA Times.

“This project will help ensure power reliability and safety, while helping reduce wildfire threats,” the LADWP said at the time. “These wooden poles were installed between 1933 and 1955 and are now past their useful service life.”

But, after an amateur botanist hiking through the park during the work saw the harm done to some of the park’s Braunton’s milkvetch — a flowering shrub with only a few thousand specimens remaining in the wild — and complained, the project was completely halted, Courthouse News Service reported.

Instead of fire-hardening the park, the city — which the state said had undertaken the work without proper permitting — ended up paying $2 million in fines and was ordered by the California Coastal Commission to reverse the whole project and replant the rare herb.

That work saved about 200 Braunton’s milkvetch plants — almost all of which have now likely been torched in the wildfires that consumed Topanga Canyon, along with nearly 24,000 acres (37 square miles) of some of LA’s most sought-after real estate.

At least eight people have died and 5,000 homes have been destroyed by the fire, which was still just 14% contained as of Monday.

One of those "western values" is thinning down to skin and bones only when we want to

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I had intended to post a particular picture here, but X/Grok has gone woke — Meghan and Little Harry must be ever so pleased.

“We won’t depict the actual results of the greens’ war on civilization because that would hurt their — our — feelings”

How the War on Farmers Threatens Western Values and Global Food Security

Farmers are the backbone of society, ensuring that our tables are filled with food three times a day, every day of the week. Yet, in the modern world, their indispensable role is often taken for granted. We rarely pause to consider that the contents of our refrigerators connect us directly to those who labor tirelessly to sustain us. What happens if the farmers disappear? The answer is simple and stark: our refrigerators remain empty. Food security, once a cornerstone of national policy and identity, is now being eroded by globalist ideologies and bureaucratic overreach, threatening not just agriculture but the very fabric of Western civilization.

The historical significance of food security cannot be overstated. After the devastation of World War II, European nations understood the fragility of their food supplies. Hunger, shortages, and economic instability plagued the continent, prompting the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC). A key component of this new cooperative effort was the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), established in 1962. Its purpose was clear: to ensure stable, sufficient food production, reduce dependence on imports, and protect citizens from the specter of future shortages. It succeeded in turning Europe into a self-sufficient agricultural powerhouse while upholding high standards of food safety and quality.

Fast forward to today, and the situation could not be more different. The European Union (EU), driven by unelected bureaucrats in the European Commission, has turned its back on its founding principles. Under the guise of environmental sustainability and climate policy, the EU has declared war on its farmers, implementing measures that force them off the land. These policies, varying by country but united in their destructive outcomes, are choking the life out of European agriculture. In the Netherlands, nitrogen emissions are the scapegoat; in Germany, farmers are being taxed into oblivion. The result is the same: despair, financial ruin, and a troubling rise in farmer suicides.

Best comment from a reader of the article:

I occasionally hear a PSA from some do-gooder group or another that states that 1 in 6 people don't know where their next meal is coming from. My reply is that 4 in 6 don't know where their last meal came from.

And then there’s this:

UK Net Zero Policies 'Taking Us Off a Cliff'

Two signs of impending disaster reared into view last week. On Tuesday, the cost of UK government borrowing passed the peak it reached in the autumn of 2022, in the wake of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget. Then, on Wednesday evening, the British energy system came the closest it has been to blackouts in decades.

Worse still, this dire news is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to energy and the economy. Britain now faces the highest industrial energy prices in the developed world, with UK businesses paying four times as much as American businesses. The UK economy, as well as facing bond-market turbulence, has stagnated, with no growth recorded in the last quarter. The heightened cost of borrowing means a fresh round of austerity measures could be on the way, involving hikes to already eye-watering tax levels or spending cuts to already strained public services.

....It’s a similar story for energy. For decades, energy policy has been shaped by climate bureaucrats seeking to decarbonise the grid, rather than consumers’ and industry’s need for cheap, stable power. Labour’s energy secretary, Ed Miliband, may be an especially zealous exponent of Net Zero, but he is merely accelerating and building on the state’s existing priorities.

The risks of relying too heavily on renewables ought to be obvious to everyone. Wind and solar power cannot produce electricity when the wind doesn’t blow or the Sun doesn’t shine. This creates obvious problems during cold, dark winters – as we saw last week. Yet many state-appointed experts remain in a state of denial about all this. They will even insist – contrary to all available evidence – that renewables will make electricity cheaper and more secure. It is hardly a surprise, then, that UK energy prices are so high and that blackouts may even be on the horizon.

The chaos in the bond markets and the increasing likelihood of blackouts are clear signs that Britain’s technocratic consensus is colliding with reality. Just don’t expect the likes of Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband to sit up and take notice. Their commitment to these failed orthodoxies runs very deep indeed.

Beege:

The 'near blackouts' Myers refers to are the shortages and astronomically high short-term rates charged by natural gas power generating plants to make up the renewable shortage I told you about last week. In the midst of the coldest winter in 15 years in the UK, the country was rudely made aware it is not prepared to cover the power requirements to keep the lights and heat on. The price to do so was eyewatering.

They are not amused; in fact, they sound positively peeved.

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“Look how the blighters scurry away like the most vile of mangy foxes, Meghan my deaR — how droll!

Shush, we command you!

The boy formerly known as Prince and his wench have issued a pronouncement from (what they wish were) Windsor Castle West, denouncing free speech among the peasants and those who would question the divine right of kings. Elon, Mark, John Locke, Voltaire; you’ve all been warned.

It doesn’t matter whether your views are left, right or somewhere in between—the latest news from Meta about changes to their policies directly undermines free speech. 

This should deeply concern us all. 

Contrary to the company’s talking points, allowing more abuse and normalizing hate speech serves to silence speech and expression, not foster it. 

In an already confusing and, in many instances, intentionally disruptive information environment, Meta has shown their words and commitments have very little meaning or integrity. As they announce these changes undoubtedly responding to political winds, they once again abandon public safety in favor of profit, chaos, and control. The company’s decision to rollback protections is so far away from its stated values and commitments to its users—including the parents and families calling for change around the globe—that it’s now deeply deceptive. 

Millions of people are using Meta’s platforms in the United States. Hundreds of millions more are using them globally. Many use the platform to spread joy, build community, and share empowering information. Unfortunately, Meta’s recent decisions go directly against its stated mission to “build human connection” and instead prioritize those using the platforms to spread hate, lies and division at the expense of everyone else. 

Given the profound global impact Meta’s decisions have on the world—of which many are still recovering from or actively suffering from—the politics of one country should never determine whether freedom of expression and civil and human rights are protected in the online spaces so clearly shaping or destroying democracy. 

Online spaces must be designed with public safety and well-being at their core, resilient against political pressures and lapses in corporate leadership. This latest move from Meta is an example of a social media company—fully aware of their power to shape public discourse—disregarding any responsibility to ensure that power is not abused and instead allowing either ego or profit, likely both, to guide decisions that affect billions. 

We are particularly alarmed by plans to abandon commitments to diversity and equity, coupled with internal policy changes that undermine protections for marginalized communities. These decisions echo what experts, whistleblowers, and families have raised in hearings on online harm, especially regarding children’s safety: platform design, dictated by internal policies, directly determines our online experience.

To ignore this is knowingly putting everyone in harm’s way and contributing to a global mental health crisis. 

Meta’s changes to its ‘Hateful Content Policies’ do not protect free expression but instead foster an environment where abuse and hate speech silence and threaten the voices of whole communities who make up a healthy democracy. 

We urge Meta to reconsider and reinstate policies to protect all users. We also call on leaders across industries to uphold their commitments to integrity and public safety in online spaces, and we applaud leaders who refuse to kowtow to bullying. 

…. Having worked in this space for the last five years and witnessing the real-world devastation these decisions have, we feel there is no justification for why this industry behaves as if they are exempt from the ethical and moral standards everyone else abides by. 

We at The Archewell Foundation remain committed to promoting accountability, safeguarding information integrity, and protecting all communities in the digital age. We hope and expect those enabling Meta’s profits, like advertisers and shareholders, to do the same. 


”We hope and expect those enabling Meta’s profits, like advertisers and shareholders, to do the same.”

Get stuffed.