Chevron Gone
(the Doctrine - not the Company)
June 28, 2024
BOOM!
Chevron gone. 6-3.
Administrative agencies don’t get to decide their own powers.
Massive win for the Constitution.
https://supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
ICYMI – the Presidential Debate Was Last Night –
Wow. Just…wow.
All that has been said has been said. What’s next?
And then some other stuff:
The most important reason why states (along with API and friends) are suing over fuel economy mandates
This week, 26 state attorneys general sued the Biden administration on their overly strict fuel economy mandates. These attorneys general are arguing that Biden is trying to force a switch to EV (which is 100% correct) but I think there is an even more important reason for this litigation—new car prices are way, way, way too high.
The current average transaction price of a new car is $48,389 and an important reason for that sky-high price is that new fuel economy regulations increase the costs of vehicles. From 1997 through 2009, the quality-adjusted price of new cars fell—in large measure because fuel economy standards hadn't changed in years and car makers figured out how to achieve the standards.
What happened in 2009? The Obama administration started ratcheting up fuel economy standards and the Biden administration is continuing that trend.
The problem is that many people on Team Obama/Biden don’t just want people to switch to EVs, they want people to drive less—they want less mobility. For example, here’s the Obama administration working with California try reduce vehicle miles traveled, and here’s a Biden administration official saying that switching to EVs is not sustainable, but people need to ride scooters and whatnot.
Hopefully, in this latest lawsuit courts will side with the Republican attorneys general who support mobility and not with the people who want us to ride electric scooters instead.
Already Out of Date Election update (after last night…)
One of the more interesting people who writes about politics is Nate Silver. He rose to fame after the Obama-McCain election in 2008, when he correctly predicted who would win in 49 out of 50 states. He has spent 16 years building a model to try to predict the outcome of presidential elections. He has worked on this modeling for the New York Times and ABC News. Lastly, Silver is not a Republican—he votes Democratic.
When ABC downsized staff in 2023, Silver started a newsletter and continued his statistical analysis of elections. He just released his current estimates of the odds of Trump vs. Biden in November and his model estimates that Trump has a 66% chance of winning and Biden 33%.
Silver admits this is a bit higher of an estimate for Trump than he thought before he worked through his model. Silver explains some of his current thinking about the contest:
And what I’d noticed over time is that the reasons that Trump would win have gradually become somewhat more compelling than the reasons for Biden. Emphasis on gradually and somewhat. Biden clearly could win in November. He won the same matchup four years ago. Not only would he be within a normal-sized polling error of Trump if the election were held today, but there are still four-and-a-half-months to go.
Still, the items on the “reasons to think Trump might win” list have proven to be more robust. There’s Biden’s age, which voters have extremely persistent concerns about. There’s the very high inflation of mid-2021 through mid-2023 — which has considerably abated, but still is reflected in much higher prices than when Biden took office. There’s the fact that the global mood is pessimistic and that incumbents have been getting crushed everywhere around the world. Plus, some of the factors I thought would be an advantage for Biden haven’t proven to be. There’s less of a fundraising gap than I expected, for instance, and I’m not sure that Biden has run the smarter tactical campaign.
On Silver’s last point, I think it’s clear that Trump has run the smarter, more tactical campaign so far. Biden refuses to take any actions that would move the needle in terms of the things independents care about the most—the economy, inflation, and immigration. Biden has talked about these things, but he hasn’t taken real actions.
Overall, the point is this—looking at the polls, particularly in battleground states, Trump currently has a lead. But it’s a long, long time until November and there is plenty of opportunity for Biden to win. There is no reason for complacency for Trump supporters. After all, Nate Silver's model just before the 2016 election had Hillary leading.
The Shadow Master admits that domestic oil and gas production is good after all…
John Podesta is the ultimate Democratic insider. He was Bill Clinton’s White House Chief of Staff, Counselor to President Obama, and now Senior Advisor to President Biden. During the Republican administrations, he runs the Center for American Progress, getting companies to donate millions upon millions of dollars to ingratiate them with Democratic power brokers.
Podesta never has been a fan of oil and gas and has worked hard behind the scenes at the White House to regulate and penalize domestic oil and gas production. But even Podesta sees geopolitical value in the domestic production of oil and gas. The Guardian reported that Podesta said,
“The US is now the number one producer of oil and gas in the world, the number one exporter of natural gas, and that’s a good thing, because following the illegal invasion of Ukraine, and the need that Europe had to rely on different sources rather than Russia fossils, it was important that the US could step up and supply a good deal of that need.”
Now just imagine how much more energy America could produce if the Biden administration supported oil and gas and didn’t work hard to kneecap future production.
Nobel Economists who got Bidenflation wrong now predict Trump will ignite inflation
You may have seen a story about 16 Nobel prize-winning economists endorsing Biden and claiming that Trump would ignite inflation. It turns out that 15 of these geniuses signed a letter in 2021 saying that Biden’s agenda “will ease inflationary pressures.”
If I had been as catastrophically wrong about inflation in my desire to impress Joe Biden, I probably wouldn’t make another prediction about inflation. But then again, maybe I’m more honest than these chuckleheads.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel mandates and carbon prices are working as intended in Europe
Lufthansa has started including a new “environmental cost surcharge” of up to 72 euros a plane ticket originating in Europe. This is exactly what European policymakers want—to limit the ability of lower and middle-income families to fly. The serfs aren’t supposed to travel. This isn’t what God and the Holy Church of Greta allow. If a columnist for The Guardian wants to fly to Scotland to see Taylor Swift, that’s fine, but pay taxes through the nose to take your family of four to see grandma.
Have a great weekend. I was off to do some Urban Camping in downtown DC, but the Supreme Court upset our plans as well. Oh well.
Follow USOGA on X at @US_OGA
The vile and sinister deeds of the supporters of the Democratic Party can only be described as truly communists - the class warfare is their obvious tactic to create totalitarian control over the masses. The Chevron deference ruling is a blockbuster beginning to reigning in the unfettered control of everything by the federal government. We need to keep pushing and kicking against the leftist communist movement - aka democrats.
Love the humor….. great stuff