A story about insane Dem politics, with some energy-related science thrown in

The Democrats run California, as they have for the last 50 years.  The state's legislature has a "veto-proof Democrat supermajority," and with a Dem governor any insane law the Dems want to pass becomes reality.

Of course you don't live in California so you think what happens there doesn't affect your life at all.  Wrong, because Cali is what happens when the Democrats control every power structure--which started here last November.  So read on.

Two years ago the abysmally corrupt governor of Cali, Gavin Newsom, signed the Democrat legislature's Assembly Bill 5 into law.  

If you're a normal American you never heard of AB5. Yet it's part of the huge inflation we're just beginning to see.  Let me explain:

AB-5 was a corrupt law from the outset, passed because a powerful union paid state lawmakers to pass it.  The bill not only made it against state law for any state resident to be an "independent contractor," but ALSO made it against state law for any California company to USE independent contractors.

Wait, I hear my liberal friends saying "I'm not an independent contractor, so this has absolutely nothing to do with me."  This is what passes for "thinking" in liberals.  Keep reading and I'll explain what it has to do with you.

The powerful realtors' and bar-association groups used their huge campaign-donation funds to be sure the law wouldn't apply to them.  But oddly, two *very* profitable companies that used ALL independent contractors--companies that certainly had enough money to be able to bribe legislators to ensure that AB-5 would NOT apply to them--had no such luck.  Can you guess the identity of those two companies?

Uber and Lyft.  The success of those companies had cost cab companies LOTs of income.  Since the law doesn't force companies to provide contract employees with medical insurance or pay overtime, Uber and Lyft could offer rides at far lower cost than taxi companies.  So the owners of cab companies saw AB-5 as an easy way to kill the upstarts that were eating their lunch.

The Democrat legislature bleated that AB-5 was simply about "fairness."  And what good American doesn't like "fairness," eh?  But what it REALLY was was an effort by the owners of cab companies and members of the taxi-drivers' union to end the ability of Uber and Lyft to offer rides at lower cost, by forcing those companies to treat all their freelance drivers as employees.

Clever, eh?

Another planned effect of AB-5 was that as soon as drivers for Uber and Lyft were classified as employees, the taxi-drivers' union would essentially force them to join!  Clever again, eh?

But the union's (and taxi owners') cunning bribe of the Dem legislature had some effects that the cunning Democrats may not have anticipated: their bill outlawed contract *truck drivers.*

[Average low-info Democrat:  "Why is that a problem?  That doesn't sound like a problem to me.  'Everybody knows' that trucks belong to, um...'trucking companies,' right?  So truck drivers must already BE employees.  Surely there can't be more than a few dozen contract drivers, right?  Cuz if that wasn't true, the brilliant Dem lawmakers who control passing laws in California would have recognized that and exempted truckers from AB-5, right?"]

Again, this is what passes for "thinking" by Democrats.  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Democrat-world, where all info comes from CNN, and independent thought is forbidden.

At last report there were about 380,000 independent truckers in the U.S.  Many own their own rigs, while others drive for trucking companies when they have free time.  AB-5 outlawed both in California, and the state has even hauled Cali trucking companies into criminal court for hiring contract labor in *other* states, in violation of AB5!

By making it illegal for companies to use contract drivers, AB5 has removed all those drivers from the pool of drivers eligible to drive trucks in California.  Yet you haven't heard a single word about that.  The Mainstream Media have completely ignored it, because it was rammed through by the Democrat-dominated legislature, and the Media never criticizes anything Democrats do.  

But AB-5 was just one assault on the trucking industry by California Democrats.  In January of last year a DECREE by the California Air Resources Board took effect, banning trucks more than 3 years old from operating in the state.  New trucks are equipped with dozens of chips and systems to reduce pollution, and as a result they cost about $70,000 MORE.  And owners say the finicky exhaust-treatment systems frequently fail, costing thousands of dollars per, and keeping the tractor out of service for months.

Already the state is refusing to register thousands of older trucks.  With the new high-tech trucks costing $70,000 more, many independent truck owner-operators have been priced out of the California hauling market.

Apparently this was all part of the plan.

Cali produces LOTS of agricultural products, most of which is shipped to other states.  If independent truckers are barred from entering California, how do you think Cali food will get to the rest of the country, eh?

Hey, no problem: Lower your expectations, citizen!  Get used to shortages, and much higher prices.  It's Science(tm), citizen!  You have to "follow the science"!

And speaking of Science:  Got any idea how much gasoline the U.S. currently uses per day?  C'mon, man, you're well informed, right?  So you know how many illegals Porridgebrain has allowed into the U.S. this year (1.7 million so far), and how much the Dems' "social infrastructure" bill will cost ($3.5 Trillion), and how many American have died within a week of getting "duh vax" (wait, you don't have the faintest idea).  So with gasoline and diesel being so vital to the economy, you'd think the media would tell ya how much of it we use every day, right?  

Of course they don't.  Think there's a reason?

It's 8.6 million barrels of gasoline a day--or to use terms familiar to the average American, 360 million gallons every day.

Now, let's say the Democrat snowflakes scream that we need to go to electric cars and trucks--as Cali has already decreed.  But because Democrats are very reasonable rulers, let's say that *for now* they only demand that we switch, say, a quarter of those cars and trucks to electricity.  But because they hate nuclear, and refuse to build any more dams to produce totally non-polluting, renewable, non-carbon hydroelectric power, they insist all the electric vehicles be powered by...wait for it...wind turbines--what we used to call "windmills" but which the Dems re-labeled "turbines" cuz that sounds a lot more sciency.

How many new wind "turbines" would we need to add to power just a quarter of our cars?  Ten-thousand?  100,000?  Ask your Dem friends if they have any idea.  Hint: They don't.  So let's find out:

Most windmills more than four years old average 1.5 MW (megawatts) of "nameplate capacity"--their maximum rating in a 50 mph wind.  New ones--a lot bigger--have a 3 MW "nameplate."  But again, actual output is almost never the "nameplate capacity" because wind speeds rarely reach 50 mph.

The actual relevant figure is "capacity factor"--the percentage of the max rated capacity that the "wind turbine" actually puts out over a whole year.  When wind speed drops, electrical output falls fast--if the wind speed drops to half the rated speed (over 50 mph!), power output drops by a factor of EIGHT, so capacity factors are just a fraction of "nameplate capacity."

For 137 U.S. wind projects in 2012, average capacity factor was 30.4%--as self-reported to the gruberment's Energy Information Agency.  But the average capacity factor for 27 EU countries in 2007 was 13%, according to the EIA.  

Perhaps the Europeans have inferior designs or low windspeeds.  Or perhaps the wind-power pushers in the U.S. government are...let's say "fudging their numbers."

But let's be *very* generous and assume all the new "turbines" are 3 MW--twice the power of the ones you normally see--and will operate at that suspiciously high 30% of nameplate.  Thus the average output of a new "turbine" would be 0.9 MW

To replace gasoline in one-fourth of U.S. vehicles would require 125,000 more "turbines" than the entire nation has today.  Is that a lot?  Well, today there are about 67,000 "wind turbines" in the whole country.  So we'd need to install about twice as many "turbines" as have been installed in the entire U.S. to date.

And that cost would be dwarfed by the cost of transmission lines and transformers needed to distribute that new power across the entire nation to recharge all 75 million cars (and who knows how many trucks).  Of course the Democrats aren't talking about these unavoidable costs, because they don't want you to know the real cost of switching to electric vehicles.  Or in this example, switching just a quarter of registered vehicles to wind power.

What can we conclude from this?  Do ya think maybe the Dem pols don't know--or care--about the actual cost?  If they continue to control both chambers of congress and the presiduncy (yes, that was intentional), do ya think they'd pass a national law banning the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles at a future date--as Cali already has?

Does anyone think a projected cost of literally $20 TRILLION would keep the Dem pols from banning gasoline-powered cars, so they could crow about having "stopped global warming"?

So since the Dems are likely to control the entire government for the rest of our lives, let's see if we can predict what will happen when they force everyone to buy EVs. What's likely to happen then?
 Almost certainly extreme energy rationing:  The Dems would know that people had to have enough electricity to power businesses, and home fridges and duh TeeVee (oh, always duh TeeVee).  So if we didn't have enough new generating capacity to power all the cars, what would be cut?  For starters, only "essential driving" would be permitted.  If you wanted to go on a vacation or even out to dinner, you'd have to use public transit.  Air-conditioning private homes would likely be made illegal.  

In other words, complete control of the citizens and an end to the lifestyle you've all grown up with, all done without firing a shot.

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But wait, it gets worse:  CARB has now ORDERED that diesel trucks won't be allowed to operate in Cali after 2045.  Instead the board has ordered that all trucks must be electric.

California’s "Secretary of Environmental Protection" (yes, that's a real position) smugly announced "We are showing the world that we can move goods and grow our economy without dirty diesel."

Leaving aside the disastrous result of AB5 outlawing contract truck drivers, the CARB DECREE forcing the trucking industry to use only electric trucks is equally stupid.  Next time presidunce Porridgebrain and Pelosi and AOC start bleating about how EVs will save the whole world from the dreaded Global Warming, keep that in mind.