President Joe Biden’s new EV mandates will likely prove to be a sizable wealth transfer from rural red regions of America to urban blue sections, and to wealthy Democrats who reside in them, according to reports.

The Biden administration has imposed the “strictest” rules in history for the auto industry staring in 2027. On March 20, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its tailpipe emissions rules for the auto industry, which will effectively force carmakers to have one-third of new car sales be plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) by 2027 and more than two-thirds by 2032.

The rule will likely prove to be “a sizable wealth transfer from rural red regions of America to urban blue sections, and to wealthy Democrats who reside in them,” according to reports.

News reports say that the new regulation represents a dramatic increase from current EV sales, which were about 8 percent of the new car market in 2023.

While environmentalists cheer, critics say that the measures will be particularly punitive for huge segments of the U.S. population who don’t want, can’t use, or can’t afford EVs. If carmakers go with the rules, the cost of remaining gas-fired cars and trucks will likely escalate as demand dwarfs supply.

Energy analyst, Robert Bryce, said, “In reality it’s a type of class warfare that will prevent low- and middle-income consumers from being able to afford new cars.”

As many traditional car buyers struggle, the federal subsidies and incentives continue to flow, to the benefit of EV buyers.

According to an October 2023 report by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, as much as $48,000 of the cost of the average EV sold in the United States is paid, not by the owner, but in the form of “socialized costs” that are spread out among taxpayers and electricity consumers over a 10-year period.

These socialized costs come in the form of taxes, government subsidies, fuel economy credits paid by gas carmakers to EV manufacturers, and higher electricity bills as consumers absorb the capital costs required to expand the power grid and install new charging stations.

The report states that “the average model year 2021 EV would cost $48,698 more to own over a 10-year period without $22 billion in government favors given to EV manufacturers and owners.”

These dollars, which do not take into account the additional dollars that gas-car owners will likely pay for their vehicles as manufacturers are forced to make fewer of them, amount to a government-mandated wealth transfer to affluent EV owners, paid by those who often cannot afford to buy EVs.

The new EPA mandate is “aimed at accommodating a very narrow segment of the auto-buying public: wealthy, white Democrats who live in a handful of liberal communities,” Mr. Bryce said. “EV ownership is largely defined by class, ideology, and geogaphy.”

Bryce reported in Epoch Times that 57 percent of EV owners earn more than $100,000 annually, 75 percent are male, and 87 percent are white. In addition, EV buyers are overwhelmingly Democrats, with 71 percent of Republicans stating in a Gallup poll that they would not consider owning an electric vehicle.

 Data from the Department of Energy supports this view. As of year-end 2022, California had 903,600 registered EVs in the state, or 37 percent of all EVs owned nationwide.

The next largest number of EV owners were in Florida, Texas, and Washington state, with 168,000, 149,000, and 104,100 EVs respectively, followed by New Jersey, New York, Georgia, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

According to a report by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, “if you count all the EVs in North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Mississippi, West Virginia, Alabama, Montana, and Idaho, they account for less than one percent of the total U.S. sales.”

In attempting to force Americans to switch to electric cars, a number of blue states including California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington are on track to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035, according to non profit group Coltura, which advocates for the switch from gasoline to electric cars.

There are practical reasons why people are unwilling to spend thousands of dollars more on electric cars. According to a November 2023 AAA survey, the primary reasons for people not to buy electric cars are a lack of charging stations, limited range, and time to charge the battery.

A recent Rasmussen poll found that 65 percent of Americans surveyed don’t think they’re likely to make an EV their next automobile purchase.

Another poll of voters found that only 14 percent were strongly in favor of regulations to phase out gas-powered cars and trucks, while nearly 60 percent were against. Opinions split along party lines, with 53 of Democrats in favor of the EPA regulations and 76 percent of Republicans against, with 59 percent of independents also opposing.

The strongest support for EV mandates came from people earning more than $150,000 a year.

The Clean Freight Coalition, a trucking trade group that supports a transition away from fossil fuels, said that the timeline set by the new EPA rules was impossible to meet given current technology and infrastructure, and that the Biden administration’s EV plan would bring significant harm to commercial vehicle operators, the businesses they serve, and consumers.

Jim Mullen, Clean Freight Coalition executive director, told the Washington Examiner, “Today, these vehicles fail to meet the operational demands of many motor carrier operations, reduce the payload of trucks, and thereby require more trucks to haul the same amount of freight, and lack sufficient charging and alternative fueling infrastructure to support adoption.”

The reliably pro-Democrat United Auto Workers Union (UAW) initially opposed the EPA mandate, fearing lost jobs due to the fact that EVs require fewer American workers to assemble components that often originate in China and that many of the new EV assembly plants being built by carmakers are in non-union states like Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama.

The UAW came around to supporting the EV plan, however, after the EPA adjusted its regulations to slow the pace of the transition.

The Biden administration’s barrage of climate-related energy and automotive mandates, critics say, fall into a category of what a recent report by the Cato Institute calls “policy beyond capability.”

Yellowstone County Commissioners have sent Senator Jon Tester a letter asking him to support a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) urging them not to implement a request from California to require zero-emissions from railroad locomotives.

The letter states that the waiver being requested by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is unaffordable by many railroad companies and it would force more freight traffic onto roads. And, further, the technology that would be necessary to meet the mandate does not exist.

 The waiver being requested would allow California and any other states to require zero-emission railroad locomotives by 2030. “The CARB regulation would limit the useful life of over 25,000 locomotives by barring those 23 years and older from operating in California. This policy ignores the operational reality that locomotives are long-term and capital –intensive investments that travel not just in one state but across the 140,000 –mile North American rail network. Small railroads cannot simply replace these locomotives and may face bankruptcy if the rule is approved. In addition, CARB would require railroads to deposit as much as $800 million per year per railroad into “spending accounts” that could only be used to purchase zero –emission equipment.”

The commissioners point out that those same passenger and freight railroads serve Montana and connect farmers and miners to west coast customers and they would be forced to comply with the same  mandate to serve those customers.

“One of the main economic responsibilities of the federal government is to facilitate interstate commerce and economic cooperation. It is for this very reason that interstate commerce laws preempt state laws. Please support and join the Manchin/Ricketts letter in the Senate that requests the EPA reject the CARB waiver.”

By Bethany Blankley, The Center Square

In fiscal 2022, 70 percent of the largest cities in the U.S. did not have enough money to pay their bills.

In the latest comprehensive analysis of the fiscal health of the 75 most populous cities in the U.S., 53 did not have enough money to pay all of their bills, according to a Truth in Accounting analysis of the latest annual comprehensive financial reports from 2022.

In its eighth annual Financial State of the Cities report, TIA found that the 75 largest cities in the U.S. had $307.4 billion worth of assets available to pay bills but their debt, including unfunded retirement benefit promises, totaled $595.3 billion.

Pension and healthcare debt accounted for the majority of debt owed, according to the analysis. Pension debt totaled $175.9 billion; other post-employment benefits (OPEB), mainly retiree health care, totaled $135.2 billion.

All 75 cities are required by law to have balanced budgets. For those with debt, in order to claim their budgets were balanced, TIA argues elected officials didn’t include all government costs in budget calculations, thereby pushing costs onto future taxpayers. Instead, they used “accounting tricks,” including “inflating revenue assumptions, counting borrowed money as income, understating the true costs of government, and delaying the payment of current bills until the start of the next fiscal year so they aren’t included in the budget calculations.”

“The most common accounting trick” used to understate costs is excluding “true compensation costs” of employee benefits like health care, life insurance, and pensions, the report explains.

“While pension and other post-employment costs, such as health care, will not be paid until the employees retire, they still represent current compensation costs earned and incurred throughout their tenure.” Cities should include these contributions in their budgets, TIA says.

TIA also found that some elected officials “have used portions of the money owed to pension and OPEB funds to keep taxes low and pay for politically popular programs. Instead of funding promised benefits now, politicians have charged them to future taxpayers” to appear to have a balanced budget while city debt increases, TIA said.

Some of the financial woes can be attributed to the market value of pensions, the report explains.

“In 2022, the cities continued to receive and spend federal COVID-19 relief funds, and as the U.S. economy reopened, they took in additional tax revenue. Such economic gains were offset by increases in their pension liabilities, which were caused in large part due to decreases in the market value of pension investments,” the report states. “Over the past few years, investment market values have swung dramatically. In 2022, this volatility negatively impacted most cities’ pension investments and their financial condition, which demonstrates the risk to taxpayers when cities offer defined pension benefits to their employees.”

To show how taxpayers are impacted by cities not having enough money to pay their bills, TIA divides the amount of revenue needed to cover unpaid costs by the estimated number of taxpayers. This calculates “a taxpayer burden.” When cities have funds left over after paying their bills, TIA divides the amount by the estimated number of taxpayers to calculate “a taxpayer surplus.”

Cities are also graded according to their fiscal health, taxpayer burden or surplus, balanced budget requirements, and other factors.

Of the 75 cities evaluated, only 1% received an A grade for fiscal health. The majority received D grades, followed by C and B grades, according to the analysis.

The five cities with the greatest surpluses were Washington, D.C. ($10,700), Irvine, California ($6,100), Plano, Texas ($5,100), Lincoln, Nebraska ($4,100), and Oklahoma City ($2,900). Rounding out the top ten with greatest surpluses were Aurora, Colorado; Fresno, California; Raleigh, North Carolina; Virginia Beach and Corpus Christi, Texas.

Of 22 cities reporting surpluses, the majority, six, were in California.

Of the 10 cities with the greatest taxpayer burden, nine are run by Democrats. New York City has the greatest taxpayer burden (-$61,800), followed by Chicago (-$42,900), Honolulu (-$24,200), Philadelphia (-$20,400), Portland (-$20,100), New Orleans (-$18,200), Miami (-$15,500), Milwaukee (-$15,300), Baltimore (-$14,100), and Pittsburgh (-$13,000).

New York City, which has historically ranked as the worst for fiscal health, attributed much of its financial woes to “COVID-19,” mentioning it 38 times in its financial report, according to the analysis. “Despite receiving $6.5 billion in COVID relief grants and a $1.3 billion increase in tax revenues,” TIA points out that New York City still needed $6.1 billion to pay its bills.

TIA notes that cities not properly funding pension and retiree health care promises “burdens future taxpayers and puts retirees at risk of not receiving promised benefits.”

An outspoken adversary of COVID vaccines, Dr. Joseph Mercola, Florida, recently announced, “The Weaponization of Finance: Get ready for a rough ride.” It follows the cancelling of all of his business’ bank accounts in July by Chase Bank, as well as the cancellation of all the accounts held by Mercola’s key staff members.

The story is not new to Montanans, who have heard the story of gun and ammunition manufacturers relocating to Montana because of the discrimination they experienced from financial institutions in other states.

Mercola predicts “the time has arrived when, if you have a view that goes against the official narrative, you’re cut off from basic financial services.” His experience he believes is “just the start” of what is in store for any business or organization that stands in opposition to approved political narratives. He pointed out that his Mercola Market bank accounts were cancelled as well the “personal accounts of my CEO and CFO …and the accounts of their spouses and children.” This occurred despite the fact that a new Florida law specifically prohibits financial institutions from denying or canceling services based on political or religious beliefs.

Chase Bank responded to Mercola’s charged saying they cancelled the accounts because there was “unexpected activity” on one account and the action was typical of procedures followed in anti-money laundering purposes.

No money laundering charges have ever been brought, said Mercola, who added that in a real money laundering case, they seize your accounts outright. “They don’t instruct you to take your business elsewhere.”

Later, Chase Bank replied to an inquiry by Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, that the accounts were closed because Mercola’s business had “been the subject of regulatory scrutiny by the Federal government … for engaging in illegal activity relating to the marketing and sale of consumer products.”

Mercola said that the last contact he has had with the Food and Drug Administration was in 2021 warning him not to recommend vitamins, etc. “to mitigate, prevent, treat, diagnose or cure COVID-19.” “We responded to the FDA’s letter and no further action was ever taken, because we had not, in fact, violated the law,” said Mercola. He went on to state, “…something else prompted Chase Bank to close our accounts, and the most likely reason appears to be the bank’s relationships to the technocratic control network that is trying to usher in a one world totalitarian government.”

Mercola’s concerns about financial weaponization are shared with the attorneys general from 19 states which earlier this year, accused JPMorgan Chase of “closing accounts and discriminating against customers due to their political or religious beliefs,” according to Business Insider. They reported, “the bank had canceled major organizations’ checking accounts and had asked screening questions focused on religion and politics before reinstating them.”

The accounts for the National Committee for Religious Freedom were cancelled and then informed they would reopen the account “if it provided a list of its donors, a list of the political candidates it intended to support, and details of the criteria used to determine its support and endorsements.”

Newsweek also had a report in April from Nebraska’s state treasurer, John Murante, who said he is disturbed by JPMorgan Chase’s “disturbing track record of debanking clients for biased or arbitrary reasons,” including fossil fuel companies and firearm manufacturers. Murante said Chase also conditions its services on whether company employees agree with customers’ political or religious activities.” He specifically identified that Chase cancelled accounts of  “… former ambassador Sam Brownback, the Arkansas Family Council, Defense of Liberty, and retired general Michael Flynn, Jr — for holding mainstream American views.”

The Hill.com has also commented on concerns on what it called “redlining,” “… against legal industries, for political and ideological reasons and blaming it on vague risks to the banks’ reputations.” As an example, The Hill stated, “Six of the largest U.S. banks already have committed not to fund new exploration and production projects in the Arctic….Debanking fossil fuel firms could lead to a disastrous energy shortage in the United States.”

Former U.S. Attorney Frank Keating writing for The Hill explained why banks were rejecting politically incorrect industries. “Officials at both the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) threatened banks with regulatory pressure if they did not bend to their will. . . Gun and ammunition dealers, payday lenders and other businesses operating legally suddenly found banks terminating their accounts with little explanation aside from ‘regulatory pressure.’”

Near the end of the Trump administration, The Hill said, “…the government should adopt a proposed new regulation to stop it…. In more general terms, banks are incapable of making qualitative judgments based on notions of morality. A situation in which banks refuse service based on possibly ephemeral perceptions of morality and societal good is a divergence from the open and generally capitalist system to which we have strived since our nation’s founding.”

The Hill in 2021 reported on Trump’s Fair Access Rule, put forward by The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) which “finalized a controversial rule banning large banks from rejecting businesses based on their industry,” which was praised by Republicans who had criticized banks that dropped clients in the firearm industry or that pledged to stop funding Arctic drilling projects. Those banks included Citibank, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase.

Democrats argued that the Dodd-Frank fair access principles are meant to protect people of color and low income communities who’ve faced decades of banking discrimination — “not powerful corporations with ample financial sector options.”

Banks also objected. “The rule lacks both logic and legal basis, it ignores basic facts about how banking works, and it will undermine the safety and soundness of the banks to which it applies,” said Greg Baer, president and CEO of the Bank Policy Institute, a research and advocacy group for big U.S. banks. 

Even free market advocates disagreed with the regulation. John Berlau, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Reason (magazine) that “the rule’s broad wording would do more than merely prevent large banks from discriminating against unpopular businesses. It would also force small banks into relationships with businesses they are not equipped to handle.”

Berlau argued that preventing banks from discriminating against certain industries “violates their right to free association and would hurt niche banks that specialize in specific industries, like farming, industrial lending, or financial technology, forcing them to lend to businesses with which they are less familiar.”

Reason Magazine later reported, “The Biden administration has rolled back a Trump-era regulation meant to protect politically disfavored businesses, like gun manufacturers and cryptocurrency exchanges, from being categorically denied banking services.”