OPINION:
Jennifer Granholm, electric vehicle industry millionaire turned President Biden’s military expert and secretary of energy, has taken great pleasure in commanding the common folk to buy pricey electric vehicles.
Now, she is turning her sights on the armed forces, endorsing a quick conversion to all-electric military vehicles. It’s a good thing life or death is not in the balance.
For households, Ms. Granholm, the former Michigan governor, argues this: Budget-strapped families who want to escape high gasoline prices should buy an EV. I have not seen her do the math for purchasing inflation-era groceries AND a $60,000 car AND an at-home charging station, AND higher insurance.
Wealthy liberals are increasingly distant from the travails of middle-class America. Just ask East Palestine, Ohio.
She’s also a big fan of China’s “clean” energy policies as auto corporations begin to let America’s No. 1 global enemy get into bed with them — permanently. We will increasingly depend on Beijing’s batteries and their mined lithium elements as Mr. Biden reminds us of our own energy and combustible engines.
“So we’re hopeful that we can all learn from what China is doing,” Ms. Granholm says of the world’s No. 1 air polluter and grand-opener of new coal plants. China is increasing greenhouse gas emissions; the U.S. is decreasing them.
A Granholm successor, Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, is leading the welcome wagon, making sure we are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party if we want to keep driving.
While Michigan partners with China, the police state’s conniving politburo is leading the way in producing deadly fentanyl; buying American politicians (the Biden family, for example), colleges, and corporate media; and stealing our intellectual property. Think of what they can snatch once inside Ford and General Motors.
Ms. Granholm’s green energy spending by way of Congress is another boon to China and its slave-labor solar panels.
During the long Cold War, conservative pundits observed and imagined inviting the Soviet Union to embed in America’s corporate world, reap the profits and shore up Marxist-Leninist colossal failures. Eastern Europe would still be a Kremlin slave state. Yet this is the entry we have given China for over two decades.
Ms. Granholm knows the EV ins and outs. Starting in February 2017, she served on the board of the electric bus maker Proterra. She walked away selling 240,520 shares for a $1.6 million profit, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Her financial disclosure form reviewed by The Washington Times shows that, while energy secretary, she exercised a vested option to buy the shares on May 12, 2021. She sold them privately 12 days later. Republicans called the wheeling and dealing a conflict of interest. The U.S. Office of Government Ethics said she was in compliance.
A month later, on June 15, Proterra “went public,” as they say, by making its stock available to all buyers.
Its press release said: “BURLINGAME, Calif. — Proterra Inc, a leading innovator in commercial vehicle electrification technology, today announced that its shares of common stock and warrants will begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market today under the new ticker symbols ’PTRA’ and ’PTRAW,’ respectively.”
Leading up to the initial public offering, the Biden administration promoted Proterra, surely jacking up its stock. In April, Mr. Biden did a virtual tour featuring Proterra. Days later, the White House invited company Chairman Jack Allen to join Mr. Biden’s climate summit.
Biden told Mr. Allen: “I used to have a friend that said it’s always great to do well and do good — you’re doing both, pal. You really are.”
With all this White House backing, surely the stock price would take off.
It did, and then it crashed like a fiery EV stranded along the road. A month after the IPO, a share was valued at about $17. But Proterra’s market value soon plunged on disappointing revenue. The stock price collapsed from $17 to today’s $1.17.
Now, about an EV military. The Pentagon talks of “non-tactical” vehicles, of which it owns 175,000, to bring people and supplies to the war.
To Republicans, climate madness has now reached the point of hindering soldiers.
“I believe the proposed swapping of the military’s non-tactical vehicles for an all-electric fleet, again, by 2030 really is putting the climate crusade ahead of our department’s lethality,” said Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa at an April 26 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “We need to focus on that first. So, do you support the military adopting that EV fleet by 2030?”
At the witness table was Ms. Granholm, who oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons development.
She answered: “I do, and I think we can get there as well. And I do think that reducing our reliance on the volatility of globally traded fossil fuels, where we know that global events such as the war in Ukraine can jack up prices for people back home. It does not contribute to energy security.”
Let’s break this down. In his first year, pre-Ukraine, Mr. Biden closed a Canadian-U.S. pipeline and made exploration off-limits. The price of oil shot up. So did the price of gasoline, fueling inflation and forcing Mr. Biden to practice Ms. Granholm’s “energy security” by begging foreign oilmen to sell us more oil.
And EV vehicles are essentially fossil-fueled. Natural gas juices most of the electric grid in this country. And if we are going to create a mass network of charging stations to replace gas stations, we will need more fossil fuels, not less. Wildlife-killing windmills won’t do the job, even when the wind blows.
As Ms. Ernst logically pointed out: “Any one of our non-tactical vehicles can pull up to a pump, fill up with biodiesel. And we are good to go right now.”
Proterra is a reminder of another Biden assault on the middle class who live outside Washington and cannot make millions of dollars giving speeches and going in and out of government.
The Labor Department has issued guidance to directing retirement accounts — the 401k(s) on which people base their financial futures. The policy urges money managers to pick environmental, social and governance stocks.
Republicans led an effort in Congress to reverse the guidance. But Mr. Biden vetoed it, saying he was protecting old people’s money. As he might say, I’m not joking.
Now 401(k) owners can watch their money go to buy Chinese solar panels and maybe Proterra stock.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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