Essay by Eric Worrall
“… after waiting for a long time to … get my electric vehicle, I got it and drove it from Michigan to here this last weekend and went by every single gas station, and it didn’t matter how high it was …”
Let them buy Teslas: Electric car owner Stabenow says gas prices don’t matter
by Breanne Deppisch, Energy and Environment Reporter
June 07, 2022 05:58 PMSen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) said it “doesn’t matter” how high gas prices go because she drives an electric vehicle, sparking backlash as gas prices in the United States climb to record highs with no short-term relief in sight.
Stabenow’s remarks came during a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday to discuss Biden’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
When the subject turned to record-high fuel costs in the U.S., Stabenow chimed in: “I do have to say, just on the issue of gas prices, after waiting for a long time to have enough chips in this country to finally get my electric vehicle, I got it and drove it from Michigan to here this last weekend and went by every single gas station, and it didn’t matter how high it was,” the Michigan Democrat said.
Stabenow added she is “looking forward to the opportunity for us to move to vehicles that aren’t going to be dependent on the whims of the oil companies and the international markets” and stressed the role that supply chain problems have had in hampering EV production and driving up costs.
…
Read more: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-environment/let-them-buy-teslas-electric-car-owner-stabenow-says-gas-prices-dont-matter
Video of Senator Stabenow’s comments;
As Rep. Mike Kelly pointed out, the average price of an electric vehicle is higher than the median income of his constituents. Checking census.gov, the median annual income of Michigan residents is $59,234, just short of the $60,000 they would need to buy an EV.
So if we assume a service life of 10 years, if Michigan residents earning median income put aside around 10% of their money before taxes, they can afford to own an average EV.
Oops, I forgot interest rates, which are on an upward trajectory thanks to Bidenflation – so I guess if they don’t have a spare $60,000, and have to finance their EV, maybe we’re looking at more like 20-30% of their pre-tax median MI income.
I mean, its not like people have to eat or heat their homes in Michigan, right? /sarc
Or perhaps Michigan residents will just have to be patient, and endure skyrocketing gasoline prices until everyone can afford an EV, like their Democrat senator suggested.
Aw, Stabenow doesn’t care. Well, I suggest we give the gas to her for free, in a sippy cup with her name on it.
Where I live the city provides electricity to EVs free of charge to encourage the purchase of EVs by the average Joe. So far the only people in town who own EVs are millionaires and their juice is paid for by taxpayers.
The best part is the town taxpayers are ok with this, they think they are saving the planet. Wow, just wow.
Same here in Brisbane, Australia.
Well, yes, she had to take a weekend to drive it, say from Detroit to Washington, D.C., because it is around 525 miles, and had to be recharged overnight somewhere… Dimwit.
And what is the price of electricty right now, and projected to be in say five years time?
…not that she’ll care, doesn’t the tax payer pick up the tab for her travel expenses?
The House gets up to $1k/mo to lease an EPA-approved low GHG vehicle. The Senate
probably gets something similar/better. They do get travel allowances & after having been
in gubmint for45+ yrs, I’m sure she knows very well how to live off of OPM!
https://www.house.gov/doing-business-with-the-house/leases/vehicle-leases
At the average price of electricity at commercial chargers, about 30 cents per kWh, it costs the same to drive an EV per mile as a Prius, even at the current exorbitant price of gas. Do the math. A Tesla gets about 3 miles per kWh (don’t forget charging inefficiency), a Prius about 50 miles per gallon. The average price of gas is ~$5. per gallon.
If you charge on commercial chargers, you’ll never pay back the price penalty of $10 to $20 thousand dollars of an EV.
This is the crux of the problem. You need to double to triple the production of electricity to accommodate 100% EV. Not just the generation, but also the entire infrastructure to carry it, which is massive. That will drive the cost of electricity through the roof by itself. Then introduce windmills and solar panels into the equation, and you have to deal with their intermittancy by building out conventional production and/or batteries and those cost so much money that even if the power from the windmills and solar panels was FREE, it would still drive up the cost of electricity.
Then there’s taxes. Road taxes on fuel pay for the roads, so if you go all EV you have to put road taxes on the consumption of electricity. Plus those EV’s are a lot harder on the road than gas powered cars because they have a 1000 pound battery in every one, and that’s a lot of additional weight.
A Prius weighs 3,000 pounds.
A Honda Accord weighs 3,000 pounds.
A Prius in not an EV. It’s a hybrid that runs on gasoline.
A Tesla Model S weighs between 4,561 to 4,766 lbs.
F-150 Lightning weighs ~1750 lbs more than the F-150 with internal combustion engine.
I am waiting for someone to solve the problem of developing an eighteen-wheeler EV. I assume the denizens of major cities would like to continue getting food and other essential delivered to their cities.
From everything I have read, the weight of the batteries required plus cab, trailer, and typical cargo far exceeds the weight limits of most bridges and overpasses. We can either reinforce them all, or buy a whole lot of whatever EVs have the largest trunks!
Actually, Germany has a pretty good idea for powering trucks.
They are concept testing overhead power lines for hybrid diesel trucks.
Similar to electric trains.
Germany tests its first ‘electric highway’ for trucks – Watts Up With That?
Mr. M.: Stabenow is a particularly fine example of dim bulbs who have enough personality to get elected, and can act passionate about whatever her staff tells her to get worked up. For her, “worked up” does not mean angry, it means putting on an even happier face. She could not make this drive without perceiving some downside to the EV, but she knows to smile and ignore the downside. I’d like to blame MI for her, but I fear all americans are to blame for letting it go this far, to where a marshmallow like D Stabenow rises to the US Senate.
Hint: Her lips wee moving.
I think we have to file the senators story in the, “I’m all right jack” cabinet.
I wonder if hypocrisy breeds insensitivity, or is it the other way round?
These people are inbreeds.
Stupidity breeds both.
Democrats only care if votes are involved.
#FJB
Henry’s Model T is still more convenient to use and can carry fuel in cans on board.
Here’s a great story of racing a Model T against a Model S. The Tesla beat the Ford by an hour and 10 minutes from the Model T plant in Detroit to the Nikola Tesla lab on Long Island. If they had run a new Ford it wouldn’t have been close.
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15112705/2013-tesla-model-s-vs-1915-ford-model-t-race-of-the-centuries-feature/
I beat my 5 year old nephew in a foot race last weekend like he was standing still. The little baby just cried.
C’mon Eric, you missed: “Let Them Eat Cake” and other low hanging fruit.
Sure Charles, but I bet everyone reading thought about it ;-).
Mr. Worrall: Not taking that bet; EVERYONE saw Marie Antoinette in that lipstick!
so her EV is not nuclear or natural gas powered.
How cute!
What happens when there’s no wind and at night?
She produces the wind by talking BS, like Harrabin?
She walks out to the wind turbine farm and orders them to turn
Hopefully, someone at Consumer’s Energy or DTE will explain to Bozette the Clown that if all her little people 1) owned EVs and 2) tried to recharge them overnight, there’s a good chance they’d blow-out a lot of transformers. And not the small ones hanging on poles, but the really big, one-off types in the sub-stations that have very long lead times to replace.
Surely the circuit breakers would open before the transformers actually blew?
Hopefully, the vast majority will, but some won’t.
Oh, she has the green electrons only pass filter installed in her charger hook up. I don’t think I need sarc tag.
Perhaps her car will catch fire, maybe when parked in her garage, and burn her house down.
not likely, she lives under a rock.
Mr. Ghost: If I say that she should park in the Senate garage, would I be an insurrectionist?
Lix Cheney thinks so.
The lack of understanding of even basic economics, shown by some modern politicians is frightening. We are moving into the dark ages again. The level of ignorance on display from people in positions of power, can only result in ever more damaging policies. The default position from this lack of education and lack of reasoning skill, shown by the political elite is anarchy.
It raises the question.
How long will the dark ages persist for, this time around? Will it be hundreds of years like the last time? Or will our discovery of AI systems truncate it this time?
The BIG problem is that her stupidity gets reported by the MSM. The clamour of accurate reasons why she is a stupid narcissist does not.
And it’s very embarrassing to have her as our Senator. She does nothing while the Senate is in session except for the occasional foot-in-mouth opportunity.
If she does nothing while in office…
…that’s a bad thing?
More like thousands if years, society will have to rebuild from scratch without easy to find fossil fuels because we have already used them up. In the dark age computers and internet will wither and die we will be hunters and gatherers of carrion and rafs
Most government entities require licenses for certain occupations, plumbers, electricians, hair dressers and barbers, attorneys, doctors and nurses, etc. Holders of these licenses must have education, work experience and successful testing. In the case of elected office-holders no education, experience or testing related to government, economics, science or sociology is required. A refrigeration mechanic, for instance, must be tested and licensed by the EPA to work with refrigerants but the EPA bureaucrats that make the rules and their enablers, the legislators, have no need to have demonstrated any knowledge, education or expertise in the subject.
tom,
You’ve just described Wilsonian progressivism, which is the political theory that people like us are too stupid to make our own economic choices. Rather, we are allowed only elect political nitwits like Ms. Stabenow and Ms. Waters (being two excellent examples), who in turn confirm and oversea appointed political hacks, who in turn manage and oversee various Federal departments and bureaus comprised of hired self-styled experts, who in turn inform us of which economic choices we are allowed to make.
I agree.
We are the people to be governed.
We are capable of deciding who we will elect to govern us, in the representative democracy, and what their scope of governance is, within the limits of the Federal and various state Constitutions.
If we start defining criteria for who can get elected, we are really asking for trouble.
EXACTAMUNDO!
TH-
I couldn’t possibly be on a more different page from the one you’re on.
It is arguably useful -maybe – to require testing before allowing a tradesman to ply his trade where the public could be harmed. Maybe it’s legit that an electrician has to get a license so that he doesn’t electrocute customers.
Maybe. I don’t totally by in. We don’t need fat arse bureaucrats in league with hack union bosses restricting who can do work.
We don’t need a nanny state to protect us from stupid decisions like hiring an incompetent contractor.
Before we got so damn smart and bureaucracy-laden, we had master tradesmen who learned their trade by starting out as apprentices. People got hired based on recommendations from other customers. That system worked just fine.
Licensing and mandated training for hairdressers? Come on. I mean no disrespect to hairdressers whatsoever. But their worth is measured by their hairstyling, not their certification paperwork.
Some of the most creative and effective people I’ve known did not have formal credentials to give them permission to be excellent.
Some of the most useless wastes of oxygen that I’ve run up against had absolutely nothing going for them except for a paper from an elite school calling them an expert.
Stepping off curmudgeon soapbox.
Her motto must be “sod you jack I’m alright “
Oh how unusual, another selfish politician!
A modern Marie Antoinette….
Elitism then and now
She would also probably insist on jumping the queue for the recharger at each opportunity as her journey is far more important than those of the plebs.
As for EVs being affordable, she sounds like one of those politicians who doesn’t know the price of a pint of milk or a loaf of bread. Such matters as the cost of living are beneath her.
It would be interesting to have some idea of her income as a senator.
WIKI has that
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_members_of_the_United_States_Congress
2022 (present) $174,000 per annum
And not subjected to the same rules and regulations THEY place on society
“And not subjected to the same rules and regulations THEY place on society”
I could get behind an Amendment that would require Congress (and the rest of govt.) to be subject to exactly the same laws they pass for everyone else – no allowance for exceptions.
Such a law was actually passed while Reagan was president. The screaming and whining from the Democrats was almost deafening.
Unfortunately it was quietly scrapped the next time the Democrats were in charge.
That doesn’t count the many subsidies and freebies that they have voted themselves.
A quick search showed that the listed salary is US$174,000, which, by the way, they get for life, even if they retire or are defeated in an election.
This does not include their free health insurance (guess who pays for that … ) and some type of housing cost allowance (if memory serves from some time ago). Each elected official has their home-state residence, and someplace to live in the greater D.C. Metroplex.
Also, keep in mind that when they are in office, they can raise campaign funds, and any funds not expended when they leave office, become their money, or at least, that’s the way it used to work. Things may have changed some, due to the seeming corruption of the whole process.
As you likely know, they can go to official functions as an invited ‘guest speaker’, for which they will receive some remuneration. Some years ago, I believe I saw that former Senator/VP Al Gore, receiving his Senate salary, was invited to be the keynote speaker at some function, and was paid (I think?) US$50,000, plus any incidental expenses. Most run-of-the-mill Senators and Representatives are unlikely to command such fees for giving a speech, but you get the idea.
Heck, a couple of speeches per month, and one of them will pay more in taxes on the fees than I’ve made in my entire working life!
What’s wrong with this picture?
Vlad
What’s wrong is that what you wrote is not at all true. Senators are essentially on the same plan as other government workers. They can receive a pension at age 62 if they have completed more than 5 years of service (or at age 50, in the unlikely event that they have completed 20 years of service). The amount of that pension depends on age and years of service, however, and by law cannot exceed 80% of their highest average 3 year salary. For a person who has served only one 6 year term, the amount of their pension is a very small percentage of their previous salary, estimated at ~9%.
They also have to purchase their health insurance, which they can do on the market or through the same plan as other government workers and retirees.
Moreover, they receive no additional allowance or stipend either while in office or afterwards to cover their housing costs in Washington.
They are also prohibited by law from using campaign money for personal use after leaving office, although PAC money is a shady gray area that seems possible for people to surreptitiously use.
As I stated, that was the way it used to work; so things have changed. I stand corrected. I still see some inequity in the way they go there as ‘ordinary’ citizens, and tend to come out substantially better off. Let’s Go Brandon has only ever been a ‘public servant’ but is worth, literally, tens of millions of dollars (pays more in taxes, if he does at all, than I’ll ever make in my entire working life).
Something is still wrong … … …
Nothing like moving the goalposts.
Something may very well be wrong. It’s just not what you described. The salary of a senator is not at all exorbitant, in particular light of the fact that they need to maintain a residence in DC as well as in their home state. If anything, it is fairly low given their level of responsibility, and the combination of giving people a lot of power, high expenses, and a relatively low salary tends to breed corruption, not eliminate it.
Corruption is a real problem, but blaming “high” government salaries is ridiculous.
they need to maintain a residence in DC as well as in their home state.
That’s part of the problem there.
Part of what problem? Would you like for them to disassociate from the state they represent, or do you want them not to show up to work?
Why do they need a residence in DC?
Go there for to do your job, and then go home. Rent a hotel for a few days (YES, a few days, not MONTHS at a time). It’s a hell of a lot easier to do that now than when the Senate was founded so there shouldn’t be any excuse.
This idea of political positions as a career instead of a period of service is the core of the problem. The idea of spending months in DC “legislating” is a part of it too. It shouldn’t be a privilege with perks to serve, it should be at least enough of a hardship to make people want to go back to their regular lives after a period.
I’m sure you’ll disagree though. Are you a Senator, perhaps?
And we have the example of Ilhan Omar to demonstrate how stringently the laws regarding personal use of campaign funds are enforced. I have to ask, were you purposely attempting humor?
I was stating facts. Omar potentially misusing funds is a different issue. Of course the laws around misuse of campaign funds, insider trading, etc., should be enforced. But that has nothing to do with lies about lifelong salaries, free healthcare, etc.
A Convention of the States (COS) can fix the inequitable lifestyle enjoyed by elected officials (given to themselves) and put them more on par with the people they’re supposed to be serving.
A Convention of the States!
What could possibly go wrong?
More and more I think an amicable dissolution of the Union is the best approach. Let the blue states secede and become the People’s Republic of America and the red states become the United States of America under a restored Constitution. I hope I can escape to Texas or Florida in time to avoid the border wall.
Anything that is passed still has to be approved by the states and congress.
On the other hand, doing nothing just means the current decline continues.
Fix the salary of the Senator’s and Representatives to the median income of the people they represent. State as a whole for senators, their district for representatives.
They don’t get a raise unless the rest of us do.
Also median instead of average, that way if the rich get richer, but no one else benefits, their salaries don’t go up.
How long did the trip take?
Looking up the distance between Michigan and Washington DC gives varying figures depending on where you start in Michigan.
The distance from Chicago is about 700 miles and said to take 11 hours.
(Plus of course the time needed to recharge the batteries.)
It doesn’t say what make of EV she has. Presumably a top of the range Tesla which will still need at least one recharge en route.
A fraction of the time it will take next winter with the heater, lights and wipers on.
Or this summer with the AC on. Charging will probably take longer as well since you have to keep the battery cool while it is being charged.
Compared to 75 degrees F:
“At 20 degrees, the average driving range fell by 12% when the car’s cabin heater was not used. When the heater was turned on, the range dropped by 41%, AAA said.”
“At 95 degrees, range dropped 4% without use of air conditioning, and fell by 17% when the cabin was cooled, the study found.”
She only has to take the trip once, to be able to drone on and on and on about it for the next twenty years. (If she really ever took the trip, which I wouldn’t take as a given here. She’s a Demonrat after all. Demonrats lie about everything for sport.)
Probably an hour runway to runway. All weekend for the poor sod that actually had to drive the car.
Mr. Fraizer: An excellent assessment, but it ruins my next line, dammit! I was gonna say that it took 8 hours for the car to charge, but they were delayed because applying makeup took longer.
More like 4 hours to get to the airport, check in, go through security, then wait to board. Then at the other end…
Back when I had to go on business trips, I learned how to get a week’s worth of clothes and other supplies into a standard garment bag. That way I had no checked baggage.
That’s how the little people fly, Jeff. For as long as we continue to let them fly at all. Most of them don’t even have a yacht, let alone a private jet.
Masters of Demonratacy never fly commercial, silly. Rubbing elbows with deplorables? Puhleeze!
Can she really be oblivious to the fact that most electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels? That is a very low IQ woman.
When gas prices double, her electricity price will double too. Her Tesla does not give her any significant protection from high gas prices.
There is some market segregation, but in the long run natural gas (which fires most electricity generation in America now) and gasoline prices move together.
As long as her vehicle is minus a tailpipe, she is pollution-free. Brilliant.
Don’t excuse her vile intentional demagoguery by assuming that she’s too stupid to work that out. Like all elite Demonrats, she’s just following the Party line and she’s lying whenever her lips are moving.
Add an m in the middle of her last name and it takes an interesting twist.
She will soon have fond memories of her diesel car at a time she can only drive her EV when the wind blows.
How clever…I like it
Uh oh! An Insurrectionist comment. Democracy in Peril! Do you have a buffalo hat?
(Stab-me-now)
Another aristocratic woman is historically well known for her saying: “Let them eat cake”. It may be a “low hanging fruit” but it sums it up quite nicely. The increases in electricity costs are also ramping up, but this probably doesn’t bother her either. She can probably arrange to have the tax payers take the bill for her transportation expenses, even the private ones ..
Apparently her bum in calibrated. She said a while back that she feels the volatility of global warming in storms when she flies twice a week.
if I had an EV you can be darn sure i’d move it to the central atlantic before november too.
Temperature is just sunspot lagged fifty years. It’s impressive how mentally retarded this site is, misses the obvious explanation for climate and bans it constantly.
Watts does not post here anymore and considers the editors mentally retarded.
“Temperature is just sunspot lagged fifty years. It’s impressive how mentally retarded ….(stupid) is”
Speak for yourself!
For non-science, you just barged in like an elephant to claim the prize for the stupidest post here!
There are people like LEIF Svalgaard here, who actually know what they are on about.
https://www.academia.edu/27945304/Solar_activity_past_present_future
suggest you download some stuff.
And all through that lengthy tome, he fails to point out temperature is just sunspot lagged fifty years, and all the climate articles on this site are spam.
You are proof of freedom of expression here, –
ie.:-
“all the climate (posts by me) on this site are spam.”
There fixed it for you!
Mr. Joe: The site seems to welcome all comments, even mine. Maybe you know all about sunspots and 50 years, but you don’t know the meaning of the word “tome”. Or “lengthy”.
It really is sad the way know nothings latch onto a meaningless statistic and try to pretend that they have actually made an earth shattering discovery.
It is earth shattering. 6th grade physics destroys climatology. But you’re too dumb to read, so keep spamming.
It would destroy climatology if you could show that it is true.
All you’ve got is an extremely weak correlation. If you knew anything about science, you would know that this is not enough to prove anything.
Looks like you were able to make this post.
Yes, they have given up. The social collapse is too rapid now.
Mr. Joe: Look up the word “fabulist” and see your own picture!
Well done lib.
1) Correlation is not causation. Most people are smart enough to figure that out on their own. You on the other hand …
2) Where does the heat hide for that 50 years?
If you calculate the heat capacity of the ocean it’s about that time.
Everything is totally obvious and trivial, it’s laughable how you write pages about something that can be said in a sentence.
The ocean needs 5e24 joules per degree. Sunlight is e17 per second.
So 50 million seconds or about a year would warm one degree. Because sunlight varies a few percent per year the warming is what we would expect from simple heat capacity math, maybe a little less because losses.
In case it wasn’t clear, the fifty years is approximately the time it takes to show up statistically. As the temperature data is accurate to .1 degree, there’s a certain amount of warming that has to happen before it shows up, although this is purely a artifact of rounding error. More precise measurement would reduce the lag.
1) Temperature data isn’t accurate to .1 degrees. That’s what the alarmists claim, but it has never been true.
That changes in orbital distance cause sunlight to vary a few percent per year is a well known fact. Unfortunately for you, it is a variation that repeats exactly each year. No trend there.
The turnover of the oceans is measured in thousands of years, not 50.
Sheesh, try to learn something about the subject you claim to have mastered.
In addition, the ocean doesn’t heat up uniformly. It’s stratified with surface and deep currents.
Heated water flows on the surface toward the poles. Denser cooled water sinks near the poles and flows along the bottom back toward the equator to replace the water that flowed to the poles.
It’s meaningless to take the volume of the oceans and the heat capacity of salt water and calculate a “heat capacity of the ocean”. It’s not a block of steel under a blowtorch, it’s a heat engine.
I see sunspots go up and down.
I see the “global wamring” line go up, monotonically.
To suggest “covariance,” that one factor varies as a function of another, you have to have variance in both factors.
There is no variance in the noted Global Temperature. Hence, no opportunity to see if both of these ideas match evidence:
“when sun spots go up, global temperature goes up,”
and
“when sun spots go down, global temperature goes down.”
That’s because there’s a lag, like I said, and even this lag is a result of rounding error.
Simple math shows the oceans get 3e24 joules per year. Let’s simplify that to the oceans raising one degree every year in the ideal case.
Solar insolation varies roughly .2% a year. That’s a thousand years for a one degree change to show up. A .1 degree change takes a half century, which is exactly what the lag is. Because the heating is a zenos paradox (half the change shows up every period) this is how long it would take for the arbitrary threshold (.1 degree) to show up.
The lag is entirely the result of the rounding error in your own data, in reality everything is trivial physics math.
Now you are directly contradicting yourself. That’s even faster than the last time you tried to push one of your fantasies.
Markw your reply is fail. Explain how I am contradicting myself.
On the opposite side of the media portrayal coin is the Wall Street Journal story of another EV road trip:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-rented-an-electric-car-for-a-four-day-road-trip-i-spent-more-time-charging-it-than-i-did-sleeping-11654268401
The infrastructure for EV’s is simply not there in the USA for extended road trips, especially outside dense urban areas. Then there is also the assumption that every charge point is a Level 3 that is able to almost fully charge an EV in a few minutes.
And is operational and not occupied by some other virtue signaler on the way back from Washington DC to lecture us about “paying our fair share”.
#FJB
Or that the charging cable has not been stolen for resale.
I wondered how long a nice fat cable of copper hung in an out-of-the-way location would last. The tall hollow concrete poles that carry the flood lights in one of our local parks have medallions on them that say, “Only aluminum wires inside. No copper.”
My gawd, has it come to that? Putting signs on things to let the criminal parasites know it’s not worth vandalizing? A row of heavily used gallows would be a much better approach.
and there you have it folks, the lack of intellect on display for all to see. That idiot was elected by equally dumb people, don’t ever forget that.
There is always a question of how many voters vs. how many votes in statewide elections in Blue and Purple states. Even with a dwindling population of people who can’t (according to Dementia Joe) figure out how to use a computer or get a state-issued ID card, Detroit manages to generate enough votes to win the statewide races for the Democrats.
Great re-election slogan
“Let them eat cake” is now “Let them write code” or “Let them drive Teslas”.
#FJB
Not a lot of solar and wind contributing to charging her up. She is still using as much fossil fuels as I do to drive to work but the emissions are in someone else’s backyard. It is sad that we elect people without any education.
And, of course, as an ethical politician, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), forewent the government subsidies and paid full price for her EV.
If she keeps it overnight in her garage, I wonder if she also found a sudden increase in the premium of her homeowner’s fire insurance.
Mr. Frank: Of course. Above, I expressed the hope that she would park in the Senate garage. Just a moment, the FBI and CNN are at my door!!
Hi there! May we come in?
Some reporter ought to ask what the policy is for parking EV’s in government buildings.
Does Debbie have to park outside?
‘If she keeps it overnight in her garage, I wonder if she also found a sudden increase in the premium of her homeowner’s fire insurance.’
If there is an increase, it will only be ‘transient’, pursuant to Federal legislation / regulation that requires the cost of carrying such risks to be ‘socialized’ among all motorists / homeowners.
I like driving by the EV charging stations because I can go get gas and do my shopping and when I come back the other way the same cars are still there charging. I wonder how long it took her to get to Washington. It was a lot longer than if she drove an ICEV. Of course her EV is new so she can still get quicker charges. As time goes on the charges get slower and slower.
Charging gets slower, and the distance she can drive on each charge decreases.
Until in the limit what charge is left just moves out of the battery and assists the grid.
This is the same person that said she could feel climate change in her b*tt due to turbulence on an airplane ride.
She’s not right in either end.
DAMN!!!!
She has her union bosses too….
Stabenow bill to boost EV tax credits to $12,500 passes Senate panel (detroitnews.com)
i live in michigan. and i hate my senators. the word corruption doesn’t come close to describing stabmenow, or peters for that matter. we fight an uphill battle here in mi. 1. many voters are leftist and vote accordingly. 2. vote fraud/corruption is deeply entrenched in the bureaucracy. republicans hold the majority in our legislature. yet most go right along with this wind/solar scam. our grid here is severely compromised.
We will have brown/black outs starting this summer. A nuclear plant shut down in May so a stabilizing grid force is fine.
Republicans have done nothing to repeal Granholm’s Renewable energy laws. We are screwed.
just curious mkelly, are you a consumers energy customer?
I live in UP. Don’t have Consumers. Now that does not mean my local electric cooperative does buy from them.
MI is a ‘swing state’, meaning it is nominally Red, but contains one or more Blue political machine jurisdictions that can manufacture as many votes as my be required to swing state-wide elections in favor of Blue candidates. Too bad!
Are you happy with your Governor?
Whims of Democrat government – FIFY
Smile Debbie, until your electric car batteries spontaneously catch fire. Note Debbie, that the smoke from lithium battery fires is very neuro-toxic. A cruel way to turn first responders, and neighbours into Democrats.
I see what you did there. All the dead vote Demonrat.
I’m guessing this senator doesn’t eat or have any furniture in her home(s). Obviously she wears clothes, and probably pays a pretty penny to maintain that ridiculously dated hairdo (reminds me of the mom in “That 70’s Show”!). Clearly she can’t comprehend that just about everything she eats, wears, has in her home(s) and is used for the hairdo is shipped in to the local store (or beauty salon) by a diesel powered truck! All the Tesla and other EVs do is move people from point A to point B. They can manage a few people and a load of groceries or some luggage and that’s about it. But there’s no way they can haul a huge load of freight – not from state to state and not (on a freighter) across the Atlantic or Pacific. And it will be a long, long time (if ever) before huge farm machinery is electrified. How stupid!
Stabenow just provided proof of how utterly clueless she is.
Where the hell does she think the damn electricity comes from?
The wall socket, Obviously.
So…The Stabber buys a Cevy Volt (range: 247 before needing a 13hr recharge) to travel about 600 miles to Washington DC…. so it had to have taken her at least three days of driving, two nights in a hotel… at about $175 a night…
I coulda drove the distance in a day. Let’s maths shall we?
600 miles at 20mpg/30mpg is 20 to 30 gal…. at $6 a gallon…. $120 to $180 for gas… compared to $350 to $525 in lodging…. hmmmm…. costs Deb $175 to $405 more to operate an EV rather than a gas car (my focus gets 36/40 mpg so it woulda cost me $100 for the trip; a 2021 Ford Explorer gets about 25 hwy, so $150 there ). And remember… she’s gotta do it again (although I’m thinking it’ll stay oin DC and she’ll fly back and forth now she has transpo there).
No wonder dems are so lousy at economic policies, or understanding about how regular people live.
It’s not like she’s spending her own money,
You’re assuming the cost of the electricity to recharge was somehow without cost, too.
Can she feel the ridicule when she’s driving?
Maybe they could include the math and consequences of overspending on EVs, insurance, chargers, and battery replacement in the Michigan drive to educate young people. Remember to use the C-word for cost and the cost of extended unemployment in the auto-related services sector.
Michigan will be 14th state to mandate personal finance education (cnbc.com)
She looked like a female version of the Joker when she was on TV last night.
Photoshop has worked wonders on that photo – her face really looks like some gnarled old tree trunk.
Probably has a Honda Generator in the Trunk.
Remember to put your very expensive EV purchase on your student loan and ask if you could do the same with the expensive insurance.
Anyone have any idea what she means by this?
After waiting for a long time to have enough chips in this country
Well,
presumably assembled in the Lower 48, with chips from Taiwan.
Auto
There has been a shortage of computer chips in this country for awhile now.
I thought she was referring to how ridiculously expensive those unquenchable firestarters are. She waited a long time to get enough chips at the casino.
Meanwhile at the station near my house diesel is $5.29 / gal, which is still considerably less than the national average. Now if I took Senator Stabenow’s attitude, I would say I don’t care because my car doesn’t burn diesel. But all the long-haul trucks do, along with all the heavy rail locomotives. The vast majority of goods moved around this country are carried by transport which burns diesel fuel. And most long haul transport that doesn’t burns jet fuel, which is also rising sharply in price.
And goods coming from overseas arrive in container ships which burn Very Low Sulfur Fuel Oil (VLSFO).
The spot price for VLSFO in Signapore was $734 / metric ton in mid-February. It reached its 2022 peak of $1,155 May 31st, and remains at $1,128 today.
When Biden took office in 2021 the price was $450 / metric ton. One year later, over a month before the Ukraine invasion, it had risen to $687. On Feb 24, the start of the invasion it was $769.
There is no question the Ukraine war has pushed oil prices higher, but VLSFO prices rose 71% between the day Biden took office and the start of the invasion; it’s risen an additional 47% since. Biden took office pledging to shut down domestic oil and gas production; the steps he’s taken toward that goal have had the inevitable effect of raising prices.
Increased fuel prices will have an effect on almost everything else we buy, even the electricity used to charge Senator Stabenow’s EV. We’re even going to have to pay more for the tar and feathers needed to run these morons out of town in November.
#FJB
When oil prices go up, natural gas and coal prices usually follow.
This means that the price of electricity is going to head up as well.
Like most liberals Stabenow has no idea how the real world works.
Does she even know that we are giving large federal tax credits to foreign made EVs?
In a crisis, you get to see clearly who you voted for. You can be sure that 99% of of Stabenow’s constituents are driving ICE cars, . Even allowing for the general knowledge that Democrats have an entitlement philosophy, I’m sure voters are pissed off with her take on the problem. What makes one so sure that she really gives a damn about any problems her constituents have? Sheesh, voters, you know this hack just gave herself an IQ test.
Oh I don’t know about that. Most dead voters are pretty much homebodies who don’t own a car, ICE or EV. The welfare queens don’t drive either, so that pretty much covers the bulk of her voters.
Fuel prices affect the cost on all products. If diesel prices rise 5 cents my annual fuel cost rises by 1 million dollars on my fleet. I am in business to make money, so prices on our products have to be raised to cover expenses. The consumer always pays for Washington’s arrogance.
Couldn’t help but notice
If she charged her vehicle in southeast Michigan she more than likely used electricity from DTE.(Detroit Edison). DTE generates 58% of their electricity from coal and another 9% from natural gas. Link. 23% comes from nukes. So even though she drives an electric vehicle she is still using fossil fuels. And coal produces more CO2 per million BTUs than any other fossil fuel.
Nationwide about 60% of electricity comes from fossil fuels. Link
“Let the peasants eat electrons…”
She should at least be calling on the state and federal governments to charge road and excise taxes on electricity used to charge EVs, so that an EV driver pays as much tax per ton-mile as a gas-car driver. How long can governments afford to let tax revenue leak out of that subsidy hole?
“Let them eat cake.” – Senator Stabenow
I am just glad these morons don’t know when to shut up.
Well Folks,.. I can tell you that I lived in Michigan a long time (- @ 11 years), and all that time I have wondered how she kept getting re-elected. Now after the 2018 and 2022 elections my “does not compute” felt sense demanded that I do the in depth research and investigation for myself.
Thanks to some people who have had entire careers analyzing the data using high tech methods available to law enforcement and very novel approaches, the results are in: Michigan has been corrupt for decades. Stabenow was installed and her placement keeps being re-newed. It is just like in Detroit and Chicago,.. the corruption is very old and runs deep.
The results of the last three elections have been used to collect data and establish connections and relationships between the players. With that I have to ask especially after I saw that comment that provided a video of her. Is it just me or is that latest picture really her? She looks like she has dropped 30-40 years. I think there’s a Skunk in the root cellar.
Now I wonder what her net worth is after so many terms? I do not think I will be surprised by what I find.
It must be nice to be a senator earning enough of taxpayer’s dollars to be able to afford such luxuries.
Personally, I think their salaries should be directly matched to the lowest income bracket of their constituency – maybe then some of these BS artists might do a little more to actually help the people they’re supposed to be serving. I won’t hold my breath, though….