Tuesday's Tedious Absurdities: Jennifer Granholm Goes Full Marie Antoinette
Few cabinet members in this century have scaled the heights of absurdity as quickly and ably as Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has managed to do. She is the epitomy of incompetence and arrogance in office, a pure talking points parrot with zero ability to think on her feet, an apparatchik whose ignorance of the subject matter at hand is rivaled only by child Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Granholm has been a running clown show since last November, when she responded with guffaws of laughter after a Bloomberg TV host asked her what Old Joe Biden could do to control the price of oil:
A week later, she was touting with a straight face Biden’s initial effort to control the price of crude oil with a release of 50 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Oh, well…
In a recent interview with VOA News, she actually repeated the following line in the midst of a major war in Europe and a mushrooming global energy crisis that is now threatening to crash the entire global economy, all of which was brought on by idiotic energy policy decisions made in Europe in this century:
"If we want to be energy secure and energy independent, that means we've got to produce our own energy," Granholm said in an interview with VOA News on Friday. "My counterpart in Ireland, the energy minister there, has said that no one has ever weaponized access to the sun. No one has ever weaponized the wind. Perhaps a move to clean energy will be the greatest peace plan the world has ever known."
True, no one has ever weaponized the sun or the wind; but then, no one has ever figured out how to economically run a national power grid at scale on them, either. And true, in order to be energy independent we need to produce our own energy; but hey, weren’t we doing that pretty damn well before Granholm and her functional invalid boss took office 20 months ago? Pretty sure we were, Jen.
[Note: Legend has it that Greek astronomer Archimedes weaponized the sun with a giant round mirror during a battle at Syracuse during the Second Punic War in the year 212 a.d. But modern scientists doubt the story as just a myth.]
Fox News Contributor Steven Milloy had probably the most accurate and appropriate response to Granholm’s statement by noting "The war in Ukraine and ensuing energy crisis were entirely brought about by 'clean energy' and climate idiocy. Lying. Airhead."
Well, yes.
Granholm’s idiocy got even further out of control on Sunday during an appearance on Fox News Sunday with host Trace Gallagher.
Check out this transcript of her exchange with Gallagher, during which she touts tax credits in the Orwellian-titled “Inflation Reduction Act” that require tens of thousands of dollars of investments to accrue as somehow de-inflationary for average Americans who don’t have enough savings to put tires on their car:
“One of the critiques here with these credits is that the prices are high, right? And the supply is limited. What is the practicality? It seems like there’s a disconnect. What’s the practicality for everyday Americans in this kind of benefit?” host Trace Gallagher asked.
“There’s two implications here,” Granholm replied. “One is, for example, if you want to buy a used electric vehicle, you can get $4,000 off at the dealership today. If you want to buy a new electric vehicle, there is a $7,500 credit for those that are assembled in America … Why is this important? Because the president … wants to re-shore manufacturing. It’s not just in electric vehicles … It will be in solar panels. It will be in wind turbines. It will be in transmission. It will be in electric vehicles and the batteries for those electric vehicles. A whole supply chain and ecosystem, energy ecosystem, built up in the United States because of the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act.”
“But you talk about incentives. Maybe it’s the messaging. People don’t quite get it,” Gallagher responded, cutting to clips of ordinary Americans who said they still could not afford an electric car, even with the tax credit. “And really, you could make the same argument, we were talking about tax breaks for adding solar panels, energy-efficient windows, appliances, heat pumps. What do you say to the families who simply can’t afford this stuff in the first place?”
“Number one, for your home, yes, there are significant incentives in this bill, which is great to reduce people’s energy costs on a monthly basis,” Granholm replied.
“So if you are low income, you can get your home entirely weatherized through the expansion from the bipartisan infrastructure law,” she continued. “If you want heat pumps, insulation, new windows, that is covered. If you are moderate income, today, you can get 30% off the price of solar panels. Those solar panels can be financed, so you don’t have to have the big outlay up front.”
“When they’re financed, they’re financed in a way that reduces your energy bill even though you have solar panels, with this 30% off. It’s a significant incentive. Same thing if you don’t qualify for the weatherization program, you will be able to, starting next year, get rebates on the appliances and equipment that will help you reduce your monthly energy bill by up to 30%. This is all about reducing costs for people.”
[End]
So, just some facts about this parade of abject nonsense in Granholm’s replies:
The average price differential in the U.S. between an EV and a gas-powered car is now upwards of $20,000. That $7,500 tax credit only covers about a third of that spread;
Weatherizing your home costs thousands of dollars up front. For a low income American who doesn’t pay taxes on about their first $50k in income, that tax credit is pretty much worthless;
In the wake of Winter Storm Uri, my wife and I had four different vendors out to give us quotes on solar panels/battery systems to back up our home. This is the biggest scam on the face of the earth. If you pay cash up front, you can get the system at our home for about $60k. But if you finance it for 25 years at the much-ballyhooed “0 percent” interest, the principal somehow gets inflated to about $160k.
It’s a second mortgage on your home that you will never pay off because the solar panels and battery both will have to be replaced at your cost long before you ever get close to paying off that loan. This is the truth about that scam.
She might as well have just put on powdered white face, donned a foot-tall white wig and said “let them eat tax credits.”
This is not just rank buffoonery from Granholm; this is outright malevolence in office by her and her fellow Democrats. They are actively striving to destroy the most efficient and cost-effective energy system in world history to benefit three chosen industries - wind, solar and EVs - that fund their political campaigns.
The entire Biden “Green New Deal” energy policy is a gargantuan transfer of wealth from middle-class and low-class Americans to those industries and the politicians who benefit from them. And Jennifer Granholm is just the red-nosed clown leading the clown parade.
That is all.
Perhaps no one, as yet, has weaponized the sun or wind, but the primary manufacturer for solar panels and wind turbine blades is China. They can and will "weaponize" (such a stupid word) those products whenever they want or need to. In fact, who knows what weaknesses etc. are built into them. Nothing like trusting your largest, richest enemy to provide you with your "modern" infrastructure.
Here is a great article comparing a 16 SEER A/C (energy efficient unit) which cost you 25% more to the regular old 14 SEER A/C. You'll be surprised to find out which one actually costs more in the short and long run. https://learnmetrics.com/16-seer-vs-14-seer/