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My local leaders turn down the feds

Posted: April 18, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

By a 4-3 vote, the Muncy Borough Council told the federal government to stay out of my town’s business.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the organization that oversees national disasters, had offered to buy and tear down 19 local homes because they sat in the flood plain of the Susquehanna River.

About 40 percent of the town of 2,400 residents sits in the flood plain. The last big flood happened in 2004, with some minor to moderate flooding every five or six years.

What concerns Council President Bill Scott is that the purchased homes will be torn down, leaving the borough with an estimated yearly loss in local revenue of nearly $30,000.

“I’m not for it,” Scott said. “Half of our town floods. That’s the main issue.”

Scott said he believes it is better to look at flood control studies before removing properties from the tax base.

“That adds up,” he said. “That’s a significant amount of money over time.”

Scott and three other council members decided that it was better to stay off the federal government tax trough and see if there was a better solution.

“Being an engineer and not giving up too easily, I think it can be solved,” Scott added. “It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s a long-term thing.”

The local homeowners complain that they can’t see their homes for a profit because they’re in the flood plain.

The argument sounds a lot like the student loan issue. People who make lousy decisions want the government to pay for their mistakes.

When we moved to Muncy, the possibility of a flood concerned us—as it does many people in the area. That’s why buyers have a home inspection and an appraisal before purchasing a house.

Moreover, flood insurance isn’t cheap—an estimated $1,400 a year above basic coverage—but it comes in handy should water damage happen. It’s the cost of buying and maintaining a home.

I applaud my local leaders for saying no to the feds and trying to devise an alternative solution. More local governments should determine whether federal programs actually hurt their communities.

The battle lines in Pennsylvania

Posted: April 11, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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Amanda Oakley never thought she’d find the love of her life at her local Wawa. Still, there she was three years after meeting Bobby on a late-night hoagie run in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, after slipping away from her wedding reception.

As he planted a kiss, the wedding photographer captured the moment in the fluorescent glow of the couple’s favorite convenience store: Wawa.

The Oakleys are among those who favor Wawa over Sheetz, which has as many devoted fans.

Simply put, the debate over Wawa vs. Sheetz is one of the most heated among Pennsylvania fans and detractors—a debate that has just gotten fiercer since Wawa plans to take on Sheetz head-to-head here in central Pennsylvania.  

Both Wawa and Sheetz have roots as dairy farms dating back to the late 19th century. Wawa started as a small dairy-processing operation (in Wawa, Pennsylvania, outside of Philly), and the first Sheetz sprung from a family-owned dairy store in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 20 miles away northeast of Johnstown and three and a half hours from Philadelphia.

Wawa operates over 950 convenience stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, and Washington, D.C.

Sheetz has dominated most Wawa-free areas of Pennsylvania over the past few decades. According to its website, the chain operates approximately 650 locations across the Keystone State, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland.

Wawa brought in approximately $14.9 billion in 2022; Sheetz followed with $11.7 billion.

Sheetz and Wawa share many similarities. While Wawa places a focus on coffee and hoagies to pair with a more limited menu, both establishments offer made-to-order sandwiches on top of other convenience store goods, like snack foods and fountain drinks. Sheetz once stood out for its more traditional fried foods, but Wawa has recently introduced chicken sandwiches, quesadillas, and burgers. Many of the outlets offer gasoline and propane tanks.

“Wawa and Sheetz represent the best of the best in the convenience store world, and they’re a notch above the rest of the pack. Several notches, really,”  Donald Longo, editorial director of Convenience Store News told director Thrilllist.com. “Everyone else is playing catch-up.”

Wawa recently said it plans to build more than a dozen locations on Sheetz’s turf in central Pennsylvania.

Supporters on both sides are lining up.

“Sheetz is really just disgusting food, and it’s like fried garbage. You know Wawa has some good, fresh hoagies and genuinely good food,” said Aaron Out, a Philadelphia-based rapper who recently found local fame with his hazy ode to Wawa and its hoagies.

Rozwell Kid, a band from West Virginia where “the hills are peppered with Sheetz locations,” according to frontman Jordan Hudkins, wrote their own jingle for Sheetz, “I Pledge Allegiance to Sheetz.” A cheery, cheeky single, many adopted it as a battle cry for late-night Sheetz runs and served as a remembrance of the band’s own late-night stops.

Although I spent more than a decade in Philadelphia’s Wawaland, I admit that Sheetz serves up some tantalizing treats here in Muncy. Whatever the case, direct competition should also be good for operations and their customers.

Easy street for electric vehicles

Posted: April 4, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

When an industry needs federal subsidies, it’s almost certain that businesses are in trouble.

That’s precisely the state of affairs for the electric car industry.

Here in Pennsylvania, the federal and state governments plan to build “alternative fuel corridors” along the interstates, sucking millions of dollars into an industry that should be self-sufficient.

Think gasoline stations. Was there ever a time that gas stations needed federal subsidies?

But Joe Biden plans to spend $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations nationwide. The federal government gives money to Pennsylvania and the other states to distribute, and a second pot of discretionary funding will come straight from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Pennsylvania will receive $171.5 million for electric vehicle charging over the next five years under the program. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is preparing to open grant applications for the first year of funding for about $24.5 million.

We all know that the cost will exceed $7.5 billion because government programs never come under budget.

Here’s an idea: Since Elon Musk has already built an extensive charging system for his Teslas, I would wager he’d create a less costly and more efficient plan than any government.

Silly me! I forgot Musk has the wrong kind of politics!

But there’s more. More money will be needed to subsidize the electric car industry.

Ford’s electric vehicle business lost $2.1 billion in 2022 and has projected $3 billion in losses for 2023. When a company loses that much money, it’s likely to lean on governments for subsidies.

Those losses came despite government rebates for buyers of up to $7,500 and a significant increase in the number of vehicles bought.

All told, Ford plans to spend $50 billion by 2026 on electric vehicles.

Alternatively, the company’s gas-powered business, which it is calling Ford Blue, and its commercial and government fleet, Ford Pro, generated $6.8 billion and $3.2 billion in adjusted income in 2022, respectively.

Biden has made the electric vehicle industry a cornerstone of his executive policy—a policy that includes “voluntary” standards through which he expects half of all new cars to be electric by 2026 and to achieve fuel-efficiency standards of 55 miles per gallon during the same period.

Finally, the electric vehicle “revolution” neglects flyover country for the most part. EVs work fine in balmy climates, where owners drive long distances and have good weather for much of the year.

Simply put, EVs need more frequent charging in Pennsylvania than in California.  

Here’s some sage advice from James Meigs, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the former editor of Popular Mechanics.

“Governments generally aren’t very good at picking the technologies of tomorrow. Maybe the car of the future will run on batteries; maybe it will be hydrogen fuel cells, maybe it will be super-efficient combustion engines. Nobody knows for sure, least of all state and federal bureaucrats,” he wrote recently. “Instead of limiting our choices, our leaders should let innovation flourish and let Americans drive what they want.”

Amen! 

Leo Tolstoy and the meaning of life

Posted: March 28, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

As Christians, Jews, and Muslims observe the important religious rites of Easter, Passover, and Ramadan, I suggest that every believer and nonbeliever read the seminal works of Russian author Leo Tolstoy and his search for the meaning of life and religion.

Born into Russian royalty in 1828, Tolstoy became one of the most influential authors in the world. War and Peace and Anna Karenina are two of the greatest novels ever written.

As a member of the Russian elite, the young Tolstoy lived a dissolute life of gambling, drinking, and debauchery.

But a crisis of conscience, particularly after his service in the Crimean War in the mid-1850, sent him into a deep depression.

His search for the meaning of life led him to a personal belief in God that also emphasized nonviolence and asceticism. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledged the importance of Tolstoy’s writings in their beliefs.

A Confession, published in 1880, chronicles Tolstoy’s search for the meaning of life and the influence of God.

At the outset, Tolstoy admits that his life and those of the elite lacked any significant meaning except to engage in debauchery. He writes: “I asked: ‘What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?’ And I replied to quite another question: ‘What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?’ With the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: ‘None’.”

Tolstoy explores the sciences for the meaning of life and finds them wanting because they can only define the mathematical explanation of existence.

He writes: “It was long before I could believe that human learning had no clear answer to this question. For a long time, it seemed to me, as I listened to the gravity and seriousness wherewith Science affirmed its positions on matters unconnected with the problem of life, that I must have misunderstood something. For a long time, I was timid in the presence in learning, and I fancied that the insufficiency of the answers which I received was not its fault but was owing to my own gross ignorance, but this thing was not a joke or a pastime with me, but the business of my life, and I was at last forced, willy-nilly, to the conclusion that these questions of mine were the only legitimate questions underlying all knowledge, and that it was not I that was in fault in putting them, but science in pretending to have an answer for them.”

For the most part, he found organized religion wanting, mainly because of the hypocrisy of those heading the Russian Orthodox Church, and that got him excommunicated from the church. Nevertheless, he found the simple faith of the working and lower classes much closer to how he thought religion should be centered on faith.

Finally, Tolstoy writes about a dream in which he is pushed out into a river and understands the meaning of his life. He writes: “The shore was God, the stream was tradition, and the oars were the free will be given to me to make it to the shore where I would be joined with God. Thus, the force of life was renewed within me, and I began to live once again.”

Tolstoy’s Confession and his later books, The Kingdom of God Is Within You and Resurrection, became more important to him than his recognized great works.

This season may be a good time to read this great man’s search for meaning.

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