Two stories that hit the nail on the head here. First Charles Lane in Slate on the new $41,000 Volt:
And that’s my problem with the Obama administration’s energy policy, or at least with his lavish subsidies for the Volt, Nissan’s all-electric Leaf (likely sticker price $33,000), and Tesla’s $100,000 all-electric Roadster: Where does the federal government get off spending the average person’s tax dollars to help better-off-than-average Americans buy expensive new cars?
The newest car in my driveway is 10 years old. The local one man garage I use is overwhelmed by business because people can’t afford new cars. How much less a $41k model. I wonder who is going to by that Volt? Lane answers:
How rarefied is the electric-car demographic? When Deloitte Consulting interviewed industry experts and 2,000 potential buyers, it found that from now until 2020, only “young, very high income individuals”—those from households making more than $200,000 a year—would even be interested in plug-in hybrids or all-electric cars. This “small number” of people will provide “nowhere near the volume needed for mass adoption.” They will be concentrated in Southern California, where weather, state regulations, and infrastructure are all favorable to electric vehicles—”adoption is already being popularized by high-profile celebrities.”
Yeah that’s the Tip O’Neill demographic isn’t it? Speaking of Tip today in the Boston Globe:
DEMOCRAT JOHN Kerry sets sail in a $7 million yacht built in New Zealand. Republican Scott Brown hits the campaign trail in a GMC pickup truck with 200,000 miles on it.
From Newport, R.I., where Kerry’s “Isabel’’ was berthed before heading to Nantucket, to Rhinebeck, N.Y., where Chelsea Clinton was married in a mansion modeled after Versailles, today’s Democrats are looking more like Louis XVI than Tip O’Neill.
It is the Boston Globe and Vennochi goes on to bash the GOP as phonies, but I didn’t see a lot of rich people at the tea party in Boston in April did you, Joan or did you skip that gathering of the Hoi Polloi?
The republicans have (and lets be fair, it has been partly by default) become the party of small business, you know the guys who actually those regular joes that the democrats used to love so much. On occasion I still hear old Roosevelt Democrats call Republicans the party of the rich, and the democrats the party of the working man. If they still believe that it’s only because they just haven’t been paying attention.
Update: Slashdot (via Glenn) includes the Lane Story and a revolt takes place in comments.
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