I’m still trying to figure this one out. The editors of the Wall Street Journal observe:
President Biden wants to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure, but there’s a contradiction at the heart of his ambition. His own White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council issued a report in May that blacklisted a litany of projects most Americans would think are classic public works.
The council is made up of three members of the Administration and 26 progressives from the academy or activists such as Susana Almanza of People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources. That’s really the group’s name. In March Mr. Biden directed them to recommend federal investments in which 40% of overall benefits would flow to disadvantaged communities.
The report floats some ideas that pass progressive muster, such as renewable energy and worker training, public transportation and “green housing.†But the report also cites more than a dozen “types of projects that will not benefit†poor communities.
These include “highway expansions†and “road improvements or automobile infrastructure, other than electric vehicle charging stations.†The advisers don’t explain why fixing roads wouldn’t help low-income people, perhaps because they can’t. The poor are far more likely to buy used cars that run on gasoline rather than new, expensive EVs. They need the mobility to travel from their homes to where the jobs are, which often isn’t where mass transit goes.
Also on the naughty list are oil pipelines, electrical transmission lines, nuclear power plants, and improvements in power production efficiency. I’m hoping the editors are mistaken or at least President Biden ignores these advisors. An infrastructure spending bill is marginally defensible on the grounds that it’s investment. An infrastructure spending bill that doesn’t even remotely satisfy Lord Keynes’s requirements for fiscal stimulus that builds precious little infrastructure but includes lots and lots of just plain consumer spending can’t be defended on any grounds except political ones.
Seriously, Dave?
Biden and his puppet masters are masters of bullshit definitions. And you can get away with it with a Pravda media.
“People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources”
Leaves you with the acronym poder, which is apparently a Spanish verb meaning generally “to act”. Some thought went into this name.
A local Austin, Tx community advocacy group, their greatest achievements have been to drive industry from their community as industry pollutes.
From their community and from the country as well, I’d imagine.
It’s a good question as to how much of this is just diversity theatre. Almost all of it IMO.
There’s actually an acronym for that, too: BANANA