I don’t know how many gas stations are in the USA, but there are a bunch. The very vast minority are on government installations. The rest are private/corporate facilities built, owned, and operated by other than government people. Those facilities serve the needs of our mobile population. Now I’m going to write about that $1T “infrastructure bill”.
That bill includes social spending for things having nothing to do with national infrastructure necessary to move people and goods efficiently. The federal government wants to spend the money they will take from us by force of IRS means to build 500,000 recharging stations for electric vehicles we already subsidize in their design and manufacture. Why? Has there been a problem with private construction/ownership and operation of liquid fueling stations? This is absurd in the extreme! Is this another pay off to the Chinese?
We’ve been guarding the Cinese rare earth mining operation in Afghanistan for years. Will they be producing the batteries for all these electric vehicles? Will they be producing the recharging equipment that we’ll be buying and paying to be installed? Best of all—will our electric power generation be expanded to provide the load to power those stations? The federal government is way over stepping to usurp the private market supply-the-demand system.
Then there is the inclusion to replace all the lead water mains in the country. Sorry. At what point in our development did the federal government create our local water works systems? This is a function of local government or private business. I have written about Odessa’s need to replace the lead mains; but the city is too busy spending revenue on art, convention center, new fire station rather than renovating existing dormant station, etc. The federal government is way over stepping to blow federal tax revenue on local-local-local projects.
Who knows. Cut the over reach out of this behemoth, and it might just drop back to an affordable bill that replaces/builds transportation needs like bridges, roads, airports, etc. Not expansion of the already over-bloated nanny swamp it is now.
Lots of wind, but its stacking up pretty deep as our focus is constantly pressed to the COVID-COVID-COVID. Sorry.
Doug Moss
Odessa
