fox news

None Of These Woke Appliances Can Handle My Ginormous MAGA Dumps!

Oh, the whining is all based on appliance industry talking points? Cool, cool.

Last month, the US Department of Energy proposed new energy efficiency standards for washing machines, refrigerators, and standalone freezers, the first update in energy efficiency rules for those appliances in a decade. The new standards may actually come into effect in 2027, giving manufacturers time to reengineer product lines to meet them. The DOE generally reviews efficiency standards every six years, but Donald Trump tried to roll back all the standards when he was in office, so the new proposed rules are a bit behind schedule.

In a statement, the DOE said the new standards would reduce home energy costs and significantly reduce pollution. The news release noted that since regularly updated energy standards went into place more than 40 years ago,

Today, the typical new refrigerator uses 75% less energy than its 1973 counterpart—while offering roughly 20% more storage capacity and more useful features. In that 40-year span, DOE raised the efficiency standard for refrigerators three times. Similarly, today’s clothes washers use 70% less energy than in 1990 and offer 50% more tub capacity. The new proposed rules will continue this trajectory of innovation and savings.

Or at least that's what the woke mob of communists bent on controlling every aspect of your lives wants you to believe. Thank goodness, Fox News and other rightwing outfits are here to counter all that green woke Critical Fridge Theory with good old fear and distrust, coming straight from industry lobbyists who would rather not change anything because it would cut into profits. Or rather, thank goodness Fox News is willing to crib generously from a Washington Free Beacon story sourced mostly to industry shills and also a Heritage Foundation shill, as if there were a lot of difference.

Still, chootz-pah points to whoever at Fox came up with this attention-grabbing headline:


Fox News website headline: Biden washing machine rule would make Americans dirtier and stinkier \u2014 and raise prices: manufacturers  Subheading:  Industry manufacturers claim the change would make each cycle take longer, detergent cost more, and leave clothes dirtier and stinkier


Credit where due, we suppose: At least Fox notes right up front that the claims are coming from the manufacturers, who of course only have consumers' best interests at heart.

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Class War

Elizabeth Warren Said This Bank F*ckbungle Would Happen, Maybe Let's Listen To Her This Time?

Why would we do that? She's a radical progressive who just happened to be exactly right.

With the weekend's failure of two big banks — Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank — America is once again vaguely aware that banking regulations have an actual effect on the economy, and, to a lesser degree, that money is imaginary anyway, just a collective agreement about numbers and who has piled them up in particular ways. So here's Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) in the New York Times yesterday, to remind us that the failure of both banks probably could have been prevented if Donald Trump and congressional Republicans — with the aid of more Democrats than there should have been, which would have been "zero" — hadn't rolled back significant parts of the Dodd-Frank banking regulations in 2018.

Remember how we had that huge financial crisis in 2008, and then Congress actually did something to prevent another one? Elizabeth Warren does!

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act to protect consumers and ensure that big banks could never again take down the economy and destroy millions of lives. Wall Street chief executives and their armies of lawyers and lobbyists hated this law. They spent millions trying to defeat it, and, when they lost, spent millions more trying to weaken it.

As Warren points out, one of the bankers insisting that Dodd-Frank was too strict was Greg Becker, CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, who along with others in the industry argued that great big banks like SVB weren't actually big enough to need rigorous oversight by the Federal Reserve, which they said was holding them back from doing great things for America.

And hey, for a while there, SVB was flying pretty high, becoming a top funder of tech startups and racking up a 40 percent increase in profits in the last three years. And everything would have been great if it weren't for the tiny problem that SVB plowed most of its capital into long-term federal bonds, which are a great investment as long as you don't need access to those funds to cover a little panic among depositors when interest rates go up. And as Warren points out, mostly having tech companies as customers also made SVB vulnerable to any wobble in the tech sector. (Same for Signature, which served a lot of crypto companies.) Oopsie!

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Class War

What Is 'Right-To-Work'? Why Does It Suck? What Is Big Gretch Doing To Murderize It In Michigan?

Very good job this week, Michigan!

Exciting news! Michigan is set to become the first state in 60 years to reverse a so-called "right-to-work" law, which is a very big deal. It was also a very big deal when, in 2012, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder initially signed the right-to-work-for-less legislation into law, given the state's robust history of unionization as the home of United Auto Workers. Especially since he had promised not to and then reversed because he felt he had to punish unions for lobbying for collective bargaining rights to be put into the state constitution.

Democrats in the Legislature and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer are going to correct that nonsense — but if you're not super familiar with right-to-work-for-less laws, here's a nice refresher on why they suck.

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White House

Joe Biden's 2024 Menu: The Rich.

:)

President Joe Biden on Thursday rolled out his proposed budget for fiscal 2024, an ambitious plan that would raise taxes on the rich and on corporations while expanding the social safety net. It would cut nearly $3 trillion from the federal deficit over the next decade by imposing a 25 percent minimum tax on the richest Americans. If you want to read the entire 185-page document, have at it!

Of course, it also won't do a single bit of that, because Republicans won't pass any of the major parts of the plan, particularly not the tax increases, but also not the social safety net parts like paid family leave, childcare, or Biden's plan to rescue the Medicare trust fund for at least 25 years.

Not a bit of it will become law except the most routine keep-things-as-they-are parts, which will no doubt end up in yet another omnibus spending bill passed barely in time to avoid a government shutdown. If then. Oh, also, the part that increases defense spending by about 3.2 percent, to over $835 billion, will probably do just fine. But whatever defense budget eventually passes in the fall won't be accompanied by the tax increases that would make the expenditures slightly less odious.

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