That's desperately ignorant. The US government already does regulate essentially everything, and whatever it doesn't, the states or municipalities or your local fucking HOA does. The USA is massively authoritarian and has been for over a century.

It's less. Pay attention. Also, that is not a win. It means the poor are kept poor.

You want to make it illegal to give money to people? Congratulations, you just figured out how to make capitalism worse.

The $20M number was from an article circulated here. No clue how to find it today given how shit all the search engines are now.

Before Pocket existed I was using Scrapbook+ to store web pages as displayed. I am now using Singlefile because they destroyed the functionality Scrapbook+ used to access the filesystem. (It also gave a browser and a search for the stored pages.)

I got a perfectly serviceable ICEV used for $5k. It will do 80 mph all day and it gets 30 mpg. If you buy a used EV for $5k it won't work, and if it does, it will still need a new battery. I could spend $15k and get a really nice used ICEV and still have another $25k to spend on fuel before I got to the price of the EV. Someday when there are more used EVs around then maybe they will actually be cheaper for people for whom it matters.

You're literally wrong about everything.

Energy transport of liquid fuels is very expensive. It costs more than 5% while in the USA we lose less than 5% in transmission. Getting the potential energy to the wheels through an ICE means shit efficiency, under 25% and usually under 20% because peak efficiency is reached only in a very narrow range of speeds and loads. There is generally plenty of grid capacity available at night, and when you add a lot of vehicles you can do V2G for grid stabilization and it actually IMPROVES effective capacity. Batteries are highly recyclable and batteries are being recycled RIGHT NOW AS WE SPEAK.

You're a bat shit dipshit. If you actually have a Phd then I fucking weep for whatever school gave it to you.

You do not appear to understand what a republic or a democracy is, so I'll ignore the last sentence.

"Independent" does not mean unaccountable to the people. The President is independent of Congress, and vice versa, but both are accountable to the people. Well, the current president doesn't seem to think so, but legally he is.

The civil service is not a part of the executive but is a co-equal branch.

You are correct. In principle, presidents have no authority whatsoever to dictate how an agency runs. The executive branch should have zero authority over the civil service, which is intended to constitute a fourth co-equal branch of government.

In the US, in principle, the status of the civil service as co-equal to, and independent of, the executive should be added to the Constitution and enshrined in law for good measure. Not that that would help much with the current SCOTUS, but a Constitutional change might possibly persuade the current government that absolute authoritatian control is not as popular as Trump thinks.

That is the idea that, in Britain, entities like the NHS and the BBC have operated under. Charters specify the responsibilties and duties, and guarantee the funding needed to provide these, but the organisation is (supposed) to carry these out wholly independently of the government of the day.

It actually worked quite well for some time, but has been under increasing pressure and subject to increasing government sabotage over the past 20-25 years.

It's also the idea behind science/engineering research funding bodies the world over. These should direct funding for grant proposals not on political whim or popularity but on the basis of what is actually needed. Again, though, it does get sabotaged a fair bit.

Exactly how you'd mitigate this is unclear, many governments have - after all - the leading talent in manipulation, corruption, and kickbacks. But presumably, strategies can be devised to weaken political influence.

So it's a plan with no drawbacks?

I do recognize that this is an issue for the disabled, but it's unsustainable for them as well, and I reject temporary solutions that aren't backed up by permanent ones. If the plan is only to kick the can and wish for a miracle, it's a bad plan.

That's not even wrong, it's just not how anything works. You're comparing a motor to an energy storage mechanism and also ignoring efficiency at the same time.

Monthly payments matter. Also when people are poor and can't afford big payments and the vehicles are very expensive then they wind up spending a lot in interest. TCO matters but so does monthly cost.

They have existed for decades. What did you actually mean to say?

No military of consequence is going to shift to purely electric vehicles any time soon because of refueling times alone, but in number of roles an EV has an advantage because it's quiet and reliable. If you can deliver a tanker truck, then you can deliver a generator.

Most of my coworkers have to go out of county for even fairly basic medical care because there isn't anything available here and wait times can be into the months. I had referrals for over a year that I never even got a call back on. It's not clear why you think that the USA has functional medical care, but in many cases and places it very much does not.