After some-inside-the-park legislative activity in the first week of the legislative New Year, the second dawned bright with the new majority in America’s House of Representatives. Some members of the old majority who liked the spotlight have been dismissed from positions of higher visibility than they previously enjoyed. Another series of the sort of partisan adventures we have enjoyed for nearly six years will commence shortly with a different spin. We think the furor will be about some of the same issues we have been talking (or muttering) about for years.

Same emergencies, different weather. There will be a few weeks of excitement because it is a new spin, then it will settle down to periodic outbursts, quickly muffled by the politico-media with interests to protect in the real deal, control of the White House in 2024. So it is likely to be a landscape filled with shouting and court battles that will drag on for months.

The nature of what is to come has already had a trial run on stage. We don’t know about you, but we prefer cooking with gas. It is faster, simpler and more efficient than the electric versions available for sale. The talk this week has been about banning gas stoves. They are used by about 40% of Americans. This is naturally tied into discussions of world-wide climatic change, except this example apparently is related to the childhood asthma crisis. We know, another one.

As a group, we like kids and are generally opposed to the infliction of asthma upon them. If our cooking in a household without small children is a malicious thing, we should have a public discussion about the matter. As usual, there are several downstream issues associated with the new crisis, just as they are with Electric Vehicles and seemingly everything else. This one is fairly simple. In 2022 our government reported there to be a little over 131 million households in America. 40% of them are currently “cooking with gas.” That equates to a new requirement to replace about 50 million stoves. A quick check of market value electric ranges indicates serviceable models range from a little under a thousand bucks to some fancy ones that cost double that and more.

A thousand bucks times 50 million seems like a lot of money, but it is really only $5 billion, you know? We are sending eight times that amount to Ukraine this morning. We jointly support all sorts of major initiatives to eliminate crisis situations even if we don;t understand them. The $5 Billion for household replacement doesn’t include restaurant sorts of things, which was another crisis not so long ago, only about the minimum wage. That rapidly turns into another crisis, even if it already solved by forthright government intervention.

So we applaud everything, crisis or not. We are determined to help find more mandatory solutions to imaginary problems. And so starts this year. We had some hope that things would be better on this time around the sun. The runners have hunched up, listened for the starting gun, and have leapt into action.

But we seem to be a little short on cash. Would you happen to have a billion or two we could borrow, just till this crisis is over?

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Article 88 Compliant. Opinions of the writer do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Socotra House legal team and are offered only under the provisions of existing rights not under dispute or pending the next crisis.

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
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