Jon Caldara
I want to thank the taxpayers of Colorado for my brand-new car. Really, thanks to each and every one of you dupes.
You see, I have never in my 60 years had a brand new, off-the-lot automobile. Instead, I buy used, and I mean really used, cars and drive them until they drop. Out of college I bought a sexy $500 Datsun 210 and sold it eight years later for $950.
My current beater is a 2010 Nissan Altima. I bought it with 95,000 miles for $6,000. It now has more than 200,000 miles and is still going strong. I drive ugly, old used cars.
Why do I drive these cars? Simply, because I know what women like. Though they’ll rarely admit it out loud, when a woman sees a bald man tooling around town in a 15-year-old rusted-out Japanese car she can’t help but think, “Mommy wants me some of that.”
Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday
So why buy a new car? It’s more than just my boredom with hot women leaving their phone numbers under my windshield wiper blade. I figure at my age I should stop spending big bucks on chick-magnet hot rods and start living more frugally. And there’s nothing more frugal than getting other people to buy you crap.
And that’s where you came in. Thanks to obscene tax credits, mandates and regulations from the people you voted into office, I didn’t pay for most of this car.
Well, “car” might be a strong word. It’s more of a golf cart with Bluetooth. It’s a Nissan Leaf.
“Leaf.” They friggin’ named it, “Leaf.” I remember having my man card ripped up to confetti-sized pieces and blown into my face to buy a mini-van when my kids were small. But that made me feel like a lumberjack in contrast to signing the papers on a “Leaf.”
My daughter likes to name our cars, “Mary the Mazda,” “Nancy the Nissan,” etc. After seeing me drive in with the testosterone-pumping Leaf her reaction was simply, “Dad, let’s just name it, ‘Summer’s Eve.'”
Okay. Agreed it might not have the raw machismo of a ratted-out old Camry, but why look a gift horse in the mouth? The list price on my new, all-electric 2025 Leaf is nearly $32,000. Yet, I paid only $15,000 for it.
I got this new car for 53% off thanks to environmental cronyism. There are not that many decent used cars for that price.
This $17,000 in welfare went to me, another upper-middle class white guy to put a second car in his two-car garage. I now have a back-up car for short trips. Most all electric cars are second or third cars for white people who could afford another car without the welfare. And it’s the left that yaps on about systematic racism?
The feds threw $7,500 at my new toy and the state of Colorado chipped in another $2,500. Yes, that would be the same Colorado that hasn’t the money to fix our roads, the very same state whose governor announced plans to cut road funding by $100 million.
Well, that explains $10,000 of the $17,000 given to me. Where does the rest come from? Regulations of course.
Car manufacturers’ yearly output can only have so much in tailpipe emissions averaged out over their fleet. Meaning when they go over, which is always, they only have two options. Either they must build all-electric vehicles and give them away at way below cost, thus my car, or they buy the tailpipe emissions credits not used from their competitors.
So, the last $7,000 in welfare you gave me is paid for higher prices you must pay for cars people actually want. You know, cars that can be quickly filled up at a gas pump instead of waiting hours to charge.
Tesla’s biggest profit center is not really sales. It’s selling its pollution credits to its competitors since none of their fleet has any tailpipes. The company is wholly built on tax credits and tailpipe regulations. No electric car could compete in the market without them. Period.
Of course, my new manly Leaf saves the environment since it has no emissions except, um, it doesn’t. Most of Colorado’s electricity is produced by coal and natural gas.
Or as the coal industry should advertise, “Coal — it’s what Teslas eat for dinner.”
Anyway, thanks for my un-needed, coal-powered toy.
Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute in Denver and hosts “The Devil’s Advocate with Jon Caldara” on Colorado Public Television Channel 12. His column appears Sundays in Colorado Politics.
