The Left Needs to Stop Banning Products and Censoring Honest Criticism
It’s bad enough to want to ban the majority of the cars that everyday people use, but it is a whole new level of tone deafness to try and shut down voices that rightly criticize this type of elitism.
The Left Needs to Stop Banning Products and Censoring Honest Criticism
By O.H. Skinner
February 28, 2024
The Biden administration wants to take away two-thirds of the cars currently on the road in favor of electric vehicles. That electric vehicle mandate has run headlong into scorching public and political pressure, and may be wilting before our eyes in an “election year concession.” But, at this crucial moment, the administration’s dark-money allies are trying a stick-save, demanding that television networks in swing states censor advertisements critical of the mandate.
It’s bad enough to want to want to ban the majority of the cars that everyday people use, but it is a whole new level of tone deafness to then try and shut down voices that rightly criticize this type of elitist maneuver.
The regulation in question is designed to expedite the retirement of traditional, gas-powered cars in favor of electric vehicles. By the Biden administration’s own analysis, the likely path to compliance features nearly 70% of the passenger car market shifting to battery electric vehicles in just a few years, despite less than 2% of the current cars on the road being battery electric.
This is part of a broader campaign by the Biden Administration to meet various “green” promises to the Left by banning countless household appliances, wiping away most of the dishwashers, refrigerators, freezers, and other appliances that consumers currently find on store shelves.
So far, the Biden Administration’s approach has been going about as well as you might expect. The effort to go after gas stoves fizzled. The campaign against dishwashers has been hit by a judicial haymaker. And now there is a steady stream of press leaks indicating that the EV mandate is on the verge of being scaled back due to “slowing electric car sales, anxious union workers, and the president’s campaign difficulties in Michigan.”
But the Left isn’t giving up in the face of this.
Recently, Climate Power, a left-wing dark money group, demanded that television stations across the country censor advertisements criticizing Biden’s EV mandate. Climate Power threatened broadcasters that the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) could pull stations’ licenses if the advertisements by the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers weren’t taken down.
You might think this could be swatted away as mere grandstanding. But just consider two things that would be front and center for stations receiving these letters. First, the FCC is currently in the hands of Biden Administration allies. Second, Climate Power has an $80 million war chestand was founded by current White House senior advisorJohn Podesta in 2020 as a spinoff of his think tank, the Center for American Progress. It is a little hard to totally ignore that letter.
This new game of siccing a politically connected external censorship and advocacy apparatus on those who dare to speak out against the heavy-handed approach that Biden is taking with consumers must stop immediately.
It is also high time for the Biden Administration to read the writing on the wall and give up its misguided attempt to wipe away products that everyday consumers rely on.
The Biden Administration has been hellbent in its first three years on imposing progressive lifestyle choices on everyday Americans by force of will, taking away products consumers currently buy and replacing them with refrigerators, cars, washing machines and dishwashers that cost more, do a worse job, but meet the “green” desires of those who live in coastal enclaves alongside other lefty elites.
It should come as no surprise that Biden has been taking incoming fire from all manner of people over this. Everyday consumers don’t want to see items wiped off store shelves by edict, especially to be replaced by products that are unpopular. And it isn’t just everyday consumers who are mad. One of the most scathing attacks on the administration’s EV mandate came from a coalition of 3,900 car dealerships, who blasted the proposal as unrealistic while citing slow sales of EVs.
This is all legitimate criticism of wildly unrealistic regulations that hurt everyday consumers and imperil American families.
It is unacceptable to see Climate Power and other groups try and censor this valid, honest criticism.
Executing a censorship maneuver to cover up the Biden Administration’s failing mandates elevates the Left’s war on everyday consumers to a whole new level.
This must stop. It is time for President Biden and his allies to stop banning products and stop trying to shut down honest criticism and debate. Consumers deserve far better.
O.H. Skinner is executive director of Alliance for Consumers and the former solicitor general of Arizona.