The first 2024 Republican POTUS Candidate? Lockdowns & Child Suicide, GM's Move to Electric to Kill MI/OH?, A Shotgun for Gen-Z (The Five for 02/12/21)
Hey, welcome to The Five (and also to the weekend, almost anyway).
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On to the news:
[one]
Nikki Haley, former Governor of South Carolina/former UN Ambassador under President Trump, broke ranks with the Donald today.
The Hill reports:
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley issued stunning remarks breaking with former President Trump, telling Politico in an interview published Friday that she believes he “let us down.”
“We need to acknowledge he let us down,” Haley, who served in her ambassador role under Trump, said. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”
Haley’s remarks are her strongest yet against the former president in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and come as Trump's legal team is set to present its defense of Trump on Friday in his second Senate impeachment trial.
Many (myself included) think this is a deliberate move for Haley to set herself up for a 2024 run at the Republican nomination for President.
Oh, and while we’re on the topic, I haven’t covered the impeachment because
A). Trump is no longer the President, and an impeachment has no real world impact for right now.
and
B). It’s nearly a statistical impossibility that Trump gets impeached. So I have no interest in following whatever weird political circus this thing is.
Hey, at least the government found something to do other than get the $600 stimulus checks to myself/my fam. (Those are still MIA).
Anyway, the first shot has been fired in the battle for the 2024 Republican nomination process.
[two]
General Motors used the Super Bowl to announce that the company will only sell electric vehicles by 2035.
Because of how electric vehicles are made, this means that Michigan and Ohio, two fo the hardest hit states in the rust belt, can expect even further job loss over the next decade.
Most vulnerable in the transition will be roughly 100,000 workers at plants that make transmissions and engines for gas and diesel vehicles.
They are people like Stuart Hill, one of 1,500 workers at GM’s Toledo Transmission Plant in Ohio. At 38 years old and a GM employee for five years, Hill is decades from retirement and worries about the plant’s future.
“It’s something that’s in the back of my mind,” Hill said. “Are they going to shut it down?”
While he and others hope GM will build EV parts in Toledo, there are no assurances that automakers will need as many workers in the EV era. A United Auto Workers paper from two years ago quotes Ford and Volkswagen executives as saying that EVs will reduce labor hours per vehicle by 30%.
“There are just less parts, so of course it stands to reason that there is going to be less labor,” said Jeff Dokho, research director for the UAW.
“We’re sort of at the beginning of that transition,” said Teddy DeWitt, an assistant professor of management at University of Massachusetts Boston who studies how jobs evolve over time. “It’s not going to be just in the vehicle space.”
I don’t hide the ball with my deep hatred of General Motors, who owe the U.S. taxpayers $11.2 Billion from the 2008 bailouts.
Which means this is a match made in heaven I suppose, because I’ll never buy a GM and I don’t want an electric vehicle due to the headache I experience when riding in Tesla’s and Prius’s.
The long term environmental impact of electric vs. combustion engines is a tangled knot to untie, but electric cars are at least better than wind power. The first wind turbines from the 1990’s are now being buried in Casper, WY and possibly (probably) leaking toxic chemicals into the ground.
I’ve never seen a better argument for nuclear power than the photo below.
[three]
A 12-year old boy in Texas hung himself this week, calling more attention to the upward trend of child suicides during lockdown.
A 12-year-old Texas boy who felt “sad and lonely” amid the coronavirus lockdown measures hanged himself, his father revealed in a report about the tragedy.
Hayden Hunstable, of Aledo, took his own life three days before his 13th birthday in April 2020 because he didn’t know how to deal with the isolation and depression when the emerging disease caused a nationwide shutdown, the UK’s Metro reported.
The boy’s 9-year-old sister, Kinlee, found him hanged in his bedroom, according to the outlet.
Hayden’s heartbroken dad, Brad, 42, spoke to Metro to help prevent future suicides among the nation’s youth.
“COVID killed my son. I think Hayden would still be alive today if COVID had never happened,” the father of three told the outlet. “I had no idea he was struggling or depressed — he was such a happy kid and loved his friends and family.”
Calling the pandemic a “perfect storm for suicide and depression,” Brad said: “I think everything just got on top of him, he felt overwhelmed and he made a tragic decision.”
During the COVID lockdown, dozens (the number is disputed, but rising) of children under 14 have killed themselves. One district in Las Vegas re-opened specifically because so many students were dying from suicide.
Meanwhile, San Francisco is still locked in a legal battle with it’s own school district to re-open, and Chicago Public Schools are re-opening after a bitter battle between the city and the CTU (Chicago Teacher’s Union) that could have shut down schools for the rest of the year.
[four]
This is one of the few times I’m going to pull a punch, but I don’t feel at liberty to write about the Gina Carano firing due to current business dealings in my professional life, but I’m also not sure what I could say that hasn’t already been covered.
I bring attention to the increasing number of women who have accused shock rocker Marlyn Manson of abuse. The most recent is Game of Thrones alum Esme Bianco, who accuses Mason of grooming her as a teen, and then cutting her with a knife and chasing her with an ax during their relationship.
Manson belongs in prison, full stop.
The second scandal that continues to break are the mounting abuse accusations against Joss Wheadon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Justice League). Like Carano, Wheadon has been employed by Disney.
As of this writing, Disney has issued no statements about Wheadon’s accusations.
[five]
It’s almost the weekend, so let’s wrap on a few notes about the culture.
Taylor Swift has started the process of re-recording her early albums after her catalog was sold to Justin Beiber manager Scooter Braun. Swift re-released a new version of her mega-hit “Love Story” today (which is pretty meh) to get fans to stream music she owns the publishing rights now. It should be noted that Swift had the chance to earn her back catalog back from the original label through putting out additional albums, but refused. I’m a big fan of Taylor’s music, but she lies left and right about this situation. I’ll continue to stream her original albums, unless the new versions of the songs are better. Albums are moments captured in time, and reworking them often winds up as good as microwaved leftover pizza.
Kalishnakov, makers of the famous AK-47 rifle, have released a shotgun for “Gen Z” which features a built in HD camera and a computer to teach the user how to shoot. This is evidence that gun makers are seeing more younger buyers, which brings the U.S. to an interesting policy position on gun control…Biden has vowed to push for more gun laws, even as the people who voted for him flock to stores to purchase their first gun. Do I “need” this shotgun? No. Do I want one? Of course.
I haven’t turned on the TV this week, but I’d love to catch Land this weekend (streaming for rent on Amazon for $14.99), the directorial debut of Robin Wright (Forest Gump, Netflix’s House of Cards, Wonder Woman) about a woman who runs from pain and grief to live alone in a cabin in a remote part of Montana. I have a deep love of Montana and hope/plan to purchase property out there if and when one of my ventures ever proves to be uber-successful.
Finally, I plan to read Brett McCracken’s new book The Wisdom Pyramid, which re-imagines the food pyramid for the other stuff you consume. I wrote for Brett when he was an editor at Relevant Magazine…but found out about the book via my friend Craig Dunham’s Second Drafts Substack…he has an excellent writeup on the book if you want to check it out (and subscribe).
Until the next one,
-sth