On January 28, 1981, President Ronald Reagan lifted the federal government’s remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States, helping to end the 1970s energy crisis and begin the 1980s’ oil glut.
The deregulatory move had been begun by Democrats in Congress, but had been placed on a gradual schedule, and the whole effort clouded with President Jimmy Carter’s talk of taxing the “windfall profits” that would immediately result from lifting the regulations.
In March 2024, the EPA finalized Biden’s “crackdown on gas cars” by issuing absurdly stringent emission standards. The idea was to advance the administration’s “climate agenda” by sending gas-powered modes of transportation to the junkyard.
Leaders of the petroleum industry were among those who saw that the scheme would “make new gas-powered vehicles unavailable or prohibitively expensive for most Americans.” The policy would “feel and function like a ban.”
This was just one of many examples of Biden-oppression pushing American voters who value at least their own freedom into the Trump camp.
Electric vehicles have pluses and minuses. In past columns, I’ve expressed much enthusiasm for the technology, but recognized that it must develop naturally, in a free market, rather than unnaturally, out of ideological hope and fear-ridden “need,” forced by government regulation and subsidy.
As James Roth has noted over at StoptheCCP.org, we’ve had a century and a half to fine-tune gas-powered vehicles, a mature technology that is “beloved by the public.” Why not let electric and gas cars compete fair and square in the market? And why give an artificial boost to totalitarian China’s heavily subsidized and promoted EV industry by crippling the gas-car industry here at home?
President Trump has heard the cry of those who prefer to step on the gas.
Section 2(e) of his sweeping executive order on “Unleashing American Energy” states that it is the policy of the United States to “eliminate the electric vehicle mandate . . . by removing regulatory barriers to motor vehicle access” and other thumb-on-scale interventions in the market.
Is the future of gas cars going to be great again?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Society is the most powerful conception in the world and society has no existence whatsoever.
Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography (1928).
On January 27, 1973, President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird, announced an end to the military draft in favor of a system of voluntary enlistment. Since 1973, the United States armed forces have been known as the All-Volunteer Force.
President Donald Trump’s Second Inaugural Address will surely be regarded as a historically consequential speech. One consequence comes from the Speaker of the House: “It is my distinct honor and great privilege to invite President Donald Trump to address a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, to share his America First vision for our future.”
Does this signal an earnest willingness for Congress to work with the new president, or is it merely a formal nicety, the usual blather?
The Epoch Times offered an extended explanation:
The event, though not classified as a State of the Union, follows a tradition since President Ronald Reagan where newly inaugurated presidents deliver speeches that are marked by comparable formality and ceremony. Such speeches are an opportunity for presidents to outline their vision for the nation at the start of their term, and to rally bipartisan support for their agenda.
Reagan’s 1981 address set the tone for this modern custom, focusing on economic recovery and national renewal during a time of economic stagnation and inflation. The priorities Reagan outlined in his speech included the promise of tax cuts, deregulation, as well as measures to curb inflation while encouraging job growth.
Paul Jacob commented on the speech on Tuesday of last week.
Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force — that grimmest and ugliest of gods that men have ever created for themselves out of the lusts of their hearts.
Auberon Herbert, The Voluntaryist Creed, Being the Herbert Spencer Lecture Delivered at Oxford, June 7, 1906, London.
On January 26, 1992, Boris Yeltsin announced that Russia would stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.
A private spacecraft is heading to the Moon.
It has taken pictures of “the Blue Marble,” our planet Earth. The spacecraft owned by Firefly Aerospace is called “The Blue Ghost,” and on Thursday fired thrusters that will allow the lunar lander to reach its destination in early March.
The mission is dubbed “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” and the mission’s client is NASA.
Launched with it, from the same SpaceX rocket on January 15, 2025, is a lunar lander from Japan’s ispace, Resilience, making the launch a double shot at Earth’s satellite.
Resilience is still in orbit, and is expected to land on the Moon before July. According to Space.com, “Resilience is packed with five science payloads. These come mainly from commercial and academic partners, while one is a micro moon rover developed by ispace’s Luxembourg-based subsidiary that will drive the mission’s initial resource exploration activities.”
See also articles at The Epoch Times (AP) and AOL (Reuters).
Paul Jacob has been covering the advance of private spacefaring for almost as long as Common Sense with Paul Jacob has been in publication.
No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige? It is not the love of truth, but desire to prevail that sets quarter against quarter and makes parish desire the downfall of parish. Each seeks peace of mind and subserviency rather than the triumph of truth and exaltation of virtue — But these moralities belong, and should be left to the historian, since they are as dull as ditch water.
Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography (1928).
On January 25, 1787, Shays’ Rebellion experienced its largest confrontation, outside the Springfield Armory, with four of the rebels dead, 20 wounded.
The rebellion was a key moment in United States history. Daniel Shays and his followers objected to Massachusetts’s high taxes and rampant cronyism. The revolt, which was completely suppressed, led to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, drawing George Washington from his retirement to serve as the new union’s president.