Apple announced that Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors and John Ternus, senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, will become Apple’s next chief executive officer effective on September 1, 2026.

Issues and Insights reports that the Trump EPA is eliminating government "encouragement" of automakers to implement "autostart." That is, there will no longer be a tax credit for manufacturers who include that functionality in their products.

Good!

Autostart -- which kills and restarts your engine instead of letting it idle at traffic stops -- is a function that about two-thirds of new cars have in America. It's yet another annoyance rammed down our throats by the nanny state in the name of fighting the "climate crisis," and I turn it off every time I drive my wife's car. I also have no plans to replace my twelve-year old car any time soon in part because it doesn't do that at all.

(I also dislike cars that attempt to drive for you in the name of safety, but that's a post, perhaps, for another day.)

As the article indicates, most drivers are with me in finding the function annoying, but don't take their word for it: There's a healthy market out there for hardware that can bypass autostart altogether.

To its credit, the Trump Administration isn't making it illegal for car makers to put autostart in their cars, nor should it do so. (It can aid fuel economy in places that aren't so hot you need air conditioning almost year-round.) Again, it's just removing the Obama-era tax credit.

As usual when this Administration does something like this, I wonder how easy it will be for the next Democrat to undo the change, especially is, as it seems , it's just a regulatory change, like the repeal of the endangerment finding.

Maybe I should look for a newer car some time during the next couple of years...

-- CAV

It appears that retirement isn’t exactly suiting leftist billionaire George Soros, as America’s most notorious political kingmaker was revealed to have dropped another massive fortune ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The Soros group, Fund for Policy Reform, pumped a whopping $50 million into his political cash guzzler Democracy PAC January 13, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Despite officially handing the reins of his $25 billion Open Society Foundations to his more unhinged acolyte son Alex, the elder Soros is signaling that he has no intention of abandoning his years-long obsession with buying control of the U.S. government for Democrats and politically handicapping his nemesis President Donald Trump. As Forbes magazine contextualized April 16, Soros has once again positioned himself as the largest midterm election donor so far.  Soros unleashed over $170 million into the 2022 midterms to make himself top dog in the political donor class that year, with the majority of it fueling his Democracy PAC. Old habits die hard?  Buying political outcomes has been synonymous with the Soros brand for decades. As Soros concluded himself in Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (1995): “Of course, what I do could be called meddling, because I want to promote an open society. An open society transcends national sovereignty.” And if the $32 billion Soros poured into his empire over the years is any indication, it’s that money isn’t an object when it comes to ensuring that his dark open society worldview becomes reality. The Soros regime had already come under enormous political and legal fire for funneling $80 million into pro-terrorism groups in the U.S. and abroad, but this hasn’t appeared to have been enough to force it underground. In fact, one of Soros’ pet projects, fake news outfit Courier Newsroom, made headlines in February by being a co-host of a radical boycott of Trump’s State of the Union Address that was packed with a full lineup of insufferable Hollywood and uber lefty journos as guest speakers. Names on the list included the TDS-afflicted actor Robert De Niro and former CNN anchor Jim Acosta. Soros had poured $20 million into Courier between 2021 and 2023 alone.  Americans should be alert: Soros may have taken on emeritus status within his organization, but he’s still as dedicated as ever to bending the “arc of history” towards his New World Order-ish utopia.

The central principle of the “Land Value Tax” which makes it different from normal Property Taxes, is that it would be the land only – so, for example, someone who kept land as a nature reserve, would pay the same tax as someone who built a factory on the land.

In the United Kingdom, since 1929, farmland has not been subject to Property Tax (called “Rates” here – a form of taxation that goes all the way back to Tudor times, first introduced to fund the Poor Law – most of Scotland did not have such a system till 1845, France did not have Poor Law style benefits till well into the 20th century), farmers, if they owned the land, would have to pay the Land Value Tax – thus turning farmers into tenants of the state. Although, of course, much would depend on how high the tax is – what really matters about taxation is not the exact form of it, but how high it is. There is no such thing as a “good tax” – all taxation is harmful, but how harmful taxation will be is determined by how heavy the burden of taxation is.

For example, property taxes in Alabama do much less harm than property taxes in New Jersey – but this is NOT because property taxes are structured fundamentally differently in New Jersey than they are in Alabama – it is just that they are much HIGHER in New Jersey, and, therefore, do more harm.

That is why, for example, the present obsession of the Tax Foundation with the exact way taxes are designed, rather than with the overall burden of taxation in American States (there has not been a State and Local Tax Burden report from the Tax Foundation since April 9th 2022) and European countries, is so disheartening – the Tax Foundation seems to have lost its way and is no longer really doing what it was created to do.

That discussion with supporters of the Land Value Tax is pointless can be seen from the Wikipedia article on the matter – the article is almost entirely a “puff piece” (any real criticism is quickly edited out – so much for “anyone can edit”) of both the Land Value Tax and the economic (the false economics of David Ricardo and others), philosophical, and even theological, theories behind it.

In the West one example of the theological thinking behind the Land Value Tax is the idea, to be found in John Locke and others, that God gave the world to humanity in-common and that, therefore, private ownership has to be justified – either by “as much and as good left for others” or by some form of financial payment (to be collected by the state – for some reason).

Logically a supporter of the idea should be against population increase, for example against immigration, as the more people who came into an area – the more landless people there will be, so the less money each landless person would get (in various benefits and services) from the Land Value Tax.

Henry George reflected this – with his opposition to people going to California, even opposing the building of railways as this would make it less difficult for people to go to California. Even the “Christian Socialist” John Rawls (once very popular in academia) seems to have rejected the idea of a world tax – holding that American taxes should go to Americans in terms of welfare state programs – of course if one “imports the Third World” (the policy of many in the Democratic Party since 1965 – especially during the Biden Administration of 2021 to 2025) then government spending does go on the poor of the world – as they have come to the nation (the same is true in Britain and other nations). Claims, by the CATO Institute and others, that Third World immigrants are “net taxpayers” (that they provide more in taxes than they take in benefits and services) are false. Ideologically motivated deceptions.

For those people who reject the theological basis of the Land Value Tax (and its real basis is theological, see above, rather than in the false economics of David Ricardo and others), the matter is of little interest – if one holds, with Hugo Grotius and others, that God did NOT give all land to humanity in-common – then no “justification” of private ownership is needed, either by “as much and as good left for others” or by some form of financial payment.