Electric vehicles are great, unless you want to go someplace in a hurry like, you know, the emergency room or maybe take an evacuation route while looking in your rearview mirror at a wildfire, flood, or tornado.

They’re also terrific, unless you want to take a road trip to a wilderness area, a national park, mountain range, desert, a hunting or fishing preserve or drive through Nevada.

In California if you going to go into labor or get appendicitis don’t do those things between 4 pm and 9 pm because that’s when the state’s grid operators issued warnings to avoid charging your electric vehicle. Schedule all personal emergencies outside of those times please because the state is running short of electricity.

California Democrats, for all their efforts to make electric vehicles the only viable option for transportation, aren’t addressing these issues. Instead, they’re saying these vehicles are the solution to global warming, climate change, and vehicle emission. But that’s just stupid.

While touting the environmental impact of these vehicles the orange-haired, “green” fanatics and climate alarmists with bolts in their noses who live with five cats in their parents’ basements, and drive mom’s Tesla ignore a variety of issues such as the effects of electric cars on the power grid, their material intensive nature, and the environmental impacts of battery waste. Oh, EVs also have a tendency to unexpectedly blow up and inconveniently burst into flames when wet.

And it’s not just these bothersome issues that are keeping mainstream consumers away from EVs. It’s also their practicality and astronomical prices. Hotcars reports that 69 percent of American consumers would rather not buy an electrical vehicle.

Reddy Kilowatt could be the EV’s Dr. Fauci 

The EV movement is running on fumes. It needs a superannuated nerd to breathe life into its crusade, the way the Covid drumbeaters used Dr. Fauci, who became the archetype of masks, questionable vaccines, and unwarranted business and school lockdowns until a wised-up public yanked away the raspy-voiced little weasel’s curtain.

They need a re-energized Reddy Kilowatt….a dancing sparkie, maybe a gay cross dresser like the ones they drag (pun intended) in to read to your elementary school kids then dare you to criticize because they’ll label you a homophobe.

Much to the green freaks’ chagrin, gasoline and diesel are undisputed winners when natural disasters whack the electricity grid.

Many of the evacuation roads are through remote areas and the countryside, and few of them have charging stations. And even if the evacuation road takes you on the highway, expect to get stranded because of traffic jams.

Last year , CNBC established that “the U.S. EV charging network isn’t ready for your family road trip.” Kristina Swallow, the Director of the Nevada Department of Transportation, said in a letter to the Federal Highway Administration that “there are a lot of areas in the American West, including Nevada, that do not have any type of electrical service.”

When Hurricane Ian hit Florida, many people stayed put, believing that their neighborhoods were secure. However, after the hurricane made landfall, they recognized that it would have been safer to leave. At this point, it was too late to evacuate because of power outages. Families could no longer charge their electric vehicles and were stuck.

CNBC, for example, pointed out that it takes “about 45 minutes to fully charge an EV, sometimes longer.” By contrast, filling your tank with gas takes just a few minutes. If you live in California, which will ban gas-powered gas car sales by 2035, you’re in deep doo-doo as the University of California at Davis estimates that state alone will need 1.9 million charging stations to accommodate the influx of mandated electric cars. Good luck. Oh, and if you’re driving an EV try and plan your escape route while avoiding Nevada.

And unless it’s a hybrid, folks can’t lug cans of electricity in the trunks of their cars like they can with gas or diesel fuel.

There are also several other risks associated with having an EV during a disaster that have gone unnoticed until now.

Some Florida homes that escaped Ian faced a new danger: electric vehicles catching fire due to their batteries being corroded by the floods.

Florida State Rep. Bob Rommel and state Fire Marshal Jim Patronis were particularly vocal about the threat of EV fires in the aftermath of Ian.

Rommel described a house that had managed to outlast the hurricane but couldn’t survive the EV fire that later started in the garage.

“On October 6th, I joined North Collier Fire Rescue to assess response activities related to Hurricane Ian and saw with my own eyes an EV continuously ignite, and continually reignite, as fireteams doused the vehicle with tens-of-thousands of gallons of water,” Patronis wrote.

“Subsequently, I was informed by the fire department that the vehicle, once again reignited when it was loaded onto the tow truck. Based on my conversations with area firefighters, this is not an isolated incident. As you can appreciate, I am very concerned that we may have a ticking time bomb on our hands.”

Traditional means of stopping the fire, like dousing it in water, are often insufficient to put out the flames because the battery packs are hard to reach and retain enough heat to reignite over and over again as soon as the water stops flowing. In 2019, it was reported that firefighters in the Netherlands were forced to submerge a BMW i8 in a tank of water for 24 hours due to a particularly persistent battery fire.

EV on fire in a SW Florida garage 

Since the current fleet of EVs obtain their electricity from coal and gas and get their battery materials from mines in impoverished African countries and China it’s understandable why folks are less than enthusiastic.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Director of Energy, Climate, and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, put the belief that electric vehicles will save America to rest saying: “American consumers are being asked to pay higher prices for electric vehicles — which depend on higher prices for less-dependable electricity that may not be available during peak demand or in the aftermath of wildfires, tornadoes, and hurricanes. This is not a resilient, prosperous future.”

(An abridged version of this commentary ran in my BizPacReview column this week at https://www.bizpacreview.com/2022/10/18/in-case-of-emergency-run-away-from-that-ev-1298116/)

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 Speaking Of Disasters:  After all the Hurricane Ian damage, President Biden is sending generators to Florida to help in dealing with the power problem. Why isn’t he sending solar cells and wind generators his administration says are so efficient and effective?

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Another Reason For DeSantis’s Popularity: Governor Ron DeSantis issued a blunt warning Friday, September 30 to those who intended to take advantage of Ian’s Florida devastation by looting and plundering.

“At the end of the day, we are not going to allow lawlessness to take advantage of this situation. We are a law-and-order state, and this is a law-and-order community, so do not think that you’re going to go take advantage of people who’ve suffered misfortune,” he said during a press conference held near Fort Myers.

To drive his point home, he described a sign he’d seen while touring an affected community on Thursday, according to Florida Politics.

“They boarded up all the businesses, and there are people that wrote on their plywood, ‘you loot, we shoot,’” he said.

During another event later that day in St. Augustine, the governor said: “I can tell you, in the state of Florida, you never know what may be lurking behind somebody’s home. I would not want to chance that if I were you, given that we’re a Second Amendment state,” he explained.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, meanwhile, posted a video of looters being arrested and doubled down on DeSantis’ warning.

“Florida will not tolerate looters taking advantage of #HurricaneIan to prey on vulnerable Floridians. They will be arrested, and I have asked state attorneys to seek the longest pretrial detention possible to keep them locked up so they cannot commit new crimes,” she wrote.

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Biden’s Welcome Wagon:  Since Joe Biden took office close to five million illegal aliens have entered the U.S. into southwest border states and are spreading out across the country. It’s estimated that millions of these are “got-a-ways” or folks who don’t want to be caught –possibly drug and human smugglers, terrorists, those with criminal records, previous deportees, etc.  The welcome mat is out, the southern border is wide open, and illegals are pouring in unimpeded at our expense. Biden and his nitwit Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas have converted Border Security personnel into tour guides, paper processors and caregivers.

The Biden administration has transformed the border patrol into the Welcome Wagon providing illegal aliens with gift bags containing cell phones, money, Covid vaccines, plane and bus tickets and more. A $169.33 day pass to Disney World doesn’t come close to buying this kind of VIP treatment.

The country is suffering a major housing shortage. So where are these people supposed to live and who is paying? Who is housing hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors, and who is paying to educate them? None of them speak English, so who pays for the remedial teachers? Few of the illegals have English literacy skills. Who is supposed to employ these people, and doing what, and how, since none have any papers for payroll taxes, and are here illegally?

Ask a liberal Democrat if he or she is willing to support an illegal’s family and you’ll get the Martha’s Vineyard treatment: “We love ‘em, but YOU support ‘em and house ’em somewhere else, please. We’ll be observing through heavy lenses.” The hypocritical liberal jerks that cheer this mess want nothing to do with helping or the cost of actually taking care of the illegals, that’s somebody else’s job. The sanctuary cities of Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, Martha’s Vineyard, and others have all displayed their hypocritical, self-serving concern for illegals.

U.S. citizens have enough problems. The average American is faced with the inflationary cost of food, gasoline, heating fuel, and many other commodities and the federal government is adding millions of mouths for us to feed, house, educate, and provide medical care. What’s going on? Is this what we voted for? As Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy would say: “The short answer is “No.” The long answer is “Hell No.”

I’ve had Nassau County teachers and parents contact me and tell me our schools hereabouts are not immune. They tell me our local schools are teeming with illegal immigrant children much to the detriment of their own kids. Not one of the teachers would agree to allow me to identify them for fear they would be retaliated against by school officials. Parents said “no, don’t mention my name ” for fear their kids would suffer as a result. Nassau County School Superintendent Kathy Burns has some ‘splaining to do but she ain’t talking.

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Express Your Opinion Nov. 8: Election day is less than three weeks away providing us all an opportunity to express our opinion at the ballot box with the twits that got us into this current mess.

If you vote for a Democrat you obviously favor their model of unprecedented spending, easy money, more regulations, higher taxes, and open borders, thus leading to slow growth and higher inflation. If you vote Republican then you opt for a secure border, moderate spending, sound money, less regulations, and lower taxes. Just saying!

If you’re concerned about inflation and high taxes you’re got company. According to a new Politico/Morning Consult poll, “Americans are expressing deep pessimism about the economy and rising inflation. More than 90 percent of voters are concerned about the U.S. economy and inflation,” Politico  explained on Wednesday, October 19.

Until Republicans are voted in and can toss a legislative net over the inept Joe Biden and his Marxist cohorts this mess will get worse. For example, as economist, educator, investor, author and columnist, Joel Ross, said: “Biden’s speech on oil yesterday (Wednesday, Oct. 19) may have been the most stunningly ignorant set of misinformation and lies of any president in my lifetime.” It was just one of the many nonsensical, ignorant and tone-deaf examples of this presidential nitwit’s ineptitude and obliviousness about what’s happening around him. It’s frightening.

Biden, who boasts that he has more positive accomplishments than any other president two years in, fails to mention that his number one achievement is a decline in the living standards for Americans.

Locally if you are unhappy with higher taxes, out-of-control city management, unexplained and inequitable building, permitting and inspection fees rising taxes, and are angry with the financial mess and suspicious money laundering dealings the current city manager and his confused cabal of losers have created, you can fix it Tuesday, November 8.

For Fernandina Beach Commission Seat 4 I’m voting for Dr. James Antun who is running against current Mayor and pompous blowhard and  California transplant, Mike “Left Coast” Lednovich.  Chiropractor Dr. Antun has clearly explained how he would approach a variety of issues facing the city with public-private partnerships and called for an audit of the controversial building/permitting fee processes. Meanwhile Lednovich blathers on senselessly about “customer service” and suggested a survey, apparently forgetting the Chamber of Commerce survey that had folks loudly protesting in front of city hall, waving signs, and telling the city and Lednovich that their current policies stink.

Mayor “Left Coast” Lednovich

Lednovich is a spittle-spewing, anti-property rights activist bragging that he has opposed every residential development project since Jean Ribault arrived here in 1562. Dr. Antun offers well thought out, reasoned and deliberate proposals, an indication of the representation he will offer as a Commissioner. We’d be lucky to have him to give the city a much-needed adjustment and give “Left Coast” the boot.

In case readers missed it previously I’m again posting a photo here of Commissioner and current Mayor “Left Coast” Lednovich proudly displaying his support for the dangerous, violent, and fraudulent Black Lives Matter organization as he parades through downtown Fernandina Beach. He is also wearing a Fernandina Beach Police Department cap despite not being a cop, and sporting a red clown nose, but that’s self-evident.

My vote for the City Commission Seat 5 being vacated by term-limited Len Kreger will go to local Fire Fighter Darron Ayscue, a lifelong resident of Nassau County who will look out for the best interests of all city residents, not just specific minority groups. He’s a fiscal conservative who will bring common sense, dignity and reason to the Commission and nicely compliment Dr. Antun. A coalition of Commissioners Bradley Bean (who gets my vote for mayor), David Sturges, and Dr. Antun and Ayscue would bring an end to the devious fiscal antics of spendthrifts Chip Ross and City Manager Dale Martin.

I’m expressing my sentiments in Washington by voting for Marco Rubio for U.S. Senator and Aaron Bean for Congress. I’m voting to keep Governor Ron DeSantis in Tallahassee along with Attorney General Ashley Moody, Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, and Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson. I’m voting for Clay Yarbrough for state senator and Dean Black for state representative. Shannon Hogue and Curtis Gaus have my vote locally for school Board Districts 1 and 2 respectively.

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Investigate The City’s Shenanigans Say Citizens: The results of the most recent poll posted here show that 94 percent, or 158 of the of the 168 respondents say they want the state to investigate Fernandina Beach’s capacity/impact fees and permitting fees to ensure they are in compliance with state law. Only 5 percent, or 9 folks said an investigation wasn’t needed. One respondent didn’t know. Remember, during the last City Commission race Commissioner Sturges won by just 38 votes, so candidates should pay attention to what the 158 folks who voted to investigate the city are saying.

The new poll asks readers if they would feel comfortable purchasing an electric vehicle.