Pity the poor residents of Martha's Vineyard, that stony island off the coast of mainland Massachusetts where some of America's most wretched refuse are forced to make their home. Or at least to summer.
Times are so bad there that former President Barack Obama, with nothing but a small government pension, a $65 million book deal, and tens of millions in Netflix dollars to his name, was forced to settle for a $12 million mansion there, right on the coast where rising seawaters will soon return the island to the ocean depths from whence it came.
Now comes the most devastating news of all, as the mostly part-time residents of Martha's must deal with fresh humiliation in addition to the economic hardships they already face. The island has been officially designated as a "low-income area" by the Biden administration.
Seriously. I'm not making this up, and when it comes to relentlessly stupid economic incentives under the Biden administration, I don't have to.
It isn't just Martha's Vineyard that is some kind of officially recognized poverty-stricken area, either.
If you've been reading VodkaPundit in recent months — and if you haven't, shame on you — you're already aware of the hazards and pratfalls (not a typo) of Presidentish Joe Biden's promise to mandate and incentivize the ever-lovin' bejeebus out of electric vehicles until everyone wears spandex jackets in his streamlined world. Or until the power grid fizzles, whichever comes first.
Under Biden's Green New Deal Lite Act (officially known, if laughably, as the Inflation Reduction Act), $7.5 billion of mostly funny money was set aside to subsidize the construction of tens of thousands of electric vehicle chargers across the country to stimulate electric vehicle demand. Being a government program, there were catches.
To get the money to install the chargers, certain conditions must be met. One is that chargers must dot the interstate highways at intervals of no less than 50 miles — even though long-distance drives are one of the worst use-cases for EVs. Those chargers must also have credit card readers (duh) and an uptime of 97%. As I noted back in December, "A J.D. Power study from earlier this year found that only 61% of charging stations were working properly, but government-funded chargers are going to be much more reliable because everyone is on drugs."
But that's not all. Biden's Green New Deal Lite also pays out perfectly good money to install chargers in low-income areas — you already see where this is going, don't you? — even though EVs are out of reach for low-income buyers.
This is what the Daily Caller found when they looked at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) interactive eligibility map:
Numerous elite hangouts and locales — including Montauk and Fishers Island in New York, and parts of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket in Massachusetts — are among the areas that the administration has classified as “low-income” and eligible for receipt of EV charger subsidies.
"Those new chargers? They're for the help, dear."
Snark aside, the Daily Caller's revelation comes as no surprise. EV subsidies have always been a benefit paid to the better off, and no number of Compton charging stations will ever change that fact. Assuming any ever get built in Compton because the truly needy on Martha's have to get theirs first.
Still, if I ever do make it to Martha's, I'm going to have to make more than a few snide comments about how shoddy everything looks compared to Aspen.
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