Renewable Revolution

 
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here to subscribe.

August 10, 2018





We’ve heard about how the Koch network 🦕🦖 is attacking public transit, and last year targeted electric cars. Now, it seems there is a similar sort of campaign afoot to combine those two and go after electric buses.

The timing of this makes sense: LA, NYC, and San Francisco are committing to 100% EV bus fleets, while other major cities like Chicago and Dallas are greening their fleets. Globally, the Chinese city of Shenzhen has a full EV fleet, with over 16,000 ⚡buses. 👍

Transitioning the US bus fleet to EVs could save more than 2 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year. As a July UCS study shows, regardless of the electricity source, EV ⚡ buses are cleaner.   

And as the good EV bus news comes, so must also come the pushback. Over the last couple of weeks, the conservative but generally-not-crazy Washington Examiner ran four pieces, three in quick succession, attacking electric buses. One was by Ross Marchand, of the Koch’s Taxpayers Protection Alliance , and the other three by a commentary writer for the Examiner, Philip Wegmann 👹.

The four pieces have barely enough rhetoric between them to scrape together one argument. Marchand claims in his piece that the buses’ expense is a problem, but neglects to mention that the fuel, maintenance and health savings from an EV replacing a diesel bus[/color] is well worth the initial cost, leading to a net savings. He also claims that EVs may be dirtier than conventional ones, citing the Koch’s Manhattan Institute. This, simply put, is false. Particularly for busses.

Wegmann offers even less in the way of substance than Marchand. In one of his pieces, he implies electric buses are unreliable because of some problems between the headlights and radios on a grand total of four buses. In another, he calls the city of Santa Monica stupid for buying electric buses, decrying “the lunatic fanaticism” of liberal cities that think it’s important to provide public transit, even if it’s not popular.

But in the first example, published in late July, Wegmann hits on some reality. In a piece that starts by proclaiming that “the wheels on the bus roll toward communism in Los Angeles,” Wegmann 😈 rehashes a legit LA Times story from back in May about problems with the Los Angeles EV Bus fleet. However, problems with one particular company’s subpar EV bus performance is hardly an indictment of the entire industry.

Unless, of course, you’re worried the success of the industry will harm you, like the Kochs are.

And Wegmann, as it turns out, is something of a Koch acolyte. His Twitter bio notes he’s a fellow of the Steamboat Institute, which is “a 501(c)(3) educational organization promoting Liberty, Free Markets, and the Founding Principles of the United States.” Though there are no obvious Koch-funding links, the Steamboat Institute is a member of the Koch’s State Policy Network.In Wegmann’s bio on Steamboat’s site, we see that he was a fellow of the Koch’s America’s Future Foundation writing program.

As for his writing career, Wegmann appears to have gotten his start in 2010, when he won a college scholarship from the NRA, then won an essay contest by Fox’s John Stossel and featuring pardoned felon Dinesh D’Souza. Then he wrote a couple things for his college paper, like “What texting hath wrought,” but was apparently “lucky enough to stumble into a job shortly” after graduating.

It looks like that job was writing at the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation publication, the Daily Signal, in 2015. Then he went to the Federalist for a few months, then back to the Signal, then stepped up to the Examiner.

To be clear, we have absolutely no evidence that Wegmann went on this anti-EV bus kick at the Koch’s insistence. But that’s sort of the point of the Koch’s strategy when it comes to blurring the lines between journalist and Koch operative. After getting trained by the Koch’s writing program, starting his career at the Koch’s Daily Signal, and enjoying a fellowship at a Koch-adjacent group, Wegmann probably doesn’t need marching orders to toe the Koch party line.

Then again, news that Wichita, Kansas was buying EV buses broke just three days before Wegmann’s first EV bus hit piece.

Wichita, of course, is the home of Koch Industries.