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Senator Joe Manchin called federal tax credits for electric vehicles “ludicrous” in a Senate hearing on Thursday. The West Virginia politician, who continues to make millions from the coal industry, has been a regular critic of subsidies for EVs, which have played a key role in the Democratic Party’s plan to decarbonize the transport sector.

Since 2009, the US has used federal tax credits as a way to offset the higher price of EVs thanks to their battery packs…

But the Democratic Party has a razor-thin majority in the Senate, and passing more tax credits would be impossible without Manchin’s vote…

Despite his claims to want to address climate change, this is not the first time Manchin has made clear his opposition to policies that would actually help. In November 2021, he called the EV incentives “wrong” and “not American.” And in March 2022, he said he was “very reluctant to go down the path of electric vehicles” and lambasted the idea of the government spending money on infrastructure.

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The Grant Town power plant is also the link between the coal industry and the personal finances of Joe Manchin III, the Democrat who rose through state politics to reach the United States Senate…Opportunity arrived in the form of two developers who wanted to build a power plant in Grant Town, just outside Mr. Manchin’s district…Then he did something beyond routine constituent services. He went into business with the Grant Town power plant.

As the pivotal vote in an evenly split Senate, Mr. Manchin has blocked legislation that would speed the country’s transition to wind, solar and other clean energy and away from coal, oil and gas, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet…But as the Grant Town plant continues to burn coal and pay dividends to Mr. Manchin, it has harmed West Virginians economically, costing them hundreds of millions of dollars in excess electricity fees. That’s because gob is a less efficient power source than regular coal.

Mr. Manchin and his wife owned assets worth between $4.5 million to $12.8 million in 2020, according to Senate financial disclosure forms, which provide only a range with few specifics…But the bulk of Mr. Manchin’s reported income since entering the Senate has come from one company: Enersystems, Inc., which he founded with his brother Roch Manchin in 1988, the year before the Grant Town plant got a permit from the state of West Virginia.

Enersystems Inc. is now run by Mr. Manchin’s son, Joseph Manchin IV. In 2020, it paid Mr. Manchin $491,949, according to his filings, almost three times his salary as a United States senator. From 2010 through 2020, Mr. Manchin reported a total of $5.6 million from the company…And since 2002 — as far back as that data goes — Mr. Manchin’s coal company has had just one customer: the Grant Town power plant.

Manchin is doing better than a pimp. That class of criminal derives their whole income from only one leased/rented product. Sex. Manchin gets to add a salary on top of that process…a salary for a job that helps him pass legislation, award contracts, that further benefit his clients and, of course, himself.