▪️If you thought there’s no way Green New Deal is actually dumb enough to post a picture of the first gasoline-powered scooter and label it the first electric scooter, we’ll you’d be wrong! That’s exactly what they did (and this wasn’t April Fools).
▪️This is an Autoped, which was launched in America in 1915, it was the first mass-produced motor scooter. The Online Bicycle Museum explains it as:
🔹”Essentially an enlarged child’s scooter with an engine mounted over the front wheel, the air-cooled 155cc four-stroke engine claimed speeds of 30mph; though the clutch and brake were activated by moving the steering column forwards or backwards, so it could be unsteady over 20mph.”
https://onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk/1918-eveready-autoped-scooter/
▪️The big box in the middle contained batteries, but not to power the vehicle. It powered the front and rear electric lights.
▪️It never gained widespread popularity, primarily used by the affluent for recreation and young criminals to get away from police. The picture GND posted is of Lady Florence Norman riding it in London.
https://mashable.com/archive/1916-suffragette-scooter#yf580grP5ZqS
▪️There we’re brief attempts at businesses using it, for example the US Postal Service tried them out as delivery vehicles. But ultimately they weren’t a commercial success; they were more expensive than a bike, but less comfortable and fast as a motorcycle.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/motorized-scooter-boom-hit-century-dockless-scooters-180971989/
▪️As for calling the switch to internal combustion engines and fossil fuels “a lost century,” that’s a bizarre way to portray the most spectacular increase in human flourishing in human history. It’s not just dumb, its ugly and anti-human to its core.
It’s bizarre to see them seesaw back and forth that Trump is totally clueless and aloof, just golfing all day, then all of a sudden he’s a dangerous king/dictator who’s diligently plotting to seize absolute power.
▪️This one is frustrating because, while it’s nice to see the vigor and speed that DOGE is acting with, they’re also sloppy with some of their findings. This is not some bombshell, millions of dead people’s SS numbers aren’t being paid out to fraudsters.
▪️This problem has been known for some time, you can read an inspector general’s report from 2015 about millions of names on the SS “numident” not being correctly annotated for deaths, even though they were older than 112 (the oldest known American at the time).
https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-06-14-34030_0.pdf
▪️There are innocent explanations for some of these. Expatriates that died outside the country, for example. Or immigrants given temporary work permit who returned to their country, people issued new numbers for various reasons, etc. However, most are simply due to the govt not diligently keeping track of deaths.
▪️It’s embarrassing that the govt has millions of numbers on the numident that are ...
