I went into the Democratic National Convention wondering what Hillary would say compared to what Donald Trump said. I figured she would paint a rosy picture of what she was going to do and we would be left with still trying to and figure out how to vote.
While I’m still not sure who I am going to vote for on election day, the Democratic convention took on a different air than the Republicans. And while not so many ideas were expressed, there is still a wide variety of questions to answer.
There were four areas of real concern that came to me out of the Democratic convention.
The first two and the two most important to me and the West are the questions concerning the energy industry and guns.
As I said last week, we would all love to have pure air and pure water. Who wouldn’t? But at what price and what time table?
I wish I could put the situation into as clear as possible a picture, but I will leave that to an expert; I give you Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar at the non-partisan Institute for Policy Innovation. Among other issues, he points out the most serious and direct, that it will take decades for the United States to be able to get rid of fossil fuels.
Water, wind, solar and biomass will take, the experts say, at least three decades or more to replace electricity, oil and gas, but the Democrats under Obama and under Clinton are trying to shut down the fossil fuel industry tomorrow—long before the others are able to pick up the slack.
Are your commercial planes going to run on water? Maybe with sails in the wind? All airlines in the world traveling on solar? Not in my lifetime…
I give you Mr. Merrill Matthews’ thoughts:
“The recent Democratic convention was a hotbed of anti-fossil fuel vitriol. The policy platform, invited speakers and nominee herself all supported a war against oil and natural gas.
Gone are the days when Democrats supported nuclear power and natural gas. Gone are the days when they championed the fossil fuel industry because it supports millions of high-paying, blue-collar jobs. Gone are the days when Democrats seriously pursued an energy-independent United States.
Today, they’re pursuing a radical overhaul of the American energy market. If they get their way, the economic consequences will be devastating.
The committee that cooked up the convention’s official policy platform explicitly rebuked President Obama, who once promised an all-inclusive energy strategy. Instead, they want to move “beyond the ‘all of the above’ energy approach.”
They just want one of the above—renewables, chiefly solar, wind and biomass. The committee adopted a proposal envisioning an “America run entirely on clean energy by mid-century.”
This is an overly ambitious goal. After eight years of the most pro-clean energy president in American history, one that handed out billions of taxpayer dollars to green tech companies, the slice of the electricity market powered by renewables increased from a puny 4 percent to an only slightly-less-puny 7 percent.
That’s a lot of time and money for very little progress.
Democrats want more than clean fuels on the energy market. They want to shut down the fossil fuel industry. Their presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton explicitly promised a CNN Town Hall that she’s “going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
But she doesn’t want to stop with coal. Clinton wants to impose crushing new regulations on fracking, the innovative drilling technique that’s opened up huge new underground energy reserves. In a March debate, she promised, if elected, “I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.”
We’ve been warned.
A regulatory crackdown on fracking would spell the end of the domestic energy industry. Most of the easy-to-access energy pockets are depleted.
Democrats want to back up their fossil fuel crusade with the full force of the state. Many have been encouraging the Justice Department to investigate companies and others who have allegedly misled the public about climate change. “Alleged” is a very low bar, since anybody can accuse anyone of anything. In practice, any executive, scientist or policy expert who challenges the far left’s climate change dogma could face fines or jail time.
But renewables come nowhere near to meeting our country’s energy needs.
Americans will still need fossil fuels for cars, planes, and to power their homes and offices for decades to come. It’s ironic that most convention attendees arrived by plane, took cars to hotels and enjoyed an air-conditioned convention center, all thanks to the fossil fuels they spent days denouncing.
If Democrats are successful in their attempt to crush domestic oil and gas, Americans won’t switch to renewables, they’ll just be forced to buy traditional energy from abroad, including from Russia, Venezuela and Iran, financially fueling those countries’ political mischief.
So let’s call the Democratic plan what it is: A full-employment act for despots and terrorists.
The Democratic vision of liberating the country from fossil fuels was on full display at this month’s nominating convention. Their vision is pure fantasy, completely detached from the realities of the modern energy market and society’s needs.”
The other topic is guns.
As recently as June 16, Clinton stated, “I believe weapons of war have no place on our streets. We may have our disagreements on gun safety regulations, but we should all be able agree on a few things. If the FBI is watching you for suspected terrorist links, you shouldn’t be able to just go buy a gun with no questions asked. You shouldn’t be able to exploit loopholes and evade criminal background checks by buying online or at a gun show. And yes, if you’re too dangerous to get on a plane, you are too dangerous to buy a gun in America.”
In the past month, the United States has seen more than its share of multiple-murder shootings of police officers, blacks, whites—it doesn’t seem to produce any singular victim. But not a single one of those shootings in the United States seem to be the result of racial cults, terrorists, white supremacists or black haters. They have been carried out by individuals who would not have been barred under any other existing or proposed law from purchasing the guns they used in their mass shootings.
President Obama made it difficult at times to buy regular ammunition for the hunting rifles, the target-practicing handguns and rifles and some other recreational type of cartridges that are as common as the .22, mostly used for hunting.
Clinton seems to follow the thinking of “If they can’t get the ammunition, they can’t shoot the people.”
That kind of thinking may hurt those who like to hunt or target shoot, but it didn’t do anything to keep down the number of murders or mass shootings in this country.
If there is a way to detect who these terrorists are in advance and if the feds can find a way to detect these mass-shooters, then I am all in favor of moving forward.
But when it comes to messing with the Bill of Rights and painting everyone in this country with the same paintbrush, then this country isn’t free anymore.
Two other issues that have shown up on the Clinton/Democratic platform and are true causes of concern are the plans for immigration reform and debt-free college, perhaps two of the most people-affecting subjects out there.
Should college be free? That would be great. The U.S. would at least move several steps up the ladder toward being the most-educated country in the world. Lord knows we are nowhere near the top now.
But the concern is who is going to pay for free college.
First of all, there are millions of Americans out there who owe billions of dollars in debts that are being counted on by banks, for-profit organizations, the universities and colleges themselves and don’t forget the federal loans. What are these institutions of higher education going to do if debt is forgiven?
Who is going to fund these institutions of research?
The costs associated with colleges and universities are soaring and are already outrageous. Who is going to absorb the billion of dollars each year that are issued by the feds and the banks and the savings and loans to pay these bills? Where do the salaries of instructors, professors, associates and administrations come from? Where will all the research dollars come from if there are no matching funds? Who pays the upkeep and maintenance? How about the janitors and dorm monitors?
And then there is immigration reform. This is a topic that has been under discussion now for decades and not much has been done because “the people” haven’t wanted to do anything. That hasn’t changed.
Obama made it illegal for undocumented aliens to go to college, so all that has been accomplished there is that there are more undocumented aliens who don’t have high school or college degrees. Has that cut down on the number of illegals on welfare or those having children in the United States, those collecting benefits as unemployed and underemployed? No. We are paying for their welfare, their health care and their children, who are United States citizens for no reason other than their mother went into labor while in the United States.
Is this reform? Is letting the millions of illegal aliens who are in the United States now remain a kind of immigration reform? I think not. Tell us, Mrs. Clinton, what is and how are you going to accomplish this and pay for the health care of these people who are here illegally while forcing the American families who can’t afford good health care to stand in line behind these undocumented workers.
If you can take care of the American citizens first, then the others, you are indeed a miracle worker like Mr. Trump, who thinks he is the only person we need to turn these United States into a worry-free Shangri-La.
Take the words of Vice President Joe Biden referring to the promises of Donald Trump and add the words of Hillary Clinton and you have the phrase, “GIVE ME A BREAK.”
The two things Clinton is saying that hold truth are that “We don’t need a dictator to take care of us all,” and the only way we will succeed is “working together.”
The annual Rio Blanco County Fair moves into full operation this evening and runs through the livestock sale on Saturday evening.
If you ever thought our youths and teenagers are next to useless individuals and that future generations are doomed, you need to stop in at the fairgrounds in Meeker over the next couple of days and you will see a far different look at America’s teens than you see on television.
A large percentage of our Meeker and Rangely-area youths are involved in 4-H or FFA projects of all kinds, and many of the youths are involved in more than one or two, ranging from care of livestock, photography, quilting, canning, etc.
See ya there!
