No intellectually engaged person on the planet wishes to prolong the use of fossil fuels any longer than absolutely necessary due to the energy production impact on the planet. Yet to blatantly lie about the near-term benefits of green energy in order to force major change is an inexcusable injustice.
Yes, the sun and the wind are essentially free sources of energy. But what happens when the sun and the wind are unavailable? Yes, natural gas and coal have a material cost as well as a negative carbon impact on the planet. But they offer a reliable source of energy not yet available from green sources. Who in our country would say yes to “Hey, when the sun and the wind are unavailable or aren’t enough to meet demand, would you mind if we shut off your energy power sources for a few hours or days?” Okay, all that food you just bought at Trader Joes….gone. The pipes froze and burst causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage are just a couple examples of what one might expect without reliable sources of energy.
The plan must be comprehensive and lead to the result we want without making outrageously ridiculous demands. For example, would you be okay with years of 50% increases in your energy bills to supplement your energy producers need to buy energy on the spot market until the technology is economically viable to store energy produced by green sources when supply exceeds demand?
To effectively educate yourself further please read this brief editorial piece from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and share your thoughts.
Where are the green energy savings?
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL There’s a major disconnect between what renewable energy backers promised and the current cost of electricity.
One of the justifications for green energy mandates is that solar and wind power are cheap. Carbon Brief, a climate-focused website, triumphantly declared that solar energy is “cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries.”
Putting aside the massive subsidies for renewables that make this true in places, there’s an intuitive appeal to this claim. Natural gas and coal cost money. The sun and wind are available for everyone. If the cost of building a solar or wind plant is cheap or heavily subsidized, power costs to the consumer should theoretically come down.
Nevada, like many states, has embraced this idea. The legislature and voters have determined that the state generate 50% of its power from renewable sources by 2030. But the promised savings haven’t materialized. Consumers have been protesting soaring power bills for months.
It’s not just here. California has long been one of the most aggressive states in pursuing green energy. But its electricity rates are 80% higher than the national average. Things are so bad that its three largest utilities want to charge consumers variable rates based on income.
The same thing is happening around the world. The United Kingdom spent years building off – shore wind farms. Surely, its electricity prices plummeted as a result. Nope. It now has some of the highest power prices in Europe.
The reason is no mystery. Solar and wind plants can produce cheap power, but they can’t produce reliable power. That’s a problem because people aren’t fans of rolling blackouts. To keep the power on, utilities have to rely on natural gas, coal or nuclear plants. Hydropower is great, but hardly scalable.
Having to build, maintain and run a backup power plant significantly reduces the cost savings that comes from not needing to purchase fuel for solar and wind plants. There’s more. Solar and wind power plants are often cheaper when they are producing power. This, along with the cost of complying with new regulations, has led to many conventional power plants closing.
But when solar and wind stop producing, utilities have to buy power on the spot market. And with less conventional power being generated, those prices can spike to extreme levels.
They’re so high that NV Energy says it will save money by spending $350 million to build two natural gas turbines that will run fewer than 700 hours a year. Green energy advocates promised cheap power. Look at your bill. They haven’t delivered. The technology isn’t there yet.
Liberals, Progressives and even middle-of-the-road Democrats, if you are interested in the truth read on. If you have no interest and just wish to live in your CNN, NBC, MSNBC, et al, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden “we are always right and conservatives are nothing but hate mongering, gun toting, racist savages” bunker then please go back to whatever it was you were doing. But, if you believe we cannot go on spending trillions we do not have, then let’s talk.
First, spend three minutes reading this editorial piece from the Las Vegas Review Journal as a primer.
WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING
Inflation Reduction Act Will Add to the Deficit
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Massive government spending programs typically cost more than projected. At some point, one might even call it a pattern.
The latest example is the ill-named Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats rammed through last August. The main thrust of the legislation was to push a radical green agenda. It included consumer tax credits for electric vehicles and roof-top solar. The bill gave corporations access to hundreds of billions in tax credits for clean energy projects. It also provided the U.S. Department of Energy $12 billion to craft a new loan program for replacing and upgrading energy infrastructure.
Democrats wanted to convince the public that massive subsidies for otherwise unattractive renewable energy projects would reduce the nation’s debt. The bill also boosted funding for the IRS. In theory, increased enforcement would increase tax collections.
That was supposed to net the government $130 billion over 10 years. The legislation raised corporate taxes by more than $200 billion. It allowed Medicare to negotiate prices of prescription drugs. The Tax Foundation projected drug pricing provisions would save almost $300 billion over the decade.
At the time, the White House estimated the bill would reduce the deficit by $300 billion over the next decade. President Joe Biden declared, “We’re cutting the deficit to fight inflation by having the wealthy and big corporations pay part of their fair share.” Hold on to your hats, but that’s not happening. Shocker.
“Originally, this was supposed to be a deficit reducer, but now it has flipped. Instead of reducing the debt, it will add to it,” Kent Smetters, the faculty director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Budget Model, said. He projects the bill will add $750 billion to the defi cit.
Why? Because people respond to incentives. The bill didn’t include caps on many tax credit provisions. Individuals and companies are rushing to take advantage of that “free money.” For instance, Tesla reduced its prices to make its vehicles eligible for the tax credit.
The costs of the tax credits were initially projected to be under $390 billion. Penn Wharton’s model now suggests the credits will total more than $1 trillion. The cost of the electric vehicle tax credit alone is now likely to top the initial estimate for all the tax credits.
The revenue raising provisions face challenges, too. Republicans have opposed hiring new IRS agents. Analysts are unsure when a new 15 percent corporate minimum tax will start producing revenue as companies use COVID losses to offset taxes. Lawsuits may prevent Medicare from negotiating drug prices.
Democrats can cover their ears if they like, but reducing the deficit is going to require spending restraint, not using statistical games to low-ball the cost of the cost of new green handouts.
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
So, when you had control of all of government, like you did recently, why didn’t you raise taxes enough to cover all your spending programs and pay for our national debt service? The rich can afford it, right? Millennials won’t need as much Social Security or Medicare, right?
You want to cut defense spending while the Chinese, Russians, Iranians and North Koreans are gunning for us with everything they have. Is that a gamble you are honestly willing to make?
You are not doing ANY of these things because…they are political suicide!
So, instead, we are very s-l-o-w-l-y committing financial suicide as a nation. Because, by the time we drum up enough political will to actually tax the right amount and reduce spending to the right amount to not completely implode our economy and form of government, it will be too late. When the debt service cost on the enormity of the national debt exceed our ability to pay, when combined with our rapidly worsening and completely out of control spending, it will exceed the aggregate total of the wealth of everyone in our nation. The economy will cease to function as all of the invested wealth (that’s everyone’s, EVERYONE’S, the wealthy, your 401K, my retirement savings, everyone’s) will not be enough to service the debt, support current government spending and invest enough to create the jobs necessary to sustain positive economic activity.
So, what must we do? Simple, come together before it’s too late, and develop a long term plan that makes everyone unhappy but averts complete disaster.
Mortgages for those who cannot afford them and “taxation” without legislative mandate. More blind and unadvisable financial market moves by the clueless Biden Administration.
While we in the US wring our hands and whine about how miserable our record is in reducing carbon emissions, the rest of the world is thumbing their nose at the problem. While we build massive solar and wind energy facilities and work to scrub clean what little CO2 is oozing from our remaining traditional electric generating facilities, the world is building coal-fired plants at an increasing pace (see below).
Coal capacity climbs worldwide despite promises to slash it
SIBI ARASU Associated Press
Apr 9, 2023
The capacity to burn coal for power went up in 2022 despite global promises to phase down the fuel that’s the biggest source of planet-warming gases in the atmosphere, according to a new report.
Steam rises from the coal-fired power plant Nov. 2, 2022, in Niederaussem, Germany.
Michael Probst, Associated Press
The coal fleet grew by 19.5 gigawatts last year, enough to light up around 15 million homes, with nearly all newly commissioned coal projects in China, according to a report by Global Energy Monitor, an organization that tracks a variety of energy projects around the globe.
That 1% increase comes at a time when the world needs to retire its coal fleet four and a half times faster to meet climate goals, the report said. In 2021, countries around the world promised to phase down the use of coal to help achieve the goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).
“The more new coal projects come online, the steeper the cuts and commitments need to be in the future,” said Flora Champenois, the report’s lead author and the project manager for GEM’s Global Coal Plant Tracker.
A young boy plays on a hill called “Teletubbies Hill,” a locally popular tourist attraction, as the chimneys of Suralaya coal power plant loom in the background, Jan. 8 in Cilegon, Indonesia.
Dita Alangkara, Associated Press
New coal plants were added in 14 countries and eight countries announced new coal projects. China, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Zimbabwe were the only countries that both added new coal plants and announced new projects. China accounted for 92% of all new coal project announcements.
China added 26.8 gigawatts and India added about 3.5 gigawatts of new coal power capacity to their electricity grids. China also gave clearance for nearly 100 gigawatts of new coal power projects with construction likely to begin this year.
But “the long term trajectory is still towards clean energy,” said Shantanu Srivastava, an energy analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis who is based in New Delhi. Srivastava said the pandemic and the war in Ukraine temporarily drove some nations toward fossil fuels.
Steam rises from a power plant located by the Turow lignite coal mine Jan. 15, 2022, near the town of Bogatynia, Poland.
Petr David Josek, Associated Press
In Europe, where the Russian invasion of Ukraine meant a scramble for alternative energy sources and droughts stifled hydropower, the continent saw only a minor increase in coal use.
Others went the other way. There were significant shutdowns in the U.S. where 13.5 gigawatts of coal power was retired. It’s one of 17 countries that closed plants in the past year.
With nearly 2,500 plants around the world, coal accounts for about a third of the total amount of energy installation globally. Other fossil fuels, nuclear energy and renewable energy make up the rest.
To meet climate goals set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, coal plants in rich countries need to be retired by 2030 and coal plants in developing countries need to be shut down by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency. That means around 117 gigawatts of coal needs to be retired every year, but only 26 gigawatts was retired in 2022.
“At this rate, the transition away from existing and new coal isn’t happening fast enough to avoid climate chaos,” said Champenois.
Srivastava added that it’s important to make sure the millions employed in coal and other dirty industries are not left behind when transitioning to clean energy, although that gets more difficult the more coal projects get locked in.
“Every day we delay a transition to clean energy,” Srivastava said, “it not only makes it harder to achieve climate goals but it also makes the transition more expensive.”
While we build and sell increasing numbers of electric-powered vehicles (which will create a couple new, difficult to solve problems) we continue to place ourselves at the mercy of the world largest oil producers. We have the capacity to out produce these fascist, authoritarian, terrorist-supporting governments and vastly diminish their geopolitical threats and war-making ability while reducing the pain our citizens are experiencing in having to choose between gas to drive to work and food for their children. All while simultaneously marching effectively to vastly, vastly reduced carbon emissions in this country in the next 10-15 years. WE CAN DO BOTH but choose not to for strictly political reasons! This as the Saudis are spending billions of our oil money on creating, of all silly things, a competing professional golf tour; while the Iranians are sponsoring terrorism; and the Russians spend billions of their oil-riches making war on the innocents of Ukraine.
Recently the Saudis decided to reduce oil production to raise oil/gas prices and fuel global inflationary pressures yet again (see this article below – Saudis, other oil giants announce surprise production cuts ) We are powerless to do anything about it because we, the Biden Administration, choose to dramatically constrain oil drilling and production on this continent because he fears the progressive left will abandon him for the 2024 election.
The rest of the world secretly laughs at our weakness and ineptitude in using the resources necessary to end this global extortion by these narcissistic, self-serving tyrants. Again, this can all be done while we pour billions upon billions into technology and innovation to both reduce carbon emissions and create the means to mitigate its effects on the planet.
Once we have assumed a leadership position and can control global oil pricing, we can squeeze the Chinese, Indians, Indonesians, et al into a descending not increasing number of coal-fired electric production facilities. We can make natural gas, a far cleaner resource, a more economic fuel by reducing the global price below that of coal as we incentivize these countries to go solar and wind production and have a massively greater impact on CO2 emissions in the next 10-15 years then focusing on what will be diminishing returns here from their domestically focused protests.
Saudis, other oil giants announce surprise production cuts
• ASSOCIATED PRESS
• Apr 2, 2023
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers on Sunday announced surprise cuts totaling up to 1.15 million barrels per day from May until the end of the year, a move that could raise prices worldwide.
Higher oil prices would help fill Russian President Vladimir Putin’s coffers as his country wages war on Ukraine and force Americans and others to pay even more at the pump amid worldwide inflation.
It was also likely to further strain ties with the U.S., which has called on Saudi Arabia and other allies to increase production as it tries to bring prices down and squeeze Russia’s finances.
Saudi Aramco engineers pass by a gas turbine generator at Khurais oil field during a tour for journalists June 28, 2021, about 93 miles east-northeast of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Amr Nabil, Associated Press
The production cuts alone could push U.S. gasoline prices up by roughly 26 cents per gallon, in addition to the usual increase that comes when refineries change the gasoline blend during the summer driving season, said Kevin Book, managing director of Clearview Energy Partners LLC. The Energy Department calculates the seasonal increase at an average of 32 cents per gallon, Book said.
So with an average U.S. price now at roughly $3.50 per gallon of regular, according to AAA, that could mean gasoline over $4 per gallon during the summer.
However, Book said there are a number of complex variables in oil and gas prices. The size of each country’s production cut depends on the baseline production number it is using, so the cut might not be 1.15 million. It also could take much of the year for the cuts to take effect. Demand could fall if the U.S. enters a recession caused by the banking crisis. But it also could increase during the summer as more people travel.
Even though the production cuts are only about 1% of the roughly 100 million barrels of oil the world uses per day, the impact on prices could be big, Book said.
“It’s a big deal because of the way oil prices work,” he said. “You are in a market that is relatively balanced. You take a small amount away, depending on what demand does, you could have a very significant price response.”
The Saudi Energy Ministry said its own reduction of 500,000 barrels per day would be made in coordination with some OPEC and non-OPEC members, without naming them. The cuts are in addition to a reduction announced last October that infuriated the Biden administration.
The ministry described the move as a “precautionary measure” aimed at stabilizing the oil market. The cuts represent less than 5% of Saudi Arabia’s average production of 11.5 million barrels per day in 2022.
Iraq said it would reduce production by 211,000 barrels per day, the United Arab Emirates by 144,000, Kuwait by 128,000, Kazakhstan by 78,000, Algeria by 48,000 and Oman by 40,000. The announcements were carried by each country’s state media.
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, meanwhile, said Moscow would extend a voluntary cut of 500,000 until the end of the year, according to remarks carried by the state news agency Tass. Russia had announced the unilateral reduction in February after Western countries imposed price caps.
All are members of the so-called OPEC+ group of oil exporting countries, which includes the original Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries as well as Russia and other major producers. There was no immediate statement from OPEC itself.
The cuts announced in October — of some 2 million barrels a day — had come on the eve of U.S. midterm elections in which soaring prices were a major issue. President Joe Biden vowed at the time that there would be “consequences,” and Democratic lawmakers called for freezing cooperation with the Saudis.
Both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia denied any political motives in the dispute.
Since those cuts, oil prices have trended down. Brent crude, a global benchmark, was trading around $80 a barrel at the end of last week, down from around $95 in early October, when the earlier cuts were agreed.
Analysts Giacomo Romeo and Lloyd Byrne at Jefferies said in a research note that the new cuts should allow for “material” reductions to OPEC inventory earlier than expected and could validate recent warnings from some traders and analysts that demand for oil is weakening.
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Gulf expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, said the Saudis are determined to keep oil prices high enough to fund ambitious mega-projects linked to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 plan to overhaul the economy.
“This domestic interest takes precedence in Saudi decision-making over relationships with international partners and is likely to remain a point of friction in U.S.-Saudi relations for the foreseeable future,” he said.
Saudi Arabia’s state-run oil giant Aramco recently announced record profits of $161 billion from last year. Profits rose 46.5% when compared with the company’s 2021 results of $110 billion. Aramco said it hoped to boost production to 13 million barrels a day by 2027.
The decades-long U.S.-Saudi alliance has come under growing strain in recent years following the 2018 killing of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S.-based journalist, and Saudi Arabia’s war with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
As a candidate for president, Biden had vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over the Khashoggi killing, but as oil prices rose after his inauguration, he backed off. He visited the kingdom last July in a bid to patch up relations, drawing criticism for sharing a fist bump with Crown Prince Mohammed.
Saudi Arabia has denied siding with Russia in the Ukraine war, even as it has cultivated closer ties with both Moscow and Beijing in recent years. Last week, Aramco announced billions of dollars of investment in China’s downstream petrochemicals industry.
The Biden Administration’s recently announced federal budget plan is an inane continuation of the feckless string of fiscal proposed actions from both parties. From the Right we have tax reduction with no fiscal constraint and from the Left we have tax increases with no fiscal constraint. Tax reduction plans come with no real effort to reduce federal spending because the Right knows talk of reduced spending spells political suicide. Tax increase plans from the Left (a prime example is represented in the commentary piece included with this post) represent supposed incremental tax offsets to endless spending increases proposed and enacted by the Left that vastly exceed the new revenues and further ballooning the deficit.
When will taxpayers demand fiscally responsible behavior by the President(s) and Congress? The answer is never as long as most taxpayers, and non-taxpaying citizens/residents, continue to enjoy the bounty of out-of-control federal spending with absolutely no reduced services or pocketbook pain.
The top 1%, that Biden proposes we raid again, cannot rally enough political clout to either sway who is elected to Congress or the Presidency or to enlighten taxpayers to the catastrophic outcome for our country when tax burden and debt burden crush the economy’s ability to produce job creation and wealth creation. Where then, when the entirety of the top 1%’s wealth has been totally confiscated, will the Left turn to fund their woke agenda?
The Heritage Foundation’s Preston Brashers’ piece below both expertly and concisely explains.
FISCALLY UNSUSTAINABLE
Commentary: Biden’s budget calls for more plundering of the American taxpayer
PRESTON BRASHERS Mar 17, 2023
Farmers know a thing or two about stewardship. If they don’t take care of their land, eventually it will cost them their livelihoods. Unlike farmers, who work to steadily build a better future, Vikings would plunder villages, taking all they could carry away before moving on to their next target.
President Joe Biden’s budgets take the latter approach, going after more and more of the American people’s hard-earned treasure every year.
Last year, his budget sought an additional $2.5 trillion in taxes beyond the $55.8 trillion in revenue that was forecast to be collected over 10 years. His latest budget is even more rapacious. The president is calling for $65.2 trillion in taxes and other revenues – nearly $7 trillion more than his last mega-budget.
Yet even with all the extra spoils, Biden’s budget would somehow manage to spend $17 trillion more than it would collect. This would shackle the American people with an additional $120,000 in federal debt per household by the end of the decade.
While the left portrays America’s billionaires as a bottomless well of tax revenues, the government could confiscate every penny of wealth from all the billionaires on the Forbes 400 list, seizing their companies’ assets and bankrupting them overnight, and that would barely cover half of Biden’s newest round of proposed increase in taxes. It wouldn’t even cover 5% of Biden’s total 10-year budget.
Clearly, all of Biden’s tax hikes can’t be limited to the very rich. Inevitably, they will reach the doorstep of every working American.
The Biden budget document repeatedly boasts it is “fiscally responsible.” The truth is, it is unsustainable, and it would doom the middle class to massive future tax increases.
Biden’s budget would allow across-the-board tax hikes by permitting most of the Trump individual tax cuts to expire. However, the biggest taxpayer raids would directly target upper- and upper-middle-income taxpayers. The collateral damage would be devastating and widespread, reducing investment, stifling entrepreneurship and leaving fewer good jobs for all Americans.
Biden’s proposed tax hikes on the upper middle class are a foreboding sign for the middle class. In the days of the Vikings, if a richer nearby town was hit with repeated raids, surrounding villages had even more reason to fear they could be the next target.
Biden’s raid on taxpayers would hit in several waves.
Under Biden’s plan, federal taxes on wages for upper- and upper-middle-income Americans would rise from 37% to 44.6%. If they invested some of their after-tax wages in stocks, they would face a 28% tax on any profits at the corporate level (up from 21%) and up to 44.6% tax at the investor level (up from 23.8%).
President Joe Biden attends a press conference after a trilateral meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during the AUKUS summit in San Diego on Monday.
And that’s just the federal income taxes. Factoring in inflation and multiple layers of state and local taxes, many investors would be left with none or almost none of their investment gains after the government ransacking. It’s insulting that Biden refers to this as their “fair share.”
Small businesses – and those who rely on them – wouldn’t escape the wrath of Biden’s new taxes. Currently, small business active income is exempt from the net investment income tax, a surtax applied to investment income. Biden’s plan would extend this tax to directly hit most small business income and would raise the surtax from 3.8% to 5%.
Even death may not protect businessowners from Biden’s new taxes. The president’s proposal would nearly triple the number of taxpayers subject to the 40% death tax in 2026. If the deceased owned a business, the tax would apply to any increase in the value of a business since it was started or acquired. These changes would punish families for experiencing tragedy and force more owners of family businesses and farms to liquidate their assets to pay the steep taxes.
When businesses and farms are ruined, it’s not just the owners who suffer. Store clerks, janitors and laborers will struggle to put food on the table when their employers are forced out of business.
For too long the president and Congress have treated taxpayers as though they should be allowed to keep only what the government decides, as though taxpayers serve at the pleasure of the government. This is precisely backward.
The government exists – at the consent of the governed – to defend us against threats to life, liberty and property, not to take our liberty and property in a less violent way.
Preston Brashers is a senior policy analyst in The Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget who focuses on tax policy. His research centers on tax and fiscal reforms to promote economic growth, simplify taxes, and reduce the role of the federal government in Americans’ everyday lives.
In reviewing the RTD February 10 article “How Richmond will spend $155 million in pandemic relief aid” I find it remarkable that virtually none of the funds were spent preparing the city for what will doubtlessly be the next pandemic.
Where is the funding to improve the delivery of healthcare in the city? Funding to attract more Primary Care Physicians, Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners to establish practices in the city. The creation of new, as well as improving existing, clinics for those with limited or no medical financial resources.
Most of us have experienced the disappointment of how increasing demands on healthcare professionals have led to longer waits for services. Clearly the trend is disturbingly more akin to the extraordinarily long waits experienced every day in countries with nationalized, single payer healthcare systems. Yet our own state legislature just this session refused to act to increase the independent availability of Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners by reducing the extraordinary amount of time these highly trained professionals must remain under the total supervision of a licensed physician. Might the AMA lobby be responsible for the failure of this legislation to reduce future physician competition?
And why were no funds allocated to helping school children recover from the devastating effects of the pandemic on learning? Clearly these children could use some rescuing using the resources provisioned by the “American Rescue Plan Act” as the source of this funding.
Finally, this funding plan (i.e., $2 million in city beautification efforts, $9 million to purchase and develop the James River Branch Trail as well as other proposed irrational spending where any reasonable person might struggle with how this relates to the pandemic) is deficit spending; vaper funds with no taxing source that will eventually fall on future generations to pay.
It seems, where democratic capitalism exists successfully, there will always be an appeal by fringe elements for so-called Democratic Socialism. Some call it a cry for an “even playing field”.
What does an “even playing field” really mean? Does it suppose all, or nearly all, humanity might have bestowed upon them a life in a bucolic setting devoid of discrimination, inequality, injustice, violence and aggression? One where all would be engaged in some government preordained endeavor that provides adequate housing, food, healthcare, public transport, furnishings, clothing, as well as other essential, and even sundry needs or wants such as occasional entertainment opportunities? Essentially, all life’s basic requirements plus?
All of these blessings bestowed for no other reason than you exist. All provided equally to eliminate jealousy or envy. Quite possibly all extraneous wealth would be confiscated. All second amendment rights suspended, once a full and final constitutional amendment is approved, and all firearms confiscated as well.
Might all of this suggested reality be conceived, organized and provisioned by some form of government entity? All provided with no regard for one’s education or other forms of qualifications, mental or physical capacity, heredity/race, age, sex, on and on? Is this an all-in assumption that everyone has the same needs for mental stimulation, achievement, recognition of accomplishment and would be forever happy with every player on the “team” receiving a “participation trophy”; all while declaring “winning” a false God?
Wait! Stop! Of course, of course all of these are silly notions that would never, ever have even a prayer of success given the truth of human nature.
So what do these “even playing field” types really want? Quite possibly they want Democratic Socialism. A system, where attempted, that has failed to eliminate poverty and injustice while dooming its citizens to a life short of its potential. A system that would eventually whittle away any sort of achievement of wealth (either created or inherited) with withering taxes, and the stifling of innovation that would ultimately lead to the destruction of our capitalistic democracy and all the amazing benefits such a system provides for so many.
Are some who underachieve marginalized by our system, well, yes. Our system, however imperfect, has been the beacon of hope to the entire world for over two hundred years. The beacon that tells of an opportunity to toil mightily and take risk in order to achieve something close to one’s potential while reaping the rewards that no other system can offer. We should scrap this entirely to achieve this so called “even playing field”?
Can more be done to even the playing field? One would assume so. But would it ever be enough to satisfy the critics of our system and the decriers of a system that produces both wealth and poverty (no different than any other system conceived or attempted)? A system that relies primarily on earnest effort and achievement. Yet one that includes a substantial safety net for those who truly need it and that totals in excess of a trillion dollars in wealth transfer programs each year.
A great deal has been done in the past 100 years, with a significant uptick in new entitlement and anti-discrimination programs since the 1960s. These entitlements amounted to trillions and trillions of new wealth transfer programs enacted. Funding made possible by a system that generates trillions in wealth creation through the magic of capitalism, without which, aid programs, both public and privately charitable, would not be nearly as well financed.
All poverty and injustice cannot be completely eradicated by any governmental/political system. But more can be and is done by our system; more than could ever be achieved in a system of socialism. Socialistic countries like France are proof of that undeniable fact. Regardless of how “socialistic” their system of government is, there is constant social unrest, strikes, protests and rioting. Unrest because whatever is done is never enough.
Once in a great while you read something that affects you profoundly. Something that simply states the values you hold dearest.
“After a few minutes, as if he had needed the moment of silence to in order to gather himself, Ulysses continued.
-I am of the opinion, Professor, that everything of value in this life must be earned. That it should be earned. Because those who are given something of value without having to earn it are bound to squander it. I believe one should earn respect. One should earn trust. One should earn the love of a woman, and the right to call oneself a man. And one should also earn the right to hope. At one time I had a wellspring of hope – a wellspring that I had not earned. And not knowing what it was worth, on the day I left my wife and child, I squandered it. So over these last eight and a half years, I have learned to live without hope. Just a surely as Cain lived without it once he entered the land of Nod.
To live without hope, said Woolly to himself as he nodded his head and wiped the tears from his eyes. to live without hope in the land of Nod.”
As a dedicated voter, I found encouragement in correspondent Judy Davis’ letter “Light a Candle”.
We have suffered with uninspiring leadership at a national level over the past four administrations and eight congressional sessions. Red lines crossed with no consequences, instigating seditious riots over false claims, and overspending creating out of control inflation are just a few possible headlines from a very unfortunate long list of disappointments.
Yet where are inspiring national leaders to be found willing to endure relentless 24/7/365 intrusive scrutiny, deceptive campaign messaging and blatant bias from a rudderless fourth estate?
How do we find electable national leadership candidates with the courage to truly bring a proven bipartisan foundation to the task? Leaders representing with equal respect those who pay no taxes, those who pay most of the taxes, and everyone in between. Where are the leaders who will emulate FDR, Eisenhower and Kennedy, elected by the greatest generation, as well as Reagan by the Boomers?
Unfortunately it will take more than lighting a candle to return greatness to the Whitehouse. I will need to read Ms. Davis’ letter every day to keep the faith.
Curt Rasmussen
Glen Allen VA
Letter Submitted 7-12-2022
Once and for All
Once and for all, AR (as in AR-15) does not stand for “Assault Rifle” or “Automatic Rifle”. The A represents the name of the first manufacturer (Armalite) of this style of rifle.
The AR-style rifle that a typical American can legitimately buy in a gun shop is a semi-automatic, single shot (a single trigger pull – a single round fired) firing mechanism. True assault rifles typically have an automatic fire option (a single trigger pull – multiple rounds fired). These weapons are difficult for the typical citizen to own. Legal purchase of an automatic rifle takes months to a year to complete the approval process and costs several thousand dollars.
Obviously there is criminal access and no amount of regulation can seemingly curtail criminal access in this country as well as around the world. Military and law enforcement agencies are typically authorized for automatic weapons. The federal agency ATF controls access per federal regulation.
So please stop calling AR-15s, AR-10, etc. “Assault Rifles”. You are further misleading the poorly informed and stigmatizing a perfectly legitimate sports rifle that is no different in its firing mechanism than any other semi-automatic sports rifle legally used by millions of Americans for a variety of purposes, including hunting, competition shooting, personal or family protection and as a hedge against tyranny.
So, for those of you who continue to call AR-style rifles “assault rifles”, you are revealing your ignorance about the world of firearms thus diminishing the veracity of any point you are attempting to make. If you wish to continue to opine about the illegal use of sporting rifles by the criminally insane, do so in a fashion that gives the appearance of knowledge and thus a hint of credibility.
I am binge watching on-demand TV program “Body Cam”. So interesting and vitally important. Every American should be required to watch at least the first three episodes. Anyone with a heart and brain will then be hooked. So enlightening and illustrative of what our policemen, policewomen and their departments are truly about; to protect and serve. The danger they endure every day is mind blowing when you see the undeniable truth of the body camera footage. These heroes truly deserve our respect and support.
It also demonstrates how we have dumped the issue of mental illness in their laps. State governments must step up and fully fund programs to assist those most seriously ill. So many are potentially dangerous to themselves, their loved ones, the public and most egregiously to the police. Police who truly wish to help yet do not have the training and resources necessary to prevent potentially life-threatening escalation into crisis.
The Willow 