"Climate change" group has goal to raise costs for workingmen and their families

As much as I like to think that we Ozarkers have lots of common sense, there’s always something happening to discourage that thought.

The latest discouragement I ran across was back on Feb. 7 on page 2 of my favorite paper, out town’s weekly local paper, the Phelps County Focus.

“Citizens’ Climate Lobby looks to expand into Missouri’s Eighth District” was the headline. The news report told about a recent meeting of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby in our town as it seeks to gather support for federal legislation that it claims is needed to control our violent weather changes.

The paper quoted the state coordinator of the lobbying group, George Laur, as saying that the group is “growing rapidly” with a “goal this year of starting a chapter in all eight of Missouri’s congressional districts.” Once a chapter is up and running in the Eighth District, which includes Rolla and Phelps County, that goal will be met.

And that will allow the group to focus all its energy on legislation.

“A primary focus of Citizens’ Climate Lobby is passage of the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act,” the Focus reported. “If passed, the law would reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent in 12 years by making the extraction and burning of carbon more expensive.”

Reread that last part out loud: “ ... the law would reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent in 12 years by making the extraction and burning of carbon more expensive.”

Think about that.

These “citizen lobbyists” want to make gasoline so expensive that you will have trouble affording a tank of gas to get you to and from your job.

They want to make it difficult for Rolla Municipal Utilities and its associated in the MoPEP power supply group to generate electricity in coal-fired facilities.

They want to make Ameren’s natural gas higher than it is now.

Their goal of “making the extraction and burning of carbon more expensive” is a fancy-pants way of saying “making it difficult for you to avoid driving your car and heating your house.”

They are doing this because they “care” about nature. They don’t care about workingmen and their families. Men who are working for wages to get food on the table and shelter for their families are given no thought, I suspect, for most of these activists are likely employed or retired from the university or some other government agency.

The Citizens’ Climate Lobby is organizing to work hard to drive up energy costs and to make it difficult for wage-working people to make ends meet.

I hope there’s enough common sense in the Rolla, Phelps County and the Eighth District to make them give up.

I hope the Citizens’ Climate Lobby fails.--RDH

Do "they" control our local economy?

Our local weekly paper, the Phelps County Focus, posted a story on its website yesterday about the probability of a new Dollar General store coming to town. The Focus also posted a link to the story on its Facebook page. I follow the Focus website and Facebook page (and Twitter and Instagram), so I had the pleasure of reading the comments and reaction from readers.

Those comments indicate to me that most people are economically ignorant.

Most of the reaction from readers was of this order: “Oh, great, just what we need. ANOTHER damn Dollar General.”

Sprinkled in were comments like: “I’d rather they put in a Home Goods or Marshall’s.” There were even a couple I saw that said something on the order of this: “What they need to do is build a bigger Aldi’s.”

Now, to be sure, we already have two Dollar General stores in this town of about 20,000. Moreover, there is one in the first small town to our east, one in the first small town to our south and one in the first small town to our north. All of those are less than 20 miles away. West of us, the first Dollar General is about 30 miles away and in the next county.

Nevertheless, Dollar General’s presence here is plentiful.

My reaction is, “Well, yes, indeed, apparently we DO need a third Dollar General in our town. The marketing division of Dollar General very likely has figured out there is a market for another store. Dollar General is not going to invest money in building and stocking another store without knowing that data indicates its sales in the area will increase. That's the way free-market capitalism works.”

And, further, my reaction regarding the other suggestions, i.e., we NEED a Home Goods or Marshall’s store or we NEED a bigger Aldi’s, is that we do not need those. If we needed them, the companies would have built them. Instead, those companies have determined that the market in this area is insufficient in population and potential spending on their products for them to make money. We don’t NEED them enough for them to invest in bricks, mortar and inventory. That's the way free-market capitalism works.

I’m also concerned about how the readers/commenters used the word “they” as in “They need to build … .”

It sounds like the readers/commenters are talking about the local government when using the word “they.” It sounds like the readers/commenters believe “they,” perhaps the planning and zoning commission and the city council, make all these economic decisions.

Well, I guess in a way, that is partially true. Our city and county governments recently opened a new shopping center that was built with borrowed money that will be paid back with sales tax money through a program called tax increment financing.

So, our town doesn't really operate in a system of free-market capitalism. Our town has a kind of socialist government/business partnership that benefits from tax money spent eagerly by willing consumers. Thanks to that blended economy, we sales-tax payers have a new shopping center that will raise money for the next 20 years or so to pay back the bonds.

Maybe the readers/commenters understand this socialistic enterprise better than I do. 

Maybe they like it because it gave them a Menards and a TJMaxx. (And, earlier, a Kohl's and a Price Chopper).

Maybe what our town needs to do is just say no to a third Dollar General, raise the sales tax again and build another shopping center with a Home Goods, a Marshall's, an Olive Garden and anchored by a giant Aldi's. 

Maybe as a supporter of a free-market, capitalistic economy, I’m the economically ignorant one, after all. It appears that the country is headed away from my position, and my own little town seems to be filled with people who want to lead the way.
Obviously, they are wrong and I am right.--RDH

I haven't left my Southern Baptist church--yet

Last Sunday, I told the other old boys in our Sunday School class that if the Southern Baptist Convention did what it looked like they were going to do, that might be my last Sunday in that congregation.
Later in the discussion, I relented, so although the Southern Baptist Convention did indeed do what it looked like they were going to do, I will be in church this morning.
What they did was pass a resolution against something called the “alt-right” and against “Southern nationalism.”
Now, what I had heard before the convention was they were going to pass a resolution against nationalism. As I told the men in my Sunday School class, it looks to me like there is two choices, nationalism and globalism. I like my nation, the United States of America, and I don’t like globalism, which I take to mean a one-world government with a one-world currency and open borders and wide-open elections.
I’m not quite sure what “southern nationalism” is, nor am I sure what the “alt-right” is.
In my limited knowledge about the current political scene, I think southern nationalism means they want to reform the old Confederate States of America and secede.
I think the alt-right is a loose-knit movement of conservative people who believe in constitutional government, most authority given to the states and less to the federal government. There is apparently a spectrum of opinions about other things, such as race, and that’s where the Southern Baptists are poking their noses. Some of the alt-right, which is really an amorphous concept, like the tea party coalition was, have views defined as racist.
They don’t particularly like inter-racial dating or marriage for their children, they don’t like special consideration given to black people for college tuition simply because of their color, they don’t believe in reparations to Negro people because of slavery and they don’t buy the belief that cops are targeting black people.  All of these are today classed as racist beliefs and the Southern Baptist Convention, although founded before the Civil War because of the slavery issue, now has become progressive on racial issues, at least on paper.
The Southern Baptist Convention is losing numbers as older people die off and young people who grew up in Baptist churches quit going. It is harder and harder to get people into a church with a Southern history and a message that people are born in sin and need a Savior.
I think the Baptists are rebranding themselves. “Racial reconciliation” is a big deal to them, so they are going above and beyond to show Negroes they care about them. Last year, at the request of a black Texas pastor, they repudiated the Southern Cross flag, also known as the Confederate battle flag, and convention leaders said no true Christian should or would display the Confederate battle flag.
This year,at the request of the same pastor, they repudiated the idea of southern nationalism, an idea that has no chance of ever occurring anyway, so no repudiation is really needed. They also repudiated all ideas of the alt-right, many of which are right and good and are in keeping with the views of the Founding Fathers.
What the Southern Baptists did not repudiate was Black Lives Matter, an organization that does not seem to spurn violence and an organization with a website that I find un-American.
The Southern Baptists also did not repudiate the “antifa,” which is a left-wing organization as amorphous as the alt-right, but one that is not afraid to use violence.
I was surprised the Southern Baptists did not pass a resolution calling for the removal of Confederate monuments. Maybe that will come next year.
I also look over the years to come for the Southern Baptists to soften their opposition to abortion, at least returning to their old squishy position of being neither really for nor really against.
Eventually, I think, the Southern Baptists will take a formal position that Islam is equal in the eyes of God to Christianity.
Most of all, I look for the Southern Baptists to embrace same-sex relationships and marriages. I think that will be soon, perhaps within the next 10 years.
I am not ready to embrace the new theology that Jesus died on the cross for women’s reproductive rights, for the right of people of the same gender to have sex with each other, for special rights for non-whites and to show that all religions are equal.
So I will have withdrawn my membership in a Southern Baptist church before that happens. I won’t leave my church today or anytime soon, but I might start entering a motion at each business meeting that we withdraw as a church from the convention. After a few times of that, either I will leave or they’ll kick me out.--RDH

Offended? Let's ban some more things so you will feel better

There was news this past week about a complaint filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by a man who didn't like a co-worker's cap. The cap was emblazoned with the Gadsden flag, which is a drawing of a coiled snake and the words, "Don't Tread on Me." The Gadsden flag made the complainant uncomfortable and scared. He said the cap's message was racist, because the flag was designed by Christopher Gadsden during the Revolutionary War, and he was a slave owner, as were many men who founded and fought for this country.

This is an extension of the anti-Confederate flag outcry, more oversimplification of history for the oversimpletons. It is an effort to stamp out American history. Look for more to come, and keep in mind that the Stars and Stripes was once the flag of a slave-holding nation. It likely flew on the slave ships owned by wealthy New England traders. Even during the War for Southern Independence there were slaves in the North. They will eventually get to that flag, but first things first.

I haven't heard whether the EEOC has made a ruling, but I presume the sycophantic Southern Baptists are already at work drafting a resolution against the Gadsden flag. The Baptists have banned the Confederate flag on church property, including certain cemeteries in the South where Confederate dead await Resurrection Day, because it is a sin to offend other people. They use I Corinthinas 10:23-24 as their scriptural support: It says: " 'I have the right to do anything,' you say—but not everything is beneficial. 'I have the right to do anything'—but not everything is constructive. No one should seek their own good, but the good of others."

Because I believe scripture and want to follow it, I got to thinking about what other things the EEOC should prohibit in the workplace and the Southern Baptists should ban on church property. To the Confederate flag and the Gadsden flag, let's add these:

1. Pork, because it offends Muslims. Moreover, some bad people have been reportedly throwing packages of bacon at the front doors of mosques. That is undoubtedly a hate crime in the modern United States. Surely, that's enough to call for an end to pulled pork sandwiches, pork and beans and sausage biscuits. No Southern Baptist church should ever allow ham at a carry-in dinner ever again.

2. Barbecue grills and smokers, because these offend and frighten climate change believers. According to this new religion, whether you use charcoal or propane, you are burning a fossil fuel and that is thawing out the ice caps. If you truly love your family, your neighbor and the Lord, you will never serve them another charred hot dog.

3. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, George Washington, and the U.S. flag, because all of this American history stuff has slavery attached to it, which makes it frightening and offensive.

4. The pledge of allegiance and the national anthem, because love of country is idolatry, according to some sects, and besides, we're globalists, and these relics of the past promote nationalism, which is now a hate crime.

5. White cops, because any time they defend themselves, they hurt black people. In fact, after reading the new Black Lives Matter list of demands, I conclude that we need to do away with law and order entirely because law and order is racism.

6. Any definition of marriage as being only one man and one woman. Marriage should be between anyone that loves, such as two men, two women, two couples or a crowd of fans at the football stadium. I love my sweet little baby, Gracie, and she loves me, so modernists would approve of a marriage for us. Love wins, they say. It doesn't matter that Gracie is a standard poodle.

7. Missionaries from the U.S. to other nations who talk about Jesus Christ and the cross he died on to take away our sin, because their presence implies that the religions of Africa and Asia are not good enough for God or man. That preaching is offensive to Buddhists, Hindus and headhunters.

Oh, my, the list could go on and on: Southern accents, "Dixie," Dixieland jazz, Dixie cups, hunting and fishing, fast cars, guns--there is just so much offensiveness that needs the attention of the federal government and the Southern Baptists these days.

I am going to think more about what I can do today while I cook some pork on my charcoal grill and watch my Confederate flag in the breeze.

Voters should be property owners

Sometimes I think we need to get back to voting the way the Founding Fathers intended: The franchise should be for white, male property owners only.
OK, I'll relent and agree that the right to vote should not just be for white men. Any man of any color who has property should be allowed to vote.
OK, I'll compromise even further and say that the right to vote should be extended to women of any color, too.
So voting should be for any property owner.
I'm not going to relent on that point. I think people who have someting to lose, such as property, will take voting more seriously. They will take a little more time to do some research and make a prudent decision on voting.
The way things are now, it is easy to manipulate voters.
Couple of days ago, while driving home from work, I was listening to a ballgame on the radio, and in between innings when they play the ads,  I heard some political announcements.
I noticed a trend this year: You question whether your opponents are truly members of the party. This is true mostly of Republican candidates. You accuse them of being former Democrats or Democrats posing as Republicans.
Or you run ads that refute what your opponents are saying about you, which is that you are really a Democrat.
It's a wonderful game, even though it tells the poor voter nothing.
I try to be a good citizen and an intelligent, informed voter. It is difficult. The foundational principle of my voter prep is to pay no attention to the TV and radio ads. I rarely watch TV so those ads are easy to avoid.
I am old-timey so I turn to newspapers first, including digital formats. I also look at some blogs.  I go to see candidates when they come to town.
It is a lot of work, and it is tempting to say the heck with it and just put up with whatever or whoever happens.
Then I think about the folks who died in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and all the other wars, and I feel guilty. They all died for the cause of good government, honest government, responsive government, limited government. For me to fail to vote would be a betrayal of their sacrifice.
Our county clerk was interviwed by the editor of the local newspaper this past week aout election. She made a couple of points that I found interesting and worth sharing.
For one thing, she said she believes the best way to vote is with a printed paper ballot and an ink pen like we did when I was a new voter. She explained that a compuer speaks a language the average person, the "everyman," cannot understand.
"If the people say this is a very close race and the state law says we're supposed to have a recount, we need to have a system that allows 'everyman' to do that," our clerk, Pam Grow, said.
She also talked about so-called "disenfranchisement," a common complaint in the cities, especially.
What is disenfranhisement?
According to some people, a simple voter ID card with a picture of the voter on it, is disenfranchisement.
Are you disenfranchised if you don't know about an election? Are you responsibile at all to inform yourself about upcoming election dates?
Are you disenfranchised if you have to go to a polling place? Should you demand the right to vote at home?
Are you disenfranchised if you have to vote on election day only? Should you demand the right to vote any time or place you want.
Grow has a radical idea (for nowadays) that voters need to take some initiative and get themselves to the polling place. She ays voters need to understand that voting takes some time. "The public has been conditioned to think the voting process is intantaneous, and for people that feel the process isn't, they claim they are being "disenfranchised."
"It is not supposed to be instantaneous. If you can wait on the sidewalk for a rock concert, you can wait for the election judges to set up and do their jobs properly," Grow said.
Regarding the clamor for early voting, Grow says, "If you want to see the Rolling Stones, you go the night they're playing at the stadium."
Her logic makes good sense to me.  It is entirely reasonable to expect voters to get themselves to the polling place in the correct precinct on the scheduled election day. It is entirely reasonable to expect them to show an identification card, preferable one with a photograph.
I would just add that you also need to be a real property owner. That was reasonable to the Founders. It seems reasonable to me today.

Hold your nose and make a choice

The Republican National Convention is over, and we've been left with a questionable candidate.

The Democratic National Convention is setting up to begin, and Democrats will be left with a candidate that has clearly broken the law, but has been "cleared" by the FBI.

Not much of a choice for us, but one or the other will be sworn in come Jan. 20, 2017, whether by you like it or not.
                                                                                
A young man who I know well and love dearly has stated publicly that he will vote for neither. I don't know if he is sitting out the election or if he will waste his vote on a third party candidate.

He ought to know better.

His comments upset my wife so much that she could not sleep Friday night. She wrote the following and published it Saturday morning. I'm using it with her permission. I'll add my comments at the end.

It is almost 4:00 in the morning and I am wide awake. Why?? Because I am stewing about a "relative" that I thought was a fairly intelligent young man, and now he is proving that is certainly not the case.
He claims to not like either presidential candidate and will likely not bother to vote at all. I am frustrated that he can not understand that it is his patriotic duty to vote.
Some people may think I get too emotional about politics and take it too seriously. To them I say, "You're absolutely right!"
I think part of the problem in our country today is that people don't take politics seriously enough. How we vote and who we elect to run our country will not only affect our lives for the next four to eight years, but the entire future of America.
To me it is a "life and death" matter, because it could very well determine the life or death of our freedoms and our way of life. How we vote will determine the future we leave for the children of today.
If neither presidential candidate floats your boat, I'm sorry, but you need to put your big boy/girl britches on and get over it. Sometimes we have to not think of it as voting FOR a candidate, but rather voting AGAINST the greater of the two evils.
We just have two choices in our two-party system here in the USA. And if a third party should rear its ugly head, a vote for them would   actually be equal to a vote for the least desirable candidate. A third party candidate has zero chance of being elected, so you are throwing your vote away if you vote for them.
It all seems so simple to me, yet some people just do not seems to understand how important politics really is. It affects every single minute of every single day, every detail of everything we do. From the air we breathe, the cars we drive, the food we eat, the books we read, the schools and churches we attend, to the malls we shop in. Everything is affected in some way by politics because of the taxes we pay, EPA pollution regulations, FDA food inspection, import/export tariffs, federal/state/local funding of schools, tax incentives for businesses, censorship of our media, etc. Nothing is untouched in some way by the government.
So, yes, I am sitting here stewing instead of sleeping. But now that I have gotten this off of my chest I will try to go to sleep since it is now almost 5:00 am.
Good night, friends!! And for heavens sake, PLEASE VOTE in November!!

My wife and I grew up when we had a required class in high school called Civics. There we learned our responsibilities as citizens while also reviewing how our government worked. We also had to pass tests on the state constitution and the U.S. Constitution. Our American history classes taught us about the sacrifices that had been made to win and keep our liberty.

That young man also got good instruction both at school and at home, but for some reason it did not resonate with him.

Whether he or you like it or not, we have only two choices, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

And whether he or you like it or not, those candidates were chosen by people like you and me, Americans who cast votes in their state presidential primaries or who met in party caucuses.

The two party candidates were chosen in the American way, whether you like it or not.

Now you must honor all those historical figures like the Founding Fathers, and all those unknowns like the dead men you see in black-and-white battlefield pictures, and go to the voting booth in November and make a choice.

I know you don't like it that your favorite candidate, perhaps he was Ted Cruz, perhaps Bernie Sanders, was not picked, but that's the way it goes with our democratic-republican system.

My favorite candidate was not picked either. I supported Jefferson Davis for president.

So I am going to pick the lesser of two evils, based on the information I have from the mainstream media, from the free press and from the new media on the internet.

I know you don't like either candidate, but those are the two serious candidates on the ballot. Cruz's name won't be there, nor will Bernie's. And Jeff Davis is dead.

Go, be an American and vote.

I can see First Amendment danger clearly

A couple of seemingly unrelated news items caught my attention this past week.
First, the Iowa Civil Rights Commission announced it had changed its mind and would not require places of worship to allow self-identifying women who are actually men by birth, so-called transgender women, to use the women's restroom or transgender men to use the men's room.
Because of the commission's previous requirement to let men in women's restrooms, there had been some concern, enough for one Church of Christ to file a lawsuit. Churches would have been required to open up restrooms to all genders, the number of which has grown so far past the two that I learned as a boy that I can't keep track of them all.
The churches were concerned that the Iowa Civil Rights Commission would enforce a provision of the law that prohibits churches from making people feel unwelcome because of their sexual orientation. As many evangelical churches still teach that homosexuality is a sin against God, that provision of the law indicates that preachers may not speak against homosexuality.
The commission changed its brochures to note that places of worship are exempt from these provisions of the law. That new position, of course, could change with the printing of a new brochure.
So, in the United States of America, we are already beginning to see the possibility of government inserting itself into churches, despite the First Amendment.
The other news item that piqued my interest was from Moscow, where Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a set of anti-terrorism laws that include bans on evangelism.
Nobody, not Russians and not mssionaries, can invite people to church or tell them about Jesus and his death on the cross as an atonement for our sins.
Christians can't talk about their faith in public places, in homes or online.
In other words, Jesus is for Sunday at church, not in your daily life outside the church. That's the way it is in Russia.
I can see the same thing happening here very easily. Can you not imagine an American anti-terrorism law that would prohibit evangelizing because we don't want ISIS recruiters to tell people how their faith calls them to kill infidels?
So, we are in danger of having the government prohibit any religious practice outside the church building. Plus we're in danger of the government telling us what doctrine we should teach and preach within the walls of the church building.
There goes part of the First Amendment.