"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