As many of you know, I was in Grand Junction Colorado last weekend, headlining their "Freedom Fest" rally Saturday, which was tremendous fun. ...but...
Talk about hurting. The western Colorado economy is driven by natural resource extraction. Big mining operations over there (coal, copper, gold, silver, uranium) + drilling and extraction of natural gas, methane, oil, oil shale. The Rocky Mtns are FULL of useable, easily located and extractable resources.
The administration,... EPA & BLM are *DESTROYING* those towns over there. Grand Junction alone has lost 8,000 jobs in the last 4 years. (A city of just 66,000 to begin with.) The surrounding counties were home to 99 oil rigs six years ago. New EPA regs & mandates has dropped that number to 7. SEVEN! And all those jobs....poof....gone along with the oil rigs. Methane producers were slapped with a requirement to retro fit their rigs with some widget that's $50,000 a pop. So 4 of the 6 producers (aka: employers) simply closed shop and left. Small businesses are all but gone. If you owned a specialty store selling something like model trains (like my buddy Chuck in San Rafael, California), good luck with that. No one has money to grow their train collection. The county school is now down to just 70 students and its looking like they'll just close it next year. On and on it goes.
We're constantly told we'll have an "all-of-the-above" energy policy. But the truth is, we're dumping hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars into (rapidly bankrupting) "renewable energy" companies, and producers of "fossil fuels" are being regulated out of existence. And so are the jobs they provide. Keystone XL? Don't hold your breath. Meanwhile we've been paying $3+ per gallon for gasoline so long its now the new normal; our winter heating bills continue to hover at record highs, and unelected officials running unaccountable (to the public) agencies are putting the squeeze on us all.
Talk about hurting. The western Colorado economy is driven by natural resource extraction. Big mining operations over there (coal, copper, gold, silver, uranium) + drilling and extraction of natural gas, methane, oil, oil shale. The Rocky Mtns are FULL of useable, easily located and extractable resources.
The administration,... EPA & BLM are *DESTROYING* those towns over there. Grand Junction alone has lost 8,000 jobs in the last 4 years. (A city of just 66,000 to begin with.) The surrounding counties were home to 99 oil rigs six years ago. New EPA regs & mandates has dropped that number to 7. SEVEN! And all those jobs....poof....gone along with the oil rigs. Methane producers were slapped with a requirement to retro fit their rigs with some widget that's $50,000 a pop. So 4 of the 6 producers (aka: employers) simply closed shop and left. Small businesses are all but gone. If you owned a specialty store selling something like model trains (like my buddy Chuck in San Rafael, California), good luck with that. No one has money to grow their train collection. The county school is now down to just 70 students and its looking like they'll just close it next year. On and on it goes.
We're constantly told we'll have an "all-of-the-above" energy policy. But the truth is, we're dumping hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars into (rapidly bankrupting) "renewable energy" companies, and producers of "fossil fuels" are being regulated out of existence. And so are the jobs they provide. Keystone XL? Don't hold your breath. Meanwhile we've been paying $3+ per gallon for gasoline so long its now the new normal; our winter heating bills continue to hover at record highs, and unelected officials running unaccountable (to the public) agencies are putting the squeeze on us all.
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