California’s troubles are many, and some of them are manmade

 

“In the last few days, a moisture-laden heat wave has unleashed extreme weather in almost every corner of California,” the Los Angeles Times reported on August 18. “In a single day, Northern California was hit with triple-digit temperatures, as well as hundreds of lightning strikes that ignited brush fires. The mercury hit 107 degrees Sunday in Santa Cruz, known for its moderate climate, and Death Valley reached 130 degrees — one of the hottest temperatures ever recorded there.”

 

And then things got worse. High temperatures created a demand for electricity that the state’s electric utilities could not meet. Rolling blackouts turned off the lights and air conditioners of two million state residents without warning, as utilities cut power to blocks of communities in order to protect the state’s electrical grid. This heatwave has been termed the worst in generations, and the state’s power utilities simply could not produce what was needed.

 

California, perhaps the most “progressive” of our 50 states, fancies itself a leader in what’s best. And where electricity production is concerned, renewable energy sources like wind and solar are best, and fossil fuels are worst, according to politically correct wisdom.

 

California seeks to generate 60 percent of electricity via renewables by 2030, and has a long way to go. An estimated 34 percent of the state’s power came from renewables in 2018, according to the California Energy Commission.

 

In its “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” drive to replace natural gas production with wind and solar, the state’s very ambitious climate policy forced the retirement of 9 gigawatts of natural gas capacity over the past five years. That’s enough electricity to power 6.8 million homes.

 

This was done despite years of warnings that there would not be enough power generation during the peak period in summer, and that a potential shortfall of 4.7 gigawatts in evening hours could occur starting this year.

 

Despite these changes in electricity production, a staff attorney at Communities for a Better Environment, described as an environmental justice nonprofit, blamed the outages not on inadequate renewable energy production, but on natural gas.

 

“It was actually gas that failed,” said attorney Shana Lazerow. “We should be talking about how gas is unreliable.”

 

The basis for her statement is that gas is to blame because burning gas creates climate warming, and climate warming is why California is trying to rid itself of any and every fossil fuel. She fails to note that whatever the actual cause of the heatwave — climate change or the Earth’s periodic alternating cooling and heating phases — having more natural gas electric facilities would produce the power to make up for production levels that solar and wind cannot meet.

 

But, of course, what is actually unreliable is wind and solar energy, especially for large scale applications like an entire state’s electricity needs.

 

If you want to lower your electric bill by putting some solar panels on your roof, go for it! Once the investment is paid off, you will likely save money. Particularly if you live in a sunny place and have the panels located where the sun will shine on them as much as possible. And, if you can store the excess energy for periods when the sun doesn’t shine.

 

But you might want to have a back-up plan, like being a customer of the electric company.

 

On the state level, California should have maintained backup natural gas production facilities to even out energy production when wind and solar cannot meet demand. Or, had enough storage for ample excess power to cover low production levels.

 

“Big Batteries Needed To Make Fickle Wind And Solar Power Work” headlined a report by NPR.com discussing the need for storage of power produced by wind and solar applications to fill the gap when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.

 

However, the report continues, “Nobody really knows how the batteries can best smooth out the irregular power supply from wind and solar power.”

As the NPR report further noted, “That's partly because batteries aren't very efficient. Batteries waste about 25 percent of the energy in the process of being charged and discharged. These sodium-sulfur batteries need to be heated to 600 degrees Fahrenheit to work.”

In other words, California overdrove its headlights in the rush to replace dependable fossil fuels for electricity production in favor of unreliable renewables like wind and solar. Was California a student of the Obama administration’s manic efforts to do away with fossil fuels, or was it a partner?

 

This is yet more evidence of the failure of “progressive” ideals to actually deliver the results that are promised.

 

James Delingpole, writing for Climate Depot, tells us that “No successful economy has ever done [what California is trying to do]. Those that have tried — such as the state of South Australia — have had the same result as California: rocketing electricity prices; blackouts and brownouts; an exodus of businesses; misery and disruption for everyone unfortunate enough to still live there.”

 

Someday in the future, after technologies have been developed to assist wind, solar and other so-called “renewables,” the transition to non-fossil fuel energy will naturally occur. We must be smart and stop rushing the process.

Donald Trump’s difficulties began because “He’s not one of us!”

The Washington establishment consists of thousands of Republicans and Democrats who are either working in government or working as Washington lobbyists, lawyers, or in think tanks.

 

The relevance and impact of this situation was given to me in a conversation several years ago with my Congressman, Morgan Griffith, the excellent Republican Representative of Virginia’s Ninth District. I had brought up the idea that Congressional term limits were needed, and he noted that even with term limits, there would still exist the very influential members of the Washington establishment and those in the bureaucracy.

 

While elected members of Congress’ tenure in Washington would be limited, the tenure of the establishment and the ensconced bureaucracy would not be affected, he said.

 

What normally occurs when a president’s term is over and the other party has won the election is that the new president brings in people from the law firms, think tanks and lobbying organizations to fill many administrative positions.

 

These are people who have functioned in or near the national government before, know the ropes, and can help the new president put together a knowledgeable administration in a relatively short period of time, and some of it before the election.

 

Some of the out-going administration’s personnel then move to the lobbying organizations, think tanks and law firms, and await their turn to move back into government. Those in the bureaucracy often remain in their positions. Not all of them are able to put aside their own political preferences in order to properly serve their country under a president with different ideas.

 

The “new guy” — or someday, “new gal” — has a built-in obstacle to conquer, the “bureaucrat mentality” lying quietly beneath the surface: “Presidents come and go, but we are here forever!”

 

When he was elected, Donald Trump had not only that obstacle, but he was also an outsider to the Washington establishment, and therefore was unable to utilize the establishment as other presidents have. To further complicate things, he campaigned on the idea of draining “the swamp,” consisting of those in the establishment, and in the bureaucracy.

 

Thus, Trump had a harder task than other presidents who were part of the Washington establishment, or at least had a firm connection to it. He didn’t have a group of close associates who had gained valuable experience and knowledge of how the federal government worked and could be called in — called in again, in many instances — to fill an important slot.

 

Trump had the Herculean task of forming a government in a short time period using the people he knew and thought competent, but who were from a world away. Many were in business, not politics. Such is the recipe for chaos, and that is exactly what occurred.

 

The first days of any administration are somewhat wobbly, but because of the “outsider” nature of Trump and the team he was assembling, this one was more so. Add to that the people who already didn’t like Trump in politics, including some Republicans, and the media. They didn’t like an outsider winning the election, especially this particular one. Others had their egos mortally injured by Trump’s combative style. Those factors made things even worse.

 

These folks oppose everything Trump says and does, without regard to any benefits that result from them. In fact, benefits are often twisted into negatives. And, nearly everything, despite how positive it may otherwise be, has some negatives. Small negatives are often magnified by exaggeration and portrayed as errors. It appears the operational motto is, “oppose Trump at any cost.”

 

Trump campaigned on a popular theme: “Make America Great Again!” Many don’t think America was ever great, and certainly isn’t great now. Their idea, like that of former President Barack Obama, is to fundamentally transform the United States of America.

 

Instead of helping the economy produce jobs and giving working Americans more money in their pockets, as Trump did by cutting taxes and harmful regulations, the loyal opposition prefers such expensive boondoggles as the Green New Deal, ending fracking, and Medicare for All.

 

It also wants to change the way the citizenry will vote in this election by moving away from in-person voting at polling places, under the theory that it is less safe to vote than to shop for groceries. Instead, everyone will be mailing back the ballot they received in the mail.

 

Mailing ballots works pretty well for Absentee Ballots requested by individual voters, and in states that have an established system for voting-by-mail. Prior to the pandemic, only five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington — had a vote-by-mail system in place.

 

The idea that the other 45 states and the District of Columbia can clean up voter rolls and establish a dependable system is a fairy tale. Some of the problems reside in the Postal Service, but the more serious problems are in state voter rolls, where people who have moved, some to other states, and others who have died are still on the voter rolls. Each one is an opportunity for mischief.

 

Democrats and Republicans always have different ideas about the country’s needs. This Republican president, even with some successes, has had so much more opposition than the others.

The War on Coal couldn’t erase industry’s history or its future

  

The story of coal in West Virginia is a long one, with ups and downs. And while the industry and individuals in it have suffered, coal has survived a concerted effort to kill it completely.

 

Coal has been in use by humans for hundreds of years. In the early years, most coal used in the American colonies came from England or Nova Scotia. But during the American Revolution, the wartime needs spurred “small American coal-mining operations such as those in Virginia on the James River near Richmond. By the early 1830s mining companies had emerged along the Ohio, Illinois, and Mississippi rivers and in the Appalachian region,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

 

Coal for many years was the major fuel in producing electricity, and more recently, through gasification and liquefaction, is used to produce gaseous and liquid fuels that are easily transported by pipeline and conveniently stored in tanks. 

 

The Green Energy mania, spurred on by often exaggerated, funding-oriented “scientific” data dealing with the increase and dangers of CO2, and the need for America to increase its world-leading CO2 reduction efforts, produced the foolish War on Coal of former-President Barack Obama’s administration.

 

This myopic governmental overreach put thousands of Americans out of work and severely damaged state and local economies, but thrilled the Green Energy crowd.

 

The coal industry was already well down the path of being phased out in the natural transition from coal and other fossil fuels to efficient, less-expensive, cleaner and plentiful natural gas, and also the currently inefficient, but preferred renewable sources, such as wind and solar energy.

 

How much more sensible it would have been to allow these natural changes to gradually work their way into being without the heavy damage caused by this irrational War.

 

Years ago, the coal industry had already lost many jobs of miners and other industry workers through the impact of mechanization. And the government efforts to end coal as a viable and needed product further damaged coal mining regions like those of southern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia.

 

However, other nations still are using and need coal, and the industry has sputtered along filling those needs, and still exists today. Not surprisingly, these nations far out-pace the United States in CO2 emissions, but hardly get anything like the official grief that America received from the “green energy at any cost” crusade.

 

Even supporters of the coal industry understand that burning coal is a significant source of pollution, and development of cleaner ways to utilize this useful and plentiful resource are on-going. While coal is now responsible for only 11 percent of electricity production in the United States, clean coal technologies have produced some significant improvements in coal usage, which are welcomed.

 

Turning coal into synfuels, which are gases and liquids that produce less pollutants when burned than does pure coal, is one way that coal can still be a useful product. South Africa has been converting coal to liquids for decades. Other gases and liquids derived from coal function as chemicals in the production of other products.

 

A plant in North Dakota converts coal into synthetic natural gas, called “syngas.” Electricity and hydrogen are made from syngas. And a company in Wheeling, West Virginia is now working to find additional alternative uses for coal.

 

Wheeling’s Touchstone Research Laboratories is working to develop high-value-added coal raw materials that can make several products, such as carbon foams, graphites, graphene and carbon fiber.

 

A strong, fireproof carbon foam, called CFOAM, has already been developed by Touchstone, and is used in the aerospace industry to make molds for manufacturing carbon fiber rocket nozzles, and in science for the most powerful telescope in history, the James Webb Space Telescope.

 

As new uses for coal emerge, new interest in West Virginia coal follows.  Governor Jim Justice announced in his State of the State address that Ramaco Carbon will be opening a new research facility in South Charleston’s Technology Park.

 

Ramaco CEO and chairman Randall Atkins, said that the company will use that facility until it outgrows it, and then expand to other locations in the state. The opening of that facility, as with so many other things, has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Ramaco announced in June that it has entered into a five-year coal-to-products cooperative research and development agreement with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the largest U.S. Department of Energy science and energy laboratory, to study converting coal to high-value products and materials.

 

There is global interest in clean coal technology, as well. In 2019, this sector invested $3.7 billion, and projections say that figure will surpass $4.6 billion by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 2.9 percent.

 

No one expects that coal will ever again enjoy the huge employment figures or the quantities of mined resources of years past. But there are bright spots on the horizon for using West Virginia and Virginia coal that will offer direct and indirect employment to hundreds of people, and produce tax revenues for state and local governments.

 

We would be further down that path today, had President Obama had the foresight to reimagine coal usage a decade ago.

What in the world is happening to the United States of America?

 

Who among us that has been alive for more than five decades would believe what is happening today? Long-standing traditions — the things upon which the nation was created and that allowed it to thrive — are crumbling around us.

 

Once highly regarded qualities like righteousness, integrity and professionalism, have taken a beating over the last number of years. Career fields like education and journalism are now home to many who are willing to abandon their personal integrity, honesty, and professional ethics to indulge in indoctrination of students and the public at large for destabilizing political purposes.

 

Recent news reports told us that our gross domestic product (GDP) dropped by 32.9 percent in the second quarter. Whether this “news” was a deliberate attempt to misinform in order to cast further negativity on President Donald Trump, or the result of ignorance on the part of these so-called journalists, is difficult to determine.

 

But what actually occurred was that the GDP actually shrank by much less, only 9.5 percent, in the second quarter, and 4.8 percent in the first quarter. If this trend continues through the rest of the year, the “annualized decline” will reach 32.9 percent.

 

We see the effects of miseducation as people who never learned about their country reject their access to the broadest set of opportunities to achieve success on the planet, favoring instead the fairytale of equality of outcomes.

 

Colleges, where people are supposed to learn much more about general studies and their chosen area of interest, have produced the “woke” movement which, in addition to being ineptly named, is a destructive force to which its practitioners are totally blind.

 

“Wokeness” was aptly described as “pervasive trends under the guise of equality [that] makes diversity training in government, and corporate America, and schools, destructive, divisive, and harmful,” by Angela Sailor, vice president of The Feulner Institute at The Heritage Foundation.

 

Professional sports and similar activities —where people with high skills in a very narrow and unimportant area of life, like throwing, catching, hitting or “shooting” some sort of ball or other object — make millions of dollars, are now decaying organizations where many or most members proudly dishonor the flag and National Anthem of the country that allowed them to be the wealthy and celebrated individuals that they have become. And they do so with the blessing of their team and league.

 

Politics and such off-shoots as political correctness, and the new fad of hypersensitivity over small or years-old irritants now are the focus of many education and news folk.

 

The selfish desires of a relative few now are expected to be accepted by everyone else, whether or not they see any value in those desires. If you do not automatically cow-tow to them, you may be the target of physical and other violence.

 

And the relatively recent advent of social media adds to the problem. Social media to an increasing degree control what political information we can see on their platforms, and what cannot be seen. That is called “censorship,” which is not among the valued characteristics of our free country.

 

One example: Twitter removed the Star of David from several tweets, calling it a hateful image.

 

Another is that certain discussions about fighting the coronavirus are deemed inappropriate for you to see. Twitter has been identified as having taken down some tweets about a drug, hydroxychloroquine, that is favored by many physicians who have used the drug, and say it is effective against the virus.

 

In addition to Twitter, social media platforms Facebook and Google, and website hosting service Squarespace banned video from a group of physicians known as America's Frontline Doctors about hydroxychloroquine.

 

A doctor in Tampa, Florida, who is lead physician at a medical office that has 8,000 patients, created a video about how she and other physicians were precluded from prescribing hydroxychloroquine for their patients, despite their previous experience with that medicine.

 

The brilliant constitutional attorney and author Mark Levin said that the Frontline Doctors’ video was “not about the overthrow of America, not about anti-Semitism, not promoting terrorism — but talking about experience, science, medical knowledge about hydroxychloroquine."

 

Apparently, Twitter, Facebook and Google know more about medicine than doctors. And furthermore, they think you shouldn’t be able to get information on certain subjects without their guidance, which means providing only what they want you to know.

 

When someone is triggered by something — virtually anything, these days — suddenly there arises a movement to remove or replace that “something” without even a superficial attempt to understand that something's complete nature. If one out a hundred things is bad, to the dump with it.

 

Through the decades, we learned to generally trust our teachers and news organizations. We expect school subjects to be presented wholly and without bias. Likewise, news is supposed to tell us the what, where, when, why and who of events, without opinion or bias.

 

When those rules are deliberately broken in order to control what the public knows, or how the public should think about things, then the result is what we see happening so often today: the sabotage of our country; the freest and most wonderful nation in history.

Why not try to understand Trump, instead of always criticizing him?

Donald Trump is not a politician; he’s an outsider. He doesn’t think, act, or speak like a politician. Therefore, his enemies say, he is a bad dude. Many don’t like the way he behaves and talks. But why can’t they put these puerile feelings away and deal with the reality before us; the problems we have and ways to improve things?

 

Even Trump’s defenders understand that, like everyone else, he is not perfect. But so much of the anti-Trumpism is based upon emotional reaction rather than upon thoughtful analysis. And, yes, anything that Trump does that produces a positive result is bad news for the liberals/progressives.

 

Trump is called many unpleasant names, which are almost exclusively wrongly applied or strongly exaggerated. Among them are that he is a “nationalist.” Those using that term disparagingly believe that he wants America — and himself — to rule the world, and if other nations are destroyed or damaged, so what?

 

But Trump’s nationalism promotes the interests of America, not necessarily to the detriment of others. He loves America, and he wants to protect the country from being abused by other countries. This is exactly what the leader of every nation should do.

 

He especially has the aim of leveling the lopsided national playing field where we pay and do far more than our share, to the benefit of other nations, and often to our own disadvantage. The upside-down trade situation with China for so many years shines as an example.

 

Trump is a businessman and sees things as negotiations, whether with the leader of another country, or with other parts of the government. He speaks in positive, sometimes over-positive, language about efforts to get things done. He speaks in very negative terms about people, countries and things working against him, but his ultimate goal is to reach an end where America benefits.

 

Not everything that Trump has done has worked perfectly, or even well. But some of them are works in progress. Negotiations are not always pretty. Sometimes, things get worse before they get better.

 

But a good many of them do get better.

 

Following the Great Recession of 2007-08, then-President Barack Obama’s policies did little if anything to bring the country out of the recession.

 

Trump, by contrast, understands economic principles, the ones that work. He knew that tax cuts and regulatory roll-backs were key to getting the economy out of the doldrums of the recession.

 

He lowered tax rates in six of the seven brackets and increased standard deductions for married and single filers, and heads of household.

 

The theory is sound: Let people keep more of their earnings, and they will spend it on needs and wants. Let businesses keep more of their profits and they will spend them on more or new equipment, additional workers, wage increases and other positive things. More spending in the private sector leads to an improving economy.

 

Naysayers will complain that businesses just pay executives and shareholders more with their increased profits. True, that happens. But the increase in employment and the decrease in people on welfare show that the money does get used for broader benefits to the economy.

 

And, they say, the rich just get richer from tax cuts. But the hated rich don’t hide their money in their mattress; they spend it on things like homes, cars, boats, furniture, trips, food, household goods, etc. Purchasing these things promotes economic expansion.

 

And the rich weren’t the only beneficiaries of Trump’s tax cuts. They created prosperity for the middle class through higher wages, more take-home pay, more jobs and new employee benefits.

 

Trump’s actions also made operating a business in the US more attractive than it had been in many years, and American businesses began returning to the country, moving factories and jobs from overseas where they had moved years ago, and creating jobs for Americans.

 

After Ronald Reagan’s economic policies had been in place for long enough to produce positive results, he said: “I knew our economic policies were a success when they stopped calling them Reaganomics.”

 

And Obama’s followers were not shy about claiming credit for the quickly improving economic conditions after Trump put into effect sensible policies.

 

The US had been propping up countries damaged by wars for decades, even beyond the point where these countries could stand on their own. An example is that the US leads the funding for NATO at 22 percent of direct funding, The NATO defense spending target is 2 percent, which only eight of 29 members currently meet. Trump wants this corrected so that America carries its weight, but not the weight of most of the rest of the organization.

 

And just last Friday, Trump signed executive orders seeking to lower the cost of insulin and EpiPens, two drug products priced well beyond where they should be. The orders also allow states and pharmacies to buy drugs overseas, slash pay to medical middlemen and make sure other countries don’t pay less for American drugs than Americans do.

 

These are the kinds of governing the country needs right now, not the disastrous hands-off policies that allow violent rioting, shootings and destruction to run rampant in cities across the nation.