I am blessed to live in the wide-open spaces of New Mexico, in a county where a mere 120,000 or so persons occupy 5,500 square miles. (The city of Los Angeles has about 4 million living in 450 square miles.)
This area has one of the largest natural gas deposits in America, which means well-paying jobs and oil deposits that attract big production companies like BHP and Conoco Phillips.
The downside: Our state is governed by Democrats.
Led by Gov. Bill Richardson, the Dems are doing what they do best: Destroying the economy and making life miserable for working people.
Falling natural gas prices and the normal winter slowdown have been aggravated by new, restrictive “pit rules” that make it economically unfeasible to work any but the most productive wells. The result: More than 1,000 will be laid off before the end of January.
That’s 1,000 families facing economic hardship, thanks to the left and its ongoing war against those they profess to love: the common people. These families will not be eating out or buying anything not a necessity, which means local businesses will suffer.
Because of reduced income and sales taxes, local government revenue will decline. Increased unemployment and welfare benefits will strain social services. Because these families no longer have health insurance, they will not pay their medical bills, and the local hospital will lose additional millions.
Nationally, our new president, Barack Obama, promises to end our economic crisis by spending more money the government does not have, the very thing that turned a recession into the Great Depression under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
His plans for meager tax cuts on individuals and business have outraged fellow Democrats and likely never will happen, and no doubt at some point in his tenure ruling (his word) America, he will seek universal health care paid for and controlled by the government, thus decreasing the quality and raising the cost of medicine.
Now another loopy Democrat, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, wants to make millions of acres of federal land off-limits for energy production. As the Democrats lock up more and more of our energy resources, they guarantee ever-increasing dependence on foreign suppliers (continuing to enrich countries that hate America) and higher costs to drive our cars and trucks, fly our aircraft, supply our military and heat our homes.
Obama and his fellow leftists seem intent on creating a system of uniform misery much like that of the old Soviet Union. When Polish railway worker Jan Grzebska awoke from a 19-year coma in the summer of 2007, he was stunned to see the economic progress Poland had made after discarding Marxist economic policies.
“When I went into a coma, there was only tea and vinegar in the shops, meat was rationed, and huge petrol queues were everywhere,” he said.
At one time, Ireland had one of the world’s poorest economies, with high government spending and taxation and dismal economic growth. Then the Irish rejected leftist economic policies and did what always has worked: They reduced the size of government and dramatically cut taxes.
Writes Marc C. Duff, senior research and policy director for The Taxpayers Network: These steps resulted in “economic growth and booming employment in Ireland, thus helping to create the ‘Celtic Tiger.’ Over the past 10 years, over 700,000 jobs were created, with the bulk of the gains located in the market services and construction sectors.”
The economic history of America is similar: Heavy government spending, debt and taxation brought the Great Depression. Jimmy Carter’s disastrous economic policies resulted in runaway inflation and staggering interest rates. The tax cuts of John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush created economic booms.
Why, then, faced with these lessons, does the left continue to drive the train called America toward a wreck? One suspects that the vast majority of the left’s voting base is composed of ill-informed, under-educated fools who actually believe government can better run the economy. Those who are in power are motivated by just that – power – and it matters not who suffers from its accumulation as long as it is not them.
After all, Hillary Clinton said, “You are going to have to give up some things.” She did not say “we.” Michelle Obama will continue to enjoy $400 lunches and send her children to pricey private schools. It is you and I who will be required to sacrifice our way of life.
Or perhaps there is a simpler explanation: Democrats are just plain dumb.
