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Earlier CDFE Web

 

Green Disaster Hitting United States Hard - Part I

Bad energy policy is starving America in the midst of plenty

We have fossil fuels to last centuries, but environmental policy makes it useless

A March 24, 2008 CNN News story makes a chilling point:  'You're working for gas now'

The headline said: The people of Camden, Alabama - a quiet southern town 80 miles southwest of Montgomery - pay a bigger chunk of their income for fuel than anyone else in the country - meaning tough choices for the ever thinner family budget.

A new study from the Oil Price Information Service, a research firm that tracks data for AAA, just reported that Camden spent a higher portion of their income on gas than anyone else in the country - for the second year in a row.

Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer, put a human face on the frightening statistic. He interviewed  Camden residents, including Corey Carter, who spends a quarter of his paycheck on gas.

Hargreaves found that Carter earns $7 an hour making car parts for a Hyundai factory that opened in 2005. He spends $65 a week on gas. That's double what it cost just a few years ago. Paying $30 more for gas out of a $240 paycheck hurts bad.

Blame environmental groups that won't let us tap the vast supplies of oil, gas, and coal right here in America. They push prices higher and higher by imposing artificial scarcity and increasing imports.

Blame the politicians under their thumb for our failing economy, too timid to face the truth: They're destroying America to appease the powerful global warming lobby.

In Camden, drivers put 13% of every paycheck in the gas tank. In wealthy towns around New York City, home of Environmental Defense, Inc. and the Natural Resources Defense Council, people spend less than 2% of their income on gas. They don't care about Camden, or its people, or gas prices - yet. But Camden is just the first domino.

Corey Carter told Hargreaves, "Going out to eat, going to the movies, you can't do stuff like that. You're working for gas now."

Then Hargreaves talked to Carrie Frye, a 33-year-old a mother who commutes 70 miles from Camden each day to work at a factory in Selma, Alabama making lawn chair cushions. She makes $220 a week - $329 if she makes her production quota. The $60 a week she now spends in gas comes out of money for food, the doctor, and buying clothes for her kids.

Camden is the rural crossroads of Wilcox County, which bills itself as the "hunting and fishing capital of Alabama." Its household income of $26,000 is nearly half the national average.

Camden's folks will hunt and fish no matter what the economy's doing. The local bait and tackle shop just had a big year. With many out of work, they don't have anything else to do - and they need the food.

Hargreaves went to Uncle Redd's, a barbeque joint on the way out of town, and interviewed owner Andrea Finklea. She used to get over 100 people a day coming in for the chicken, ribs, and mac n' cheese. Now, they get 65 on a good day. Finklea told the CNN writer, "We're planning on cutting back on employees hours, that's a bad thing."

Camden has a lot of bad things. William Malone, head of the local Chamber of Commerce, told Hargreaves, "People are cutting back any way they can." Malone also runs a local insurance company, where he's seen people buying insurance with less coverage and higher deductibles.

Jimmy Pugh runs the Coast to Coast Tru Value in the center of town. His business is off 10 to 15%. He too may have to cut back on hours. "Gas prices are having a big effect on it," Pugh told Hargreaves.

Camden saw its town revenue from sales taxes drop 5% in December, said Mayor Henrietta Blackmon. In February revenue fell another 2.5%.

That's bad enough without considering home heating prices. They bring a new problem:

LIHEAP, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, a government welfare handout, is already infested with non-profit groups like the Campaign for Home Energy Assistance, lobbying for more tax money to give to the poor instead of lobbying for more energy to make it affordable for proud people with low incomes. The group's name sounds noble until you realize it's just perpetuating poverty, not solving it.

What will the politicians do? Go get American energy from American soil? Build energy supplies to lower energy prices? Not a chance. They'll put poor people on welfare, make them beggars, turn them into energy slaves - and buy their votes forever. Until the whole economy collapses.

What will environmental groups do? Help increase our oil, gas and coal production? Not a chance. They'll get in the way, stop what production we have now, and smash anyone who opposes them.

It's time for America to stand up to these bullies.

Read the two books that are now alerting the public to these threats:

Ron Arnold's Freezing in the Dark: Money, Power, Politics and The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy foresaw in 2007 the events affecting Camden, Alabama in 2008.

This powerful 420-page exposé of the American Left is rapidly becoming a classic in political investigative reporting.

Its final chapter, "The Energy Gap," lays bare the inner workings of the environmental movement and its utopian plans to convert the nation to renewable fuels that don't exist in useful amounts, and won't for decades.

With his straightforward Energy Reality chart, Ron Arnold showed that 85% of all the energy America uses now comes from fossil fuels, the target of the global warming lobby.

If we outlaw 85% of our energy - or drive up its price through artificial scarcity so no one can afford it - we will plunge our nation into an Energy Gap that could be fatal.

Energy Keepers Energy Killers: The New Civil Rights Battle by Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, makes the compelling point that access to abundant, affordable energy is essential to making our hard-won legal civil rights into real, living civil rights.

This eloquent 120-page statement builds on the fundamental principle that energy is the "master resource" which makes all other resources usable. Without energy, all rights are meaningless.

Roy Innis condemns the environmental elitists and politicians who want to cripple the fossil fuel economy with cap-and-trade schemes and other unworkable restraints, which will devastate low income families and minorities first and worst - and then, everybody.

Boldly striking back at the Energy Killers, Roy Innis makes a convincing case that power must be wrested from them through non-violent civil rights action.

Calling for an Energy Keepers movement to take on the Energy Killers, Roy Innis provides a clear roadmap to the steps needed to assure America's economic civil rights.