Page 4 - Dinuba Sentinel 4-11-19 E-edition

Opinion
A4 | Thursday, April 11,, 2019
In My Opinion
'What a strange world we
W live in today!'
Fred Hall
mess is that Jerald Nadler and Adam Schiff claim to see and know things that were not discovered by
Mueller’s partisan, professional investigative team!
It seems that, everyday, I find myself exclaiming
Fred Hall - Publisher Rick Curiel - Editor
e often wonder what happens to those people who espouse such good
ideas and plans when asking for our votes, once they are sworn into office either in Sacramento or Washington. It’s as if all the best-laid plans are
put on the shelf as our representative assumes the herd mentality and it seems as if their only concern becomes mimicking the actions and thoughts
of their fellow pretenders. What the hell happened to the common sense theyonceusedincapturingourvote? If we wanted to send someone to Washington who was just going to do what was popular then why not send a pet dog with a note?
With the current Democrat- controlled House of Representatives in full throated roar, demanding up
to 10 years of the President’s income taxes “because Presidents have always providedthem”onecanbeexcusedfor wondering what the real requirements are for being President. Truth is, the President is already rich. Why not look at the tax records of the house members who have become wealthy since being elected?
Actually, there are only three mandated constraints set forth in
the Constitution as requirements tobecomePresident. Thosewould
be: one must be 35-years of age;
a candidate must have lived in the United States for a period of 14-years; third of all, one must have been born in the United States or have at least one parent who is a United States citizen. Probably the most important one is the win the election via the constitutionally mandated Electoral College.
No one, not even the current much- maligned President can be forced to release his personal, nor business, incometaxes. Thereisnowaythe Congressional Democrats can legally compel Donald Trump to release such records against his will. Perhaps I should hedge that a bit because California,
Washington, Oregon and Hawaiian judges have been really squirrely in their interpretation of the law when it comes to the current administration. They employ painful machinations
to make the “law” fit their personal agendas.
We’re not quite sure why the investigations continue in the House, especially since the “Mueller Probe,” which drug on for almost two years, announced they had found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaignandtheRussians. Tensof millions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted on the attempt to overturn
an election, which did not meet their expectations. Therearecertainly issues, including border security, which are far more pressing than a unilateral attempt to remove a legitimately elected President from office. The most incredible thing about the whole
Guest Column
E What I learned from a trip to Iran
in some conversation, what a strange worldweliveintoday! Ourown politicians and the institutions which educate our children blame our
own country for all the ills in the world; people who are experiencing the greatest economy enjoyed in decades are demanding a change from capitalism to the frequently failed governmental form of socialism which is completely destructive of a thriving economy. Whereisthecommonsense in all of that?
Outside of the Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford who had an affair with a Brazilian women while
he was in office, we didn’t think it
was within the purview of a Governor to conduct foreign affairs. Yet, Jerry Brown of California flew to Beijing
and conducted extensive talks and even signed agreements with Chinese officials. Not to be outdone, his successor Gavin Newsom is on his
way to South America to conduct talks with future California citizens who are currently outstanding citizens in one of those countries.
Governors—particularly in California—have enough problems right here at home to keep them busy without having to set up a California “embassy” in locations where they
have no business being! Anyway, the money which Governor Newsom is squandering might be better spent here in California for a whole laundry list of needs.
Although we make every effort to not do so, one of the worst sins one can make when writing this sort of column is to make too many generalizations. There are, indeed, many hard-working, top-caliber people employed by local, county, state and federal governments. They are too often tainted by lazy, union-protected individuals who
feel they have discovered a “nest on the ground.” We salute all those dedicated individuals who work for
a bureaucracy where their individual initiative is neither recognized nor encouraged.
Atipofthehattoadedicated, life-long, bureaucrat from Manteca who brought this shortsightedness to our attention. You, sir, deserve our recognitionandgratitude.
But, as always, that’s only one man’s opinion.
Fred Hall is publisher of the Dinuba Sentinel.
Guest Column
IRs the Green New Deal even feasible?
ep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. generation with wind power, we
Ed Markey (D-Mass.) have just released their would need to add another 540,000 Green New Deal resolution, which they hope wind turbines. Not only would
will “move America to 100 [percent] clean and renewable energy” by 2030.
Given current U.S. energy requirements and the state of renewable energy technology, let’s just say it’s an ambitious goal — actually, an impossible goal.
Since there are no plug-in jet aircraft and battleships and relatively few electric cars, let’s just focus on electricity generation, which at least has the potential to come 100 percent from renewable energy sources.
According the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), U.S. electricity-generation facilities generated about 4,034 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity in 2017.
Of that total, 62.9 percent (2,563 billion kWh) came from fossil fuels, 20 percent from nuclear plants, 17.0 percent from all forms of renewables, and 0.3 percent from “other sources.”
The two primary renewables for electricity generation are wind turbines and solar power. In 2017 wind produced 254 billion kWh (6.3 percent of total electricity generation) and solar 53 billion kWh (1.3 percent), according to EIA.
However, after billions of taxpayer dollars and eight years of President Obama — the most pro-renewable energy president the country has ever had — combined wind and solar power only increased from about 3 percent of all electricity generation in 2008 to 7.6 percent in 2017.
But let’s game this out a little to see what it would take to replace fossil fuels with wind energy, since it already produces nearly five times more electricity than solar power.
The American Wind Energy Association says there were about 54,000 wind turbines operating in 41 states and two territories in 2017 — several states, especially in the Southeast, have no wind turbines. At 6.3 percent of power generation, they produced one-tenth of the amount of electricity fossil fuels produced.
So, to replace fossil fuels as a source of electricity
Merrill Matthews
that many wind turbines take up thousands of square miles, they would be devastating to the bird population.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service addressed the issue of wind turbine- related bird deaths last year. While conceding that the estimates varied widely, the service concluded, “The most comprehensive and statistically
sound estimates show that bird deaths from turbine collisions are between 140,000 and 500,000 birds per year.”
While the wind-turbine industry is trying to address this problem, it’s safe to predict that bird deaths would increase dramatically with a 10-fold expansion of wind turbines. Of course, the green new dealers envision the expansion of solar energy also, which could reduce the need for some turbines. But solar panels only provide a little more than 1 percent of current electricity generation. Significant expansion would take years — and a lot of money.
And no one has yet solved the renewable energy intermittency problem — i.e., that there are times when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. In such cases generators have to fall back of fossil fuels to keep the power on.
Heavy political pressure, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies, and the desire to be seen as environmentally conscious have been slowly pushing the country toward renewables. But it will take decades to reach a 100 percent renewable electricity generation, if we ever do. And passing a Green New Deal resolution won’t expedite the process.
Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas.
arlier this year, I had the opportunity to but rather on our leaders. Whew! take an unusual vacation: to Iran, as part of Many felt similarly about their
a 28-member peace delegation. own leaders, but understandably
Many dear friends thought it a bad idea. Wasn’t it dangerous? Aren’t they out to get us? Isn’t it run by crazy clerics? I’m not sure about the mental health of the clerics, but to the rest: basically, no, no, and no.
Iran is a very modern place that looks in many ways like the United States. You’d recognize the horrific traffic and the overwrought advertising. You’d also recognize the friendly, accommodating people, eager to interact with foreign strangers and practice their nascent English.
More surprising, perhaps, is its size. Tehran has 12 million people, half again larger than New York City, with much safer streets (except to cross).
Soon, though, our delegation found profound and troubling differences between our two lands - primarily the sanctions.
Although Iran has lived up to its end of the nuclear deal, the United States has not, failing to lift old sanctions on Iran as promised, and recently adding more.
This became painfully clear when one of our members suffered a heart incident soon after arriving. The hospital treated him very professionally with old but adequate equipment. But when it came time to pay, his insurance company reneged, citing the U.S. sanctions on all financial transactions.
These mindless rules prevent many critical medicines from entering Iran, promoting physical suffering and hastening death among its citizens. They’ve also destroyed currency value and devastated the economy. Millions of formerly middle class citizens are now in poverty as our nation throws its weight around.
Luckily the countless Iranians who approached us on the street didn’t’ take it out on us personally
William A. Collins
groused more about ours. Others wondered why we act
so aggressively toward Iran. They haven’t done anything to us. That was easier to answer in 1953 when we overthrew their elected government at the behest of our
oil companies. We wanted to keep control of the black stuff.
But now times are a bit different. The world, especially the U.S., is awash with oil. Sure, we want theirs, but it’s no longer such a big deal. There seems to be more to it than that.
What our national leaders seem to want even more than oil is control. Total control. No nation should be allowed to go its own way and thus set a bad example for other restive places. Surely we are not harassing Nicaragua, Haiti, or Cuba for their oil. We seem deathly fearful of any nation, no matter how small, showing independence from us and our particular brand of capitalism.
Our humble group (Code Pink, it’s called) could not answer this profound question, nor did we learn anything serious about the famous Revolutionary Guard or the fearsome clerics who apparently wield great power.
What we did learn was that Iran is, if anything, safer than the United States, that our sanctions are hurting average people rather than their leaders, and that by continuing to promote them the United States is looking like a jerk to the rest of the world. Not a bad set of lessons to come away with for the price of 10 days of jet lag.
William A. Collins is a former mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut. Distributed by OtherWords.org.
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