High School Never Ends

This has happened to all of us, in some way, shape, manner or form:

Your older sibling has a group of friends and they either form a club (like a tree house, when people used to build tree houses…BTW, what’s the carbon footprint of building a tree house? It’s in a tree, so does that increase or decrease the footprint?) or the older sibling never lets you go out with his/her group of friends.

So what do you do? You throw eggs at the tree house, or vandalize their room while he/she is out with the friends. Or you do other, more mean-spirited stuff. But the point is you get mad at their snobiness and show them that they’re a real jerk.

This is how politics works. The imprint for our 21st century political process is a direct descendent of how we responded to unjust exclusivity during our growing-up years.

So today's by-invitation-only “Regional Energy Forum” held by Obama cabinet folks and Democratic politicians from Colorado, and the subsequent protest of the “forum” is even more ironic because it took place at a high school – the contemporary birthplace of all cliques, clubs, arrogant and ineffective class presidents, and viral social retaliation!

Sometimes things just come together. And it was truly an all-American scene at Fossil Ridge High School today.

By nearly 1:15 p.m., somewhere in the vicinity of 100 protestors lined the entrance to the high school. A man dressed in 18th century drum core regalia played a tune on his fife while chants of “Drill here, drill now!” were struck up by the throng.

American flags large and small rippled in the warm afternoon wind. An occasional car exiting the school would honk as it passed the line of the non-invited. A single-prop airplane even circled overhead, with “No Bama” written on the underside of the wings. When it passed overhead, the crowd found a common cadence of “No Bama, No Bama!”

Picket signs of various size and slogan bobbed up and down. One read, “Shame on you, Ritter and Salazar, for shutting down Colorado’s energy!” Another: “Cap & Trade Is Voodoo Economical Farce.”

In a crowd such as this, opinions were freely given and accepted. One gentlemen in the line scoffed, “How come Ritter showed up in a Yukon SUV? Hypocrite.”

A Loveland man, Carl Langner, accused the Obama administration of using the “excuse” of global warming to wean the U.S. off fossil/nuclear fuels and onto the exponentially more expensive “clean” energy sources.

When asked what he thought about the by-invitation-only forum, Langner said it “sucks.” And about those who were invited? “I call them cronies, but I guess they’re business people.”

Ric Hicks, a representative from Americans for Limited Government, was signing protestors up for a postcard campaign that is to be delivered to Rep. Betsy Markey asking her to vote “no” on a series of Democrat-proposed legislation. Markey was one of the forum’s hosts, along with U.S. Interior Secretary Salazar, Gov. Ritter and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman Nancy Sutley.

“Maybe there will only be 80 or 100 of these postcards on her desk,” conceded Hicks. “But it lets her know that these 80 or 100 people used their lunch break to voice their concern over where America is heading.”

In a press release issued by Gov. Ritter’s office about the forum, “hundreds of energy and climate stakeholders and business and civic leaders” were in attendance.

“Colorado isn't just a mile high state – we're miles ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to creating a New Energy Economy,” Ritter said during the forum.

Colorado is unfortunately near the end of the pack when it comes to opening up meetings of such magnitude to the general public. Wind energy won’t power Ritter’s Yukon, but it will put more money in the pockets of the “energy and climate stakeholders.”