Colorado is determined to beat California to the bottom, and, from way behind in the 70s, it's caught up and is about to pass it

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The Colorado I spend time in the early 70s was filled with young people my age with ambition — they all wanted to start their own businesses, and were working every odd job they could to accumulate savings — and older, tougher men and women who seemed to know what they were about. Then the Californians and eastern hippy refugees came in. The state is rushing towards oblivion, and the aging hippies and their spoiled spawn are cheering, because they’re idiots.

Stephen Green:

THE NEW DARK AGE: Colorado’s forced march to energy uncertainty.

“Energy isn’t a luxury,” Colorado Springs Utilities CEO Travas Deal recently told my Power Gab co-host Jake Fogleman and me. His concern? The direction of Colorado’s energy policy—away from affordable, reliable baseload power and toward costly, intermittent wind and solar.

He’s right. Reliable power is not optional. It’s a matter of life and death. We saw that in Texas during 2021’s Winter Storm Uri, where 246 people died amid rolling blackouts that nearly triggered a catastrophic grid collapse.

We’re seeing blackouts in Colorado, too. At the same time, the cost of power in Colorado is skyrocketing. Residential rates have increased over 85% since 2003, higher than inflation.

Yet Democrat Governor Jared Polis is doubling down on this dangerous trajectory to enshrine his unrealistic campaign promise of a grid powered by 100% “renewables” into state law. A draft bill circulated at the Capitol earlier this year mandates a 95% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the electricity sector by 2035 and 100% by 2040. This far exceeds the ambitious targets codified in 2019: 80% carbon emissions reduction by 2030.

The only way to meet this emission goal is to shut down the remaining coal and natural gas baseload, blanket the state with industrial wind turbines, utility-scale solar installations, and industrial batteries, force Coloradans into electric vehicles, require heat pumps, and drain Coloradans’ bank accounts.

That last part is key.

Previously: ‘F’ Is for Democrat: Colorado’s Collapse Under One-Party Rule.

Contract on the peninsula (Updated)

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459 Field Point Road, of the Belle Haven peninsula but not in it, has been on the market for 33 days @ $5.1 million, and reports a contract today. Nice house.

UPDATE: My friend Suzy Armstrong, who represents the buyer here, reminded me that this was the house the late David Ogilvy bought, renovated and lived in after he remarried. I visited there a number of times, and Suzy’s right: it’s a beautiful house, superbly redone, as you’d expect from anything David set his hand to.

And some family members, sadly

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Poll: college-educated women end friendships over politics

Your experience of losing friends since the 2024 election is absolutely real

If you wanted to drill down to the biggest dividing factor here, it’s the portion of the coalition made up of college-educated women – a cohort that now dominates the politics of the Democratic coalition. In their circles, they say differences of political opinion have led to broken friendships with friends and neighbors at a more than 40-point rate – 67 percent to 24 percent.

One factor here could be an underlying belief that your friends and neighbors are just flat-out racists over their political opinions. Of Kamala Harris voters, Cygnal’s poll found that 62 percent say race relations have gotten worse in the past five years (since the summer of George Floyd), while 55 percent of Trump voters say race relations have improved or stayed the same. And again, the same cohort shows up to double-down on that belief: fully 75 percent of white female Democrats with a college-degree say race relations have gotten worse since 2020 – compared to just 41 percent of black men.

It’s the allyship that matters most, you see – not friendship.

Just as a reminder of how ephemeral most tribal political battles are, the late Charles Krauthammer wrote:

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

Very much related:

March 2021: Pew Study: White Liberals Disproportionately Suffer From Mental Illness.

October 2024: There Is a Mental Illness Crisis Among Liberals

So far, Trump has lived up to just about every promise he made during the campaign; that makes him unique among all other politicians in my lifetime, possibly since the founding of the country

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Exhibit 210:

EPA chief Lee Zeldin to kill car feature ‘everyone hates’

WASHINGTON — Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin hinted Monday that he’s preparing to roll back one car feature that every driver “hates.”

“Start/stop technology: where your car dies at every red light so companies get a climate participation trophy,” Zeldin tweeted Monday in a post that has since racked up more than 8 million views.

“EPA approved it, and everyone hates it, so we’re fixing it.”

The feature kills internal combustion engines at red lights and has been touted by proponents for being able to conserve fuel and cut down on pollution.

Critics have questioned whether the feature can wear down the car’s battery or engine more quickly.

The “off-cycle CO2 reducing” tech has its origins in a federal rule proposed under former President Barack Obama in 2012 — but didn’t take effect until new fuel economy standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions five years later.

Between 2012 and 2021, the number of vehicles produced with a stop-start feature due to the carbon credits surged from 1% to 45%.

Up to 65% of vehicles had the technology included in new models by 2023.

The smart start tech can improve fuel economy by between 4% and 5%, according to past EPA estimates.

But it hasn’t shown clear reductions in emissions tests, an EPA spokesperson noted.

If finalized, automakers could no longer receive any credits to produce the stop-start tech in new models.

The move follows Zeldin targeting other tax incentives from a New York climate law and green grants from the Biden administration as part of a renewable energy push. 

Zeldin charged that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul unwisely ended “safe extraction” of natural gas, gas hookups on new building construction, and gas stoves — but sought to cut sales of gas-powered vehicles and block the new Constitution Pipeline’s construction.

In January, the EPA head revealed that he found $20 billion in taxpayer money “parked” at Citibank in Manhattan after it was authorized for an array of “far-left activist groups” following the passage of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

President Trump tapped Zeldin to “unleash prosperity through deregulation” with an executive order in January that designated the EPA and other agencies to eliminate at least 10 regulations for every new one proposed.

And there’s this:

UPDATE:

I’ll add that his cancelling many of the most onerous regulations imposed on the oil and mining industries will bring additional, incalculable benefits.

Liker the Episcopal Church, who knew this old bag was still around?

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sally’s seen better days

Ed Driscoll, via InstaPundit:

SCHADENFREUDE OVERLOAD: Silly Socialite and Aged Madame of the Deep State Whorehouse Sally Quinn Whines That Liberals Don’t Feel “Safe” or Social in Trump’s DC.

Watergate-Era Washington Was Less Toxic Than This

It’s spring in Washington, D.C., the most beautiful time of the year. Dogwood, forsythia, cherry trees, tulips and daffodils decorate every sidewalk, wisterias weep from porch overhangs, and redbuds pop up at every corner. The air is redolent of blossoms, a soft breeze sharing their scent through the streets. It’s the perfect backdrop for the columned monuments and buildings that remind us of the miracle of our democracy. Spring is normally the happiest time of year here.

But not this spring.

This spring Washington is a city in crisis. Physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. It’s as if the fragrant air were permeated with an invisible poison, as if we were silently choking on carbon monoxide. The emotion all around — palpable in the streets, the shops, the restaurants, in business offices, at dinner tables — is fear. People have gone from greeting each other with a grimace of anguish as they spout about the outrage of the day to a laugh to despair. It’s all so unbelievable that it’s hard to process, and it doesn’t stop.

Nobody feels safe. Nobody feels protected. This is a city where people seek and, if it all goes well for them, wield power. But today in Washington those who hold — or once held — the most power are often the most scared. It is not something they are used to feeling. I lived through the paranoia and vengefulness of Watergate. This time in Washington, it’s different. Nobody knows how this will end and what will happen to the country. What might happen to each of us.

 Ed Driscoll: “Quinn’s headline is amazing. We’ve endlessly pointed out that every incoming GOP president is Hitler, only to be rehabbed into the proverbial Wise Elder Statesman to attack the next incoming Hitler. Quinn is using that hoary old Democratic Party cliché to describe how much better past life in her one industry company town was when a previous Republican was in office. (See also, previous Democrat grandees finding newfound respect for the man they spent the mid-1970s hounding out of office.)”

Old Greenwich sale

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3 Vista Avenue, $5.2 million, $5.8 asked.

“Exclusion: Dining Room Chandelier, Curtains and Roman shades in dining room and living room”

I’ve always enjoyed these curtain exclusions; back when I practiced residential real estate law, there were some fierce fights between sellers and owners over the damn things, and when, sometimes, my buyer/client won, I’d ask them a year or so later, “what you’d do with them?” “Oh, was the invariable reply, “it turned out they didn’t fit, so they’re in the attic.”

Tee hee.