The New York Times must not be feeling well: they usually just blurt out inconvenient truths about Democratic politicians like this. Today’s example: millionaire Congressman Jared Polis (D, Colorado) and his hatred of cheap, clean energy:
Mr. Polis became a self-proclaimed poster boy against fracking last year when a red-and-white drilling rig sprouted near his weekend home in Weld County…
Yes, God forbid that our self-proclaimed ruling class ever see their part of the skyline sacrificed for such a trivial thing as energy independence and clean power*. That’s for the peons who aren’t enlightened enough to be rich Democratic liberals.
Via
The coalition is hydraulically fracturing. MT @jdickerson: Battle Over Fracking Poses Threat to Colorado Democrats. http://t.co/jnYZHCSdVg
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) June 10, 2014
Moe Lane
*Remember when the left liked natural gas? Yeah, turned out that was just pillow talk, baby. As usual.
PS: While I understand that hydraulic fracking is a matter of some theological urgency to certain percentages of the population, I would appreciate it if the people who are so insistent about keeping other people’s religious sensibilities out of the public debate would exercise similar restraint when it comes to their own.
Sort of similar to when the Kennedys, don’t you know who I am, liked wind energy until they wanted to build a wind farm off the ocean front property. Funny how that happens.
They still like wind energy. They just like it as a friend, you know?
You missed a chance to shout “classical reference.”
I’m shocked Polis has a home in Weld County. Shocked he’d be caught dead there, after all isn’t that where the hated Ken Buck lives?
Well, yes. Weld County is fairly big – third-largest county in Colorado, over 4,000 square miles. Eastern Weld County includes Greeley, where Ken Buck and Cory Gardner hang out. It’s not the kind of place you’d likely find a gay flower-shop millionaire like Polis. (Although, to be fair, Colorado is rather libertarian and gay-friendly, for the most part, even in the redder areas.)
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Western Weld County, however, is right next to Boulder County, where Polis’s power base lives. If you live there, it’s kind of like living in Boulder, only half as expensive for twice as much room, and a third the tax and regulatory burden. I’m not surprised that Polis chose to have a second home there. I’m a little more surprised that he’d actually admit to having a second home at all – he’s made a lot of political capital out of pretending to be a common business owner. Weekend houses don’t polish that image, even if you do use them to yell about fracking.
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They’ve been mining for coal, drilling for oil, and extracting natural gas from Weld County for more than a century. Polis is on very dangerous ground (ha!) when he attacks that too directly.
Depends, Bartlett .. Once there are more Boulderites registered in western Weld, the county can be flipped and the eastern Weld types will be on the receiving end of a world of hurt.
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Mew
Which is why, living in Western Weld myself, I’m so zealously converting my neighbors the other direction and badmouthing the county to Boulderites considering moving in. It’s the neighborly thing to do.