Rural communities are being hurt by covid economic slowdown

When the Under Secretary of Interior visited Utah in 2009 after President Obama pulled 77 oil and gas leases from the Basin, I went to Vernal to hear him speak. I can tell you that I didn’t have much empathy for him but I did fear for his life. Roughly a 1,000 people came to voice their frustration. Their lives had been thrown into turmoil. Their way of life was threatened. The State of Utah lost almost a billion dollars as result - much of it from the school trust fund.

The artificial economic slowdown from government mandates surrounding Covid 19 has already slowed oil demand so our rural communities were already hurting, but now it will be a nosedive. The Ute Tribe has already complained as much of their revenue for their Tribe's welfare is derived from these leases as well.

Last night, I was speaking with a former legislator after a Charter School Board meeting. We were reminiscing about the stupidity of the Obama Administration and how ordinary people were hurt from his radical environmental policies just like regular folks are now doing under Biden’s policies.

No lie, as I described my sad visit to Vernal, someone who overheard me, interrupted us, and explained that he was living in Vernal at the time. He described the helplessness as he had to drive to Texas to surrender his oil rig. He and his wife were financially ruined and they had no idea what they would do next.

These causes and effects of arbitrary decisions are not just statistics. There are individual stories . . . individual lives that are thrown into chaos. There will be divorces. There will be suicides. There will be children who will go hungry - and all because radical environmentalists who don’t understand markets. The world will actually become more polluted - not less because rather than producing oil in America where we have the highest standards in the world, the market will take oil from countries with lower environmental standards especially for refining.

For all those people that had “Make America Kind Again” signs in their yards, I ask you a simple question . . . Do you really think all these people would rather have someone as president who occasionally came across as “mean”. . . who occasionally called someone who was overweight “fat” . . . who was a New Yorker and slugged back when attacked, or do you really think they would prefer a person who lied about taking away energy jobs that provide minorities and those without college degrees a great way to make it into the middle class? As I stated earlier, the disparate reality of what is truly kind is frightening.

Thanks Mitt Romney! Thanks Jeff Flake! Thanks the Deseret News Editorial Board! Please have the courage to visit all the people that you have dramatically affected. As I said earlier, you own it!