Community mourns with Rother family

Many Kingfisher County families will be hugging their children tighter this week after the tragic accident that claimed the life of 4-year-old (nearly 5) Whitley Ryan Rother. Tragedy can strike so suddenly and unexpectedly. It is difficult to adequately express the grief the community feels about the loss of a child and the inability to relate the sympathy felt for the Jared and Jaime Rother family. It is frustrating not to be able to help. The misery just has to be endured. Perhaps it helps – to some degree – for the family to know that others care. The Holy Bible perhaps says it best in Matthew 19:14: “But Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me and do not try to stop them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’”

The left is determined to destroy America.

Leftist Democrats in the House of Representatives scheduled a vote last week on HR9, the Climate Action Now Act, which would block federal funds from being used to leave the Paris Climate Agreement signed by former President Obama. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., chairwoman of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. President Donald Trump withdrew in June 2017, within six months of becoming president. However, another member of the select committee, Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., proposes an amendment on the basis that the Paris Agreement harms the economy of her coal-producing state. Miller’s amendment to the Castor bill highlights the shortfalls of the United Nations accord to fight climate change,  noting it does not account for the United States’ abundance of natural resources and the hundreds of thousands of Americans employed by the fossil fuels industry. Miller’s amendment is unlikely to pass the House, which now has a Democrat majority. Because full U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement won’t be complete until 2020, the Castor bill seeks to block federal funds from being used to achieve the exit. Under the Paris Agreement, the U.S. could lose 400,000 jobs by 2035, according to an analysis by The Heritage Foundation. The analysis also estimated total income loss of more than $20,000 for the average family of four and an aggregate loss of $2.5 trillion to the gross domestic product. “While the climate is indeed changing and human activity is playing a role, the chances of looming climate catastrophe are simply unrealistic and not grounded in reality,” Nicolas Loris, an economist who studies energy and environmental issues at The Heritage Foundation, wrote in a recent commentary for The Daily Signal. The scare tactics used by climate alarmists are becoming increasingly meaningless to more and more Americans who are not willing to destroy their economy in the name of unreliable research. “…[E]ven granting … a looming catastrophe, the Paris Agreement itself would do little to alter the climate. To have any impact whatsoever on climate, the entire world would either have to quickly change the way it consumes energy or simply remain undeveloped. Both options are devoid of reality,” Loris wrote. Climate control is not about saving the world in our opinion. It is about putting more controls on people – typical bureaucratic manipulation to destroy individuals’ rights and increase the power of the elite. The elite hate the fact that the nation’s founders (idealistic geniuses that they were) put roadblocks in place to prevent the evolution of the U.S. into a dictatorship. They detest the idea that common people may consider themselves as important as the “leaders.” Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders and third president of the United States, warned early on that the nature of government is to become increasingly stronger while individual rights diminish. That might be why he suggested a rebellion can be good for a nation on occasion. He also wrote: “The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.” He also commented: “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them. “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” In a letter to James Madison (28 October 1785) he wrote: “It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.” Real education is imperative for a free people.