Video: 6:30 Point Of View Roundtable Discussion Of Green Energy, Medicinal Marijuana, Minimum Wage
Just FYI, I’m also on POV every Monday for a weekly segment as well, including tonight!
Friday’s discussion was, as always, pretty interesting.
Our debate about pipelines took a turn into a green energy debate when one of the other contributors suggested that she’d rather we not build pipelines at all. Her answer for where we’ll get energy? Solar panels and wind mills and stuff. Which is just silly. As I explained in the segment, I’m not against those energy sources per se, but Americans have an expectation that energy be plentiful, cheap and reliable. Power sources like wind and solar are none of these things.
Which is why so-called “renewable energy” is a smaller percentage of our national power grid than it was in 1949. Despite the billions we’ve spent on subsidizing green energy, and the policies encouraging and even downright mandating its use, there’s no getting around the fact that it doesn’t work very well.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be inventions and innovations in the future that make those energy sources work, but for right now it’s foolish to jam them down the throats of Americans.
We also discussed the issue of medicinal marijuana, which is being debated in Minnesota. Personally, I’m not much convinced on the medicinal qualities of marijuana. I think it’s a bit of a canard, propped up by junk science and perpetrated by people who really just want access to weed for recreational use.
But that’s a moot point, as far as I’m concerned. I’m for blanket legalization of marijuana for however Americans want to use it. Marijuana prohibitionism, specifically, has done very little outside of explode our prison populations and feed a war between law enforcement and drug gangs that has left tens of thousands (hundreds?) dead.
Enough is enough.
My favorite part of the discussion was the minimum wage argument. At one point Nathan Berseth said that the minimum wage would force businesses to raise prices, but then said we should raise the minimum wage anyway to keep up with…rising prices.
As if inflating labor costs have nothing to do with inflating the cost of goods and services.
