Govt Too Big, Dysfunctional and Un-American

America has been going too fast and on the wrong course since President Joe Biden took office. And his energy policy best illustrates this.

Speaking at an event in Carlsbad, California, four days before the midterm elections, Biden revealed his vision to totally transform the manner in which America will heat, cool and light its homes — by moving from coal, gas, and oil, to wind and solar.

"We're going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar power," Biden said.

But it's not the government's function to decide how America will generate its power — and it's certainly not Biden's job. That's up to the utility companies themselves, based in large part on customer demands, which in turn are based on cost and reliability.

On the cost issue, Biden claimed that the shift would save utility companies "a hell of a lot of money" because "it's also now cheaper to generate electricity from wind and solar than it is from coal and oil. Literally cheaper. Not a joke."

But it's literally not cheaper. Summer sun and winter winds may be free, but the cost to convert them to electric power, and store that power, is significantly higher.

Biden also brought up the reliability factor as a win for renewable energy sources.

"No one is building new coal plants because they can't rely on it," he said.

But China is proof that there's nothing unreliable about generating energy from coal. Dozens of new Chinese coal-fired plants are being built, which account for more than half of the world's new coal powered plants.

The first coal-fired Edison DC power plant was built in New York in 1882. General Electric opened its first modern AC coal plant in Pennsylvania in 1902, and today coal generates about 22% of the power in the United States, and 40% worldwide.

That's just coal. As of 2019, natural gas plants produce about 38% of the nation's power.

There's nothing unreliable about these plants. What's unreliable are politicians like Joe Biden. But maybe Biden can be forgiven. His misstatements, exaggerations, and outright lies are legendary.

Senior CNN reporter and fact-checker Daniel Dale corrected Biden on a number of his fabrications in a single tweet on Saturday.

"Gas prices weren't over $5 when Biden took office," he began. "The Social Security hike isn't a Biden achievement. The Trump tax cut didn't 'only' go to the top 1%. Biden didn't cut the debt in half. Biden didn't get Congress to pass a law to forgive student debt."

And that's CNN. That's also probably why politicians have no business setting our energy policy. Their only interest is in getting themselves and their fellow party members elected into office.

And that's the problem when government gets too large, too unwieldy, something that the late President Ronald Reagan warned us against during his farewell address to the nation, which he delivered from the Oval Office on Jan. 11, 1989.

Early into his address, Reagan described an encounter in the early 1980s between the USS Midway and a "leaky little boat" packed with "refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America."

He said, "The Midway sent a small launch to bring them to the ship and safety. As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck, and stood up, and called out to him. He yelled, 'Hello, American sailor. Hello, freedom man.'"

Later Reagan explained how the sailor — and all of us — earned the moniker "freedom man."

"Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: 'We the People,'" he said.

"'We the People' tell the government what to do; it doesn't tell us. 'We the People' are the driver; the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast."

Reagan explained that "Our Constitution is a document in which 'We the People' tell the government what it is allowed to do."

It's time that we push the government aside and take over the wheel again. It's time to tell the government it's gone too far, it's going too fast, and it's taking a dangerous route.

Last night's phenomenal election blowout in Florida — even in uber-liberal Miami-Dade county — is proof that a government "of the people" not only works, but that the people hunger for it.

It's time that the people of the world started once again addressing us by our proper name: "freedom man."

Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.