CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
March 19, 2015 06:49 AM UTC
13 Comments
Like in the 
Who will clean up just the physical mess on the landscape? The
“If history is a guide we already know the answer”.
Yes, we do… This is an old story, repeated for us here in the 21st century…
Good diary, thanks PK.
Thanks, PK. Somebody should read this –loudly and very slowly — to the Grand Junction chamber and Club 20 board.
I thought liberals were happy that oil and gas workers are losing their jobs?
That’s your mistake. You need to accept your limitations. Not everyone is a ‘thinker.’ You know?
Truly said, but I doubt that the chain and the nose ring will be pried off. Facts and history are so inconvenient and irrelevant to the o & g people and in the m individual’s world. They leave behind a moldering ideology and and a tremendous amount of damage. And, they just don’t care. They can’t see the very bad karma that follows them like the big black cloud we will try to clean up.
you are correct. As a young man I worked in the industry for a couple of years. I returned to carpentry mostly because of the culture and the Karma of the business
They are special…and don’t you forget it…
No one here has ever seen any evidence that you have ever had a thought of your own.
We don’t want them out of work entirely. We want them to work on those wind farms Senator Gardner was plugging last Oct.
We do not like oil and gas – the industry, not its workers – for the reasons stated in the (most excellent) diary: when all is said and done, the oil and gas extraction companies leave, and they leave the taxpayer with all the damage they’ve done. Air pollution, abandoned toxic wells and ponds, unsightly equipment blighting the landscape, waiting to rust out into some future environmental disaster…
The petrochemical industry is not a good steward of our lands. They are not interested in being conservative; they’re self-centered, greedy, and live only for the moment. They don’t care about their legacy 10, 20, or 30 years down the road; they don’t have children who will inherit the land, who might want to use it for something…
Liberals aren’t really for people losing jobs. Perhaps you’ve equated us with some other group who is constantly looking to downsize our workforce.
The amount of oil and gas jobs is vastly overstated by the industry. Relative to agriculture, meat processing, manufacturing, and insurance/health claims processing, actual oil and gas roughnecking jobs rank 3rd or 4th in number, even in Weld County. See table, below, from 2012 CU Leeds School of Business study, “Assessment of Oil and Gas Industry”, table 10, page 12.
Regardless, nobody wants to see another human lose their livelihood. Which is why, as Democrats, we vote FOR the federal budget to have plenty of funds to retrain displaced workers, provide food stamps and unemployment benefits to help families survive the transition, and encourage research and development in new technologies.
Most of the displaced O&G workers have skillsets which would transfer readily to constructing and repairing infrastructure – highways, bridges, pipelines. That is, if we could ever get Republicans to vote for maintaining and repairing infrastructure. The kind of person who likes to work with their hands and work outdoors should also enjoy setting up and maintaining wind and solar facilities.
Gasoline stations will still be selling gas, milk, and other items – those 14,000 jobs are not at risk. The 6K or so office and professional jobs will still be employed in finance and related fields, even if their fracking clients are not active anymore. Lobbyists and their staffs will still be lobbying, as you know very well.
Of course the oil and gas grown ups know that, like any fossil fuel biz, theirs is a boom and bust deal and they’re going to be putting towns, whole regions, on the map and letting them shrivel and die because that’s the way it works. They don’t care about jobs. They care about profits. They know the people they hire are doomed to be out in the cold down the line and they don’t care. Let them go to work in retail. The only energy economy that will ever break the boom an bust cycle is one based on renewable or constantly available resources like wind, solar etc. The jobs that go with that kind of energy economy aren’t going to keep ballooning and disappearing, rinse repeat. The O&G people know that too. They just don’t care. As long as they hang on to all their wealth and power they think they’ll always be able to take care of themselves whatever happens. The only resource they care about is personal wealth and the only people they care about are themselves.
PS. They’re also really good at getting the suckers to vote for their interests instead of their own. And nobody is more easily suckered than grass roots Republicans. Just look at Modster.
Profit: Those monies any business earns between the time of convincing fools and politicians to fund operations, and before filing bankruptcy.