I can't wait for $10 gasoline!

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

In the debate this last Tuesday, President Obama made this amazing statement: "Think about what the governor just said. He said when I took office, the price of gasoline was $1.80, $1.86, why is that? Because the economy was on the verge of collapse."

This leads to a question and a conclusion. The question is this: are we to infer the economy is much better, now that gas is $4 per gallon? And then the only logical conclusion one can reach from the president’s statement – we should all be cheering for $10 gas, for that will indicate the economy is really booming.

So much for community organizer macroeconomics.

Next, he suggested with all the great “green” stuff his administration has promoted we will all be driving cars that get 50 or so miles per gallon, so the price won’t be so bad. That assumes you can afford one of his Chevy Volts, of course, something hard to do when on unemployment.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail UK, published an article on Oct. 16 claiming that global warming stopped 16 years ago. Now, I am not here to vouch for the veracity of the Daily Mail article (search on line and you will find the usual suspects denouncing this article as misguided at best), but rather to say, once again, the science of global warming is unsettled enough to continue to cause controversy.

What I am here to say is that our current president has latched onto global warming and its cousin, “Green” far too early, far too fervently. It ties into his gas price scenario. He has wasted nearly four years, ignoring the economy, ignoring people’s suffering, while he chases an elusive nirvana.

Which leads to another question – why are the progressive liberals so enthused with “Green?” The answer is quite simple. We, the populace, are too stupid to know what is good for us. We will have to be led by the federal government to make proper choices when it comes to “Green.”

In other words, we have to submit to central planning in order to be saved from ourselves and to save the Earth – it is all about control.

After all, we can’t leave something as important as saving the Earth up to the mere unwashed masses can we?

And here is where “sustainability” comes in as the control tool. We have “Second Nature” (www.secondnature.org), already 19 years old, and founded by John Kerry, his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, and others.

This organization is driving a radical agenda into our universities. According to Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, in an Oct. 3 article in “The Chronicle of Higher Education,” we find the following details of the current collegiate sustainability movement: “…Sustainability hasn't yet achieved this level of intimidation [he is comparing it to the diversity movement], but not for want of trying. AASHE [Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education] keeps a directory of ‘peer-to-peer sustainability outreach programs,’ or ‘eco-reps.’

"These are the busybodies who do things like go through students' trash to make sure that everyone is diligently recycling, and who hector everyone to squeeze into a tighter carbon footprint…”

And Wood continues: “…Sustainability combines some astonishingly radical ideas with mere wackiness. Many sustainability advocates want to replace free markets (a source, as they see it, of unsustainable growth and exploitation) with some kind of pan-national rule with little scope for private property rights. On the other hand, sustainatopians also busy themselves with eliminating trays from cafeterias and attacking the threat of plastic soda straws…”

This all may sound peculiar, odd and funny until one goes to the AASHE page and discovers what is considered important sustainability activity to this organization (http://www2.aashe.org/archives/2012/0703.php#18).

Remember, the name of this organization is Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

Here one finds this proclamation: “Humboldt State University and San Diego State University have ranked among the top friendliest schools for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students by national nonprofit Campus Pride. The LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index (www.campusclimateindex.org) aims to set a national standard of LGBT inclusive policies, programs and practices, and offer an ongoing measurement tool to improve the quality of life for LGBT people on campuses.”

Huh? Did I just go through a time warp or something? How did we jump from sustainability, even centrally planned sustainability, to this?

Ah, yes, it IS all about control, isn’t it?

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga., following decades of wandering the world, and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.