Lights Out
America’s Dream Of Third World Status
April 17, 2001
“Give me your tired,
your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
There is a rumor circulating that people want to immigrate to the United States for a better life. Too bad that when they arrive the lights will be out. This is no joke and neither is the fraying fabric of American life.
The Liberal vision draining America into the 21st century foresees the replication of third world living conditions on the continental shores of the United States. It’s the huckster’s ultimate vision; “re-morph” the United States into the “Forth World” of national progress. The journey from hegemonic superpower to a typhus puddle is the terminal concept in theme park development.
With the expectation of a semi-enjoyable weekend, I arose on Saturday morning and clicked on the television in search of a weather forecast. Suffering through the insufferable, I watched a “Health Update” which preceded the weather. Not surprisingly, this little interlude only served to elevate my blood pressure.
The talking (air) head on the Health Update touted the benefits of a midday nap for working adults. Ceaseless babble about increased productivity, improved mental attitude and greater work enjoyment resulting from more daytime sleep and less work was the stuff that derives vomit. Serious heaving commenced with the closing argument for a midday nap, “After all, the practice of sleeping the afternoon away is a long tradition in Mexico, Africa and India.”
This Health Update must have been a production of the Committee To Re-Elect Gray Davis (Governor of California). I am certain a daily siesta makes mucho sense to Californians. If more time is spent sleeping and less time is spent at work, electrical consumption should decrease.
All of this is, of course, contingent on the premise that Californians are capable of sleeping without their fully integrated home entertainment centers murmuring environmental mood music to muffle the hum of central air-conditioning. Ergo…Gray Davis gets his Jimmy Carterish 10% reduction in power consumption by lulling his constituents into a siesta.
Nothing beats hypocrisy like more hypocrisy and nothing defines a Liberal baby-boomer better than hyper-hypocrisy.
Rationing is an understandable necessity during times of national crisis. Rationing is an inexcusable affront when it is used as a replacement for competent planning and leadership. And, leadership is a nearly extinct term in an America partially neutered by spoiled brat baby-boomers long on knowing everything and short on common sense.
Perhaps this harsh criticism can be mollified by the fact that most boomers are still living in the black and white world of their early television exposure. Mysteriously, the shades of gray were lost on this crowd.
What more could an entitled little brat ask for? The expectation of endless hot water, refrigerators full of food, stereos, lava lamps and wardrobes of clean clothes were never in doubt. Mommy and Daddy pushed the standard of living curve ever higher and their little prodigies never cried foul.
Oh, those healthy little tykes evolving from the luxury of their warm baths into the necessity of their endless hot showers. Thank God, their riotous nature was assuaged by the advent of the BodySpa by KOHLER.
It might have been the guilt of entitlement or bad acid, but somewhere in the progression from infancy to adulthood, the Boomers suffered a short circuit. Everything their parents accomplished was redefined by the liberal intelligentsia. Progress became the product of a morally bankrupt society.
Candidly, the only moral bankruptcy is the Boomers abysmal treatment of their inheritance. Mommy and Daddy quick-claimed the greatest nation in history to little BaBo who is hell-bent on depreciating our nation’s future to zero.
Whether it was hypocrisy or a mega-diaspora of common sense, it was intellectually inconsistent (stupid) to protest chemical companies in the 1960’s while using RIT® to tie-dye shirts. In contemporary America it seems just as hypocritical to hug a tree when you drive to the forest in a SUV. It’s unnecessary to beat a dead horse, so I won’t mention Oprah’s concern for the environment from the interior of her $35 million Gulfstream V.
The Rural Electrification Act of 1936 was the envy of the world and the California Rolling Blackouts of 2001 is an insulting farce. In the face of the California madness, the Connecticut state legislature’s environment committee voted 27 –1 to enforce strict emission regulations on state power plants. Clean-air organizations and environmental activist lawmakers hailed the 27-1 vote.
“Proponents of the bill call fears of a power crisis a red herring and say the industry can operate profitably with the regulations…At the end of the day it comes down to whether or not we want to clean up the air for the people of Connecticut," said Rep. Christopher Caruso, D-Bridgeport.”
It is reassuring to have the Proponents of the bill guarantee that all will be well (from the depths of their infallible collective wisdom). Besides, if they are wrong, who will remember? This brand of myopic nonsense occurs daily in all 50 states. America is becoming a loony bin and the loonies are at the controls.
Long-term strategic planning is being supplanted by short-term political gain. National survival is being sacrificed for another term in office for a legion of minions.
The concept of providing electricity to the populace is not rocket science. There has to be a balance between supply and demand…otherwise known as equilibrium. If a government allows its population growth to explode, mainly through irresponsibly managed immigration policies and the permanent subsidization of poverty, it has to balance burgeoning demand with an increase in production. Then again…shortages are always an option.
It is irreconcilable to have Liberals screaming for pristine air and no new power plant construction while at the same time supporting unrestricted immigration and the expansion of the welfare state. If you want to add demand, you had better add supply.
American’s have to tolerate the energy dislocations created by OPEC. Besides, OPEC is just operating in their self-interest. But whose self-interest is some State House yokel like Gray Davis promoting? Which drug made him hallucinate an almost 50% increase in the cost of electricity and a simultaneous decrease in its supply?
Hello out there in LaLa land. Don’t blame the power companies. Blame the little brats who think they can have everything without paying a price…just like Mommy and Daddy used to make nice. Life doesn’t work that way.
Other than in a Soviet ten year plan predestined for failure, it is an impossibility to have a demand for 100 units of a product, with a supply of 50 units and pricing as if there were 1000 units. If the government keeps its inept mitts off the process, the price of a product is a direct function of its demand. Gee..wiz…guess what…produce more and the price gets lower.
Either free the market to seek an equilibrium price and let the poor go without (this means no shortages caused by price regulation) or…QUIT MUCKING UP THE PROCESS AND LET’S START BUILDING SOME GENERATING PLANTS.
I have no intention of living in a third world theme park. And, I am equally certain that people don’t immigrate to the U.S. for a recreation of their homeland’s deficiencies. If politicians want to conserve electricity let’s start by shutting off the air conditioning in their homes and offices. Better yet, let’s take away their blow dryers.
(If you think this is fun just wait until the water shortages start to hit.)
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