Green Goons

Traveling to Madison, Wisconsin last week, film maker Michael Moore said, “America is not broke ... Wisconsin is not broke. The only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers.”

Hmm.

We know that Michael Moore is not broke. He became a millionaire making dubious documentaries that attack gun owners, oil companies, General Motors (before Obama took it over), and “the rich.” We also know that he’s not starving. He’s the most corpulent communist in the country, but he’s wrong about America not being broke.

The United States government debt is over $14,000,000,000,000. President Obama’s budget will add $1,500,000,000,000 to it next year bringing it to $15,500,000,000,000. Then he proposed to do that again the following year bringing the debt to $17,000,000,000,000. After that, many of us hope he becomes former President Obama, but we’ll see.

Michael Moore is right, however, about the broken moral compass of our rulers. For example, gasoline prices go up nearly every hour. It’s getting so people are afraid to drive more than 150 miles for fear that they won’t be able to afford the gas to get home again. Still, President Obama refuses to allow oil development either on government-owned land or just off our coasts. We have enough petroleum in the ground right here in the United States to last us centuries but Obama, the Democrats and their green goons won’t let us get at it for fear there might be a spill and a sea gull might get oil on its wings. It’s all right though to send $1,000,000,000 a day to Muslim countries who use much of it to finance jihad against us in their radical quest to destroy western civilization. Our liberal Democrat rulers want fossil-fuel energy prices to go up in hopes that Americans will turn to solar panels, windmills and Chevy Volts.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said, "[T]his administration's policies have been designed to drive up the cost of energy in the name of reducing pollution, in the name of making very expensive alternative fuels more economically competitive. . . . In the United States, it's harder to get a permit to mine coal than it is to get a heart transplant. . . . we are going to produce about 13 percent less petroleum in the U.S. this year than last year. Now how is that good policy at any time when energy security is supposed to be a priority, but particularly a time of turmoil in the Middle East in the oil-producing states?"

Barbour may run for president as a Republican in 2012.

Leaders who would intentionally drive up energy prices for every American do indeed have broken moral compasses as Michael Moore suggests, but that isn’t how those leaders see themselves. When they look in their mirrors, they see modern-day saviors of the world looking back because oil and coal are fossil fuels. Michael Moore, President Obama, and millions of other Chicken Littles have been predicting for decades now that we’re all going to be boiled alive by global warming allegedly caused by burning those evil fossil fuels.

Just by inserting the word “allegedly” in the previous sentence, I’ve made myself a heretic in the rigid religion of Environmentalism. I’ve become the equivalent to a Holocaust-denier, a shill for oil companies, anathema to the “Greens” - just like Haley Barbour.People like Barbour and me are understood by the environmental saviors as suck-ups to “the rich” whom they think are ripping off everybody else on earth. Environmental saviors are also champions of “the poor” and those members of the middle class who bow at the same altars they do. They’re on the side of the public-employee unions who portray themselves as champions of ordinary Americans against “the rich.” They would save us all from the the evil intentions of “the rich” who conspire constantly to make everyone else poorer and destroy the world. Wisconsin and America “are not broke” because there are still some rich people who could pay more taxes. No matter that they’re already paying most of our federal income taxes. No matter that, according to an article on CNBC’s web site: “[S]ocial welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries [in America] this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960” Who do they suppose is paying for all that?Hope this isn't a Wisconsin teacher

Michael Moore and Barack Obama, both millionaires, know how much money we’re all supposed to have. They know how much is enough, how much is too much, and what amount each of us deserves. They would use government to take wealth away from “the rich” and fix everything for everybody so we can all live happily ever after driving our Chevy Volts and plugging them in every thirty miles.

Hang on America. The journey to the Big Green Paradise is going to be expensive and if you’re not broke yet, you soon will be.

The Tissue Issue

It’s fashionable to be “green” these days, among liberals at least. Advertisers pick up on it to make products and services seem as green as possible. Given that man-made global warming is being exposed as a hoax with fudged data in British and American universities, NASA, and the UN, I’m wondering how long the fad will last.

Two years ago, pop singer Sheryl Crow showed clips from Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” on her concert tour and insisted we could save the planet by using only one sheet of toilet paper per visit, “ . . . except, of course, on those pesky occasions when two or three could be required.” I can’t help but think that attempts to use just one sheet would be the main cause of “those pesky occasions,” but I’m one of those conservatives the Green People think don’t care about the environment and like to pollute it every chance I get because I like drinking dirty water, breathing dirty air, and using too much toilet paper, so what would I know?

Remember that Gore is the guy who, as a US Senator, restricted each American toilet flush to two-and-a-half gallons, so now toilet paper doesn’t go all the way down after you flush. It just swirls around and stays in the bowl - an inconvenient flush, you could say, because we have to wait while the tank slowly fills up and try again.

When Al Gore and Sheryl Crow insist that global warming is caused by human activity, they sound like Chicken Little and Henny Penny squawking “The sky is falling!” Nonetheless, I don’t want to get in the way of any students who wish to comply with Crow’s recommendation. The problem is that toilet paper at my school is on continuous rolls about twelve or fourteen inches in diameter and not perforated into individual sheets. Students and teachers must reach into the bottom of the dispenser, grab hold of the end of the roll, pull down a length of tissue, then pull up and to the side so the sawtooth edge of the dispenser severs the piece for use. If the one sheet Crow wants people to use is four inches long, it would be nearly impossible for students to pull out only that much and tear it off. It would just shred in their fingers and make for an inconvenient wipe.Luckily we have award-winning custodians in my school and I put the problem to them. Could we possibly perforate the big toilet paper rolls by drilling into them? They furrowed their brows and scratched their chins as they considered my tissue issue. They could drill a set of holes across the paper from the outside in so it would rip off in perforated sheets they said, but the ones toward the end of the roll would become ever smaller as its circumference steadily decreased with use. Those tearing off sheets at the end would find them so small that one sheet couldn’t possibly suffice for the task at hand no matter how fervently they wanted to save the planet. Steadily decreasing school budgets may, however, solve the perforation problem. Students in Ireland and Hawaii are now requested to bring their own toilet paper and we can ask our students too.

Meanwhile, Sheryl Crow is still, as our Hawaiian president might say, all “wee-weed up” over toilet paper. Last week, she wanted only recycled toilet paper dispensed at her concerts. I don’t know if she’ll allow people to use more than one square if it’s recycled, but she specifies that it has to be “post-consumer recycled toilet paper and paper towel” and that leaves me wondering: Does she mean some consumer must have used the toilet paper before her concert-goers use it? If so, how does it get recycled? Is it pulled up from a septic tank and reprocessed? I don’t like to visualize that so I’ll assume it’s from some other sort of “post-consumer” use, like an already-read newspaper or something.

Readers should keep this in mind should Crow ever decide to do a gig here in the Maine/New Hampshire area and you get what folk singer Tom Rush might call “the urge for going.” If it’s an outside venue, I suppose people could pick a leaf off a low branch and use that for a real greenie wee-wee.

The Right Choice

More than six years after their oh-so-close election fight, Bush and Gore are still in the news. Gore got an Academy Award and was the darling of Hollywood. Bush got his usual hammering. You know the drill: He’s a moron, warmonger, liar. As dozens scramble to replace him, our president’s foibles are out there. I don’t see him as a moron, a liar, or a warmonger, but many of his policies are way off. Twice I voted for him, however, and would again given the same choices.

Mr. President? Here’s where you’ve messed up so far:

You’re wrong on government spending first and foremost. There’s very little government can do for people that they wouldn’t be better off doing for themselves.

You’re wrong on the prescription drug benefit. We simply cannot afford it.

You’re wrong on aid to agribusiness and small farmers. Let farmers sink or swim on their own like everyone else.

You’re wrong on aid to education. The federal government should not be in the education business except for perhaps one function: Design a test to measure what every student should know and be able to do in each grade, K-12. Don’t require that every student take it; just put it out there so everyone knows about it. If states or local districts really want to see how their students measure up, they’ll use it. If they don’t, they won’t. Government can’t make schools improve. Only the communities in which those schools exist can do that.

You’re wrong on illegal immigration. What part of the word “illegal” don’t you understand? Look at the map. Borders define our country. If we don’t control them, we won’t be a country. Legal immigrants are fine and they’re the only ones who should be here. Deport the rest. All of them.

You’re wrong on the war: You’re not aggressive enough. Reread your speeches from the fall of 2001. The “Bush Doctrine” was right on the money. “If you support terrorism, we’re coming after you,” you said. Iran and Syria are supporting terrorism and you’re not going after them.

Other than those things, I’m with you, and I know you’re not as dumb as you look sometimes. Meanwhile, you can take some consolation knowing your opponents in 2000 and 2004 are making asses of themselves. Next to them, you still look good. Kerry dropped out the 2008 race because people got to know him and they don’t like him. Even though he called you dumb, your GPA at Yale was higher than his. He still thinks he’s a genius though and that irritates people. Those remarks about our soldiers being “stuck in Iraq” because they didn’t do well in school? Dumb. Very dumb.

Then we have Al “Save the World” Gore. He’s telling us all to ride bikes and cut down on electricity while just one of his mansions uses more than twenty times what an average American home does, and he has three of them. Meanwhile, your ranch in Crawford is an ecological wonder compared to Gore’s Nashville home. According to a 2001 article in the Chicago Tribune:

[Bush’s] 4,000-square-foot house is a model of environmental rectitude. Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this ‘eco-friendly’ dwelling use about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize. A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem.

In a free society, hypocrites like Gore get smoked out eventually.

When Bush won the 2000 election, I was at a directors’ meeting of an education-reform group called “The Southern Maine Partnership” at a fancy restaurant in Portland. I was the only person there who voted for him. The others were depressed as they speculated, ominously, that Bush would advocate vouchers in public education - checks to parents for about half the amount it would cost to educate students for a year in public school. Parents could use vouchers for private school tuition.

“I think vouchers are a good idea,” I said. There was silence as everyone looked at me incredulously. “Gore sent his kids to private schools but he’s against vouchers that would enable others to do the same thing. Meanwhile, Bush sent his kids to public schools but he supports vouchers that would allow many more parents to make the same choice Gore did. Bush is pro-choice on education and so am I.” My term on the board ran out shortly after that and I wasn’t invited back.

My votes in 2000 and 2004 don’t keep me up nights. President Gore? President Kerry? Now those are scary thoughts.

Chicken Little Lives

The more you know, the more you know you don’t know. As I learn new things, I’m aware of how ignorant I am. After more than thirty years of teaching, I find myself qualifying what I claim to be true with phrases like, “The best analysis indicates . . .” or “We don’t know for sure, but we think . . .” I believe there is an objective reality out there, but the brightest among us perceive it imperfectly at best. As a history teacher, I know how much disagreement exists about past events - even those to which we were eyewitnesses. As my wife often points out, I’m not always aware of what’s happening around me in the present. As for the future, we can know very little beyond what Little Orphan Annie told us: “The sun will come up tomorrow.” Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess.

Thus, I’m acutely aware when Chicken Littles like our former vice president (and almost president) tell me the sky is falling and we must run and tell the king. We’re seldom able to predict the weather accurately beyond three or four days, yet Mr. Gore claims an ability to predict it decades and centuries into the future. That would be okay, except that he wants to institute some drastic changes that would affect what I do every day and people who think like him have taken control of Congress. They think humans can reverse climate change by limiting carbon emissions. What hubris.

As a history-loving boy, I was fascinated by pre-Columbian discoveries of America, especially those close to my region of the continent. I read about Vikings going to and from Greenland and veering off course. A thousand years ago, Greenland was able to sustain a colony of 1500 people agriculturally, something that wouldn’t be possible today. Off-course Vikings described coastlines encountered with great detail and their descriptions were recorded in “Icelandic sagas” subsequent to their wanderings. Historians in Iceland tried to match Viking descriptions with existing coastlines of eastern Canada and New England, looking for places described as, for instance, “a broad, shallow bay bordered by a spit of land on the southwest,” and so forth, but without success.

However, when they considered the coastlines with a rise in sea level, as would have been the case a thousand years ago in what climatologists called at the time a “little climatic optimum” or what today is called the “medieval warming period,” historians discovered that what had been described as a broad, shallow bay would today be a salt marsh. With such modifications they noticed striking similarities between Viking coastal descriptions and what’s visible today. Some of the studies I’ve seen purposely overlook this warming period in charts that show temperatures over millennia. They make dire predictions of flooded cities, droughts and hurricanes with data that describe conditions which seem no more worrisome than those prevalent a thousand years ago.

Clearly, Mr. Gore wants attention. It must be hard to have lost the White House after winning the popular vote and see the guy who beat you in the spotlight endlessly. I seldom think of Al Gore inventing the internet when I go on line every day, but I do think of him after I flush my toilet. Thanks to his support of the National Energy Policy Act, toilets manufactured after 1994 must have a maximum capacity of 1.6 gallons of flushing power. I bought my toilets in 1987, but I’ve replaced the flush valve and ball cock in the one I use most and now it doesn’t flush very well. There’s something still floating around afterward because Gore’s 1.6 gallons don’t get rid of everything. It’s that brown-stained toilet paper or that little piece of turd that remind me of the former vice president. Gore thinks I need government to tell me how much of my own water I’m allowed to use to flush my own toilet.

He warned us we were running out of water and now he’s doing his Chicken Little act about carbon emissions. He’s pumping up Turkey Lurkey environmentalists who claim a lawn mower running for an hour on Saturday pollutes the atmosphere as much as an automobile on a 100 mile drive. So, in 2007 we’ll have emission standards for lawn mowers. What’s next? An inspection sticker for my snowblower? My weed whacker? My chainsaw?

As I get less certain about what the future holds, Gore gets more certain. He knows what’s best for me and for everybody else in the world whether we like it or not.