|
 |
Power Crisis – Rolling Blackouts in California
California has been experiencing rolling blackouts due to a power crisis. Every time the electricity reserve falls below a certain percentage, rolling blackouts are put into effect. Democrats are saying that conservation is the key to controlling this problem. Republican Dick Cheney is saying conservation is good but the infrastructure of the energy issue is important as well. There is the question of getting the local governments to cooperate. There is the often-used acronym in Washington NIMBY, not in my backyard. Cheney said in a recent interview with CNN, "So they haven't built any electric power plants in the last 10 years in California, and today they've got rolling blackouts, because they don't have enough electricity; they've got rising prices; they've got a whole complex of problems that are caused by relying only on conservation and not doing anything about the supply side of the equation." He also said the "now, with the gas prices rising as dramatically as they have, nuclear power looks like a pretty good alternative from an economic standpoint, if the permitting process is manageable and if we find a way to deal with the waste question." With the issue of waste piling up at reactors, Cheney said, "The French do this very successfully and very safely in an environmentally sound, sane manner. We need to be able to do the same thing."
Popular methods for producing energy include hydroelectric, natural gas steam turbines, nuclear and coal. Environmental extremists have argued for years against the use of nuclear power, citing reasons tied to the environment. Unfortunately, sipping lattes in a trendy Santa Monica coffee house is far removed from Four Corners, Arizona where nearby Indian Reservations are inundated by millions of tons per year of Uranium 238-enriched coal exhaust – a natural by-product of raw coal.
Unfortunately since 1999 California's governor Gray Davis has done little to solve the energy situation, other than blame previous state representatives and fully endorse his public utility commission to gauge customers at a new rate increase of nearly 50%. San Diego exhibited the first warning signs of the impending problem in 1999. At that time Davis had a golden opportunity to secure an electricity contract at reasonable costs ensuring California's "bright" future, but instead chose to indulge opponents of the second amendment by way of frivolous legislature.
Gas Prices
U.S. pump prices have hit record highs, topping the $2-a-gallon mark in California and talk of a possible $3 a gallon sometime after the peak-driving season begins on Memorial Day.
Vice President Cheney says that, "the fact is today we can't blame the problem on OPEC in terms of current gasoline prices." Since no new refineries have been built in this country for over 25 years, "The net result is that no matter what happens to the international oil price, it's the lack of refining capacity that drives those gasoline prices higher not what happens in terms of the price fluctuations for crude."
Technology plays a role in conservation. The automobiles, for example, we drive today with all those silicon chips in them that, in effect, retune the engine between every firing of a spark plug. On the other hand though, "many of the people who go to the polls and vote like their big SUVs." The Clinton administration ducked this entire issue for eight years. Technology can only make more efficient vehicles but not make all vehicles efficient. Some issues are strictly tied to policy.
ANWR, which stands for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is an area of 19 million acres in northern Alaska. "We only need to disturb an area of about 2,000 acres," Cheney says. "With today's modern technology, we can go into a place like ANWR, develop the resource and leave an absolute minimal footprint behind." Looking back to 1975, Cadillac dealerships sporting large, spacious V-8 automobiles were teeming with surplus inventories. The OPEC oil shortage created a situation where economy was sought after, something the Japanese automobile manufacturers capitalized on, poised with 4-cylinder models already existing in the marketplace. By the mid-eighties, it was clear that fuel was cheap and plentiful. Even Toyota was quickly designing V-8 offerings. Domestics pushed the envelope by creating new generations of SUVs classified as trucks according to the EPA -- hence, loose emission requirements and no gas-guzzler tax. By 2000, vehicles such as the Ford Excursion could only reach 15 miles per gallon if towed. The prestige of a $60 fill up is reminiscent of the '70s where another efficiency craze will no doubt become paramount in the coming years.
Re-Education
In a FOX News article by Wendy McElroy on May 9, 2001 titled "America's Re- Education Camps", she states that:
This fall, tens of thousands of bright-eyed and malleable young men and women will descend on American campuses to begin their academic careers in earnest. Most of them will face what we used to call freshman orientation. More than anything, though, it's looking more and more like indoctrination.
One of the main components of many of these orientations is diversity, or sensitivity training. Attendance is usually mandatory and often tax-funded. Students will watch films and participate in exercises designed to shake the values they acquired from their culture and families. Two of the most popular diversity-training films are Blue Eyed and Skin Deep.
The 90-minute Blue Eyed documents an experiment conducted by Jane Elliott, a $6,000-a-day sensitivity trainer. In it, a group of 40 people are divided into blue-eyed and brown-eyed people. The former are psychologically brutalized; the latter are psychologically empowered as a lesson in white racism. Hugh Vasquez's Skin Deep documents a workshop on race. One section of the accompanying study guide — entitled White Privilege — declares that white privilege controls all power in society and that whites must assume their guilt. Requiring attendance to sensitivity training has caused some critics to make comparisons to Soviet psychiatry and the re-education camps of some Communist countries, such as Maoist China. There, re-education attempted to replace "bad" personal attitudes with ones that served the purpose of the state.
In an article entitled "Thought Reform 101" (Reason, March 2000) Alan Charles Kors, co-founder of The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, explicitly compares this diversity training to Communist re-education camps. It is a comparison worth pursuing. The following are merely a few of the parallels.
Re-education camps often target religious groups because religion represents a strong alternate value system. In similar fashion, diversity training involves systematic denigration of alternate value systems such as conservatism. Re-education camps break the loyalty that prisoners feel toward their families who often offer an alternate system of values. A Vietnamese prisoner wrote, "When making declarations about relatives, we had to make mention of their guilt as well." The goal of such vented hatred is also said to be noble. In order to evolve into a society in which people love each other without 'isms,' it is necessary to brutalize different classes into appropriate awareness.
All this can, understandably, be a bit much for your average 18-year-old away from home for the first time. Helping kids to adjust to campus life is one thing. Political and cultural re-education, which the champions of the "diversity industry" are peddling at $3,000 an hour, is another.
Taxpayers need to stop footing the bill for these exercises. Parents who wish to nurture the values of their children must oppose the coercive indoctrination of political correctness into their offspring. They must exercise the most important aspect of freedom of speech: The right to say "no."
On a similar note Mr. Chris will soon feature an interview with self-proclaimed human rights activist Steven Pernile describing his new program, "Reorientation for all people."
