Comment

The burden of imaginary political hobgoblins; oil glut possibilities in 2000

July 1998 Vol. 219 No. 7
Comment

Bob Scott

Good grief

Once again, friend and reader Campbell, initial R., from up North Texas way who’s been mentioned on this page before, has sent us a piece of fascinating reading that seems worth sharing. What it is is a quote from H. L. Mencken, a noted writer, editor, critic and curmudgeon during the first half of this century, who didn’t suffer fools easily — especially pecksniffian politicians — and let them know about it.

Mencken’s observation:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — hence, clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Now if you have heard a more accurate description of the present booboisie running most governments around the world — but particularly ours here in the U.S. and other Socialist types in Europe — kindly let us know. Indeed, some notable imaginary hobgoblins have oozed in recent years from the Clinton hippie horde, many inspired by envirowacko types in the EPA, other bureaucracies and even the congress. A few examples:

• Miz Hillary’s abortive attempt to destroy the U.S. healthcare system and substitute socialized medicine as practiced in the UK, Europe and Canada.

• Billy Jeff’s failed attempt (but not by much) to impose a $50-billion Btu tax on fossil fuels that would have mashed the oil and gas business.

The ongoing subsequent effort by Billy Jeff and his environmentally deranged sidekick Ozone Gore and their radical green minions to destroy oil and gas via their idiotic support of the global warming (GW) myth.
Each day and every day pronouncements from the White House that we have to take action on [you name it] to save the children.
The still-controversial theory of ozone-layer depletion supposedly caused by CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) that caused replacement of freon refrigerant in ACs, fridges, etc. with a substitute whose waste by-product fluoroform has the GW potential (if GW is ever found to exist) 10,000 times that of CO₂.
The attack on pesticides in roach spray, the banning of which could deprive farmers of their only effective defense against all those hungry bugs out there that would then eat us out of house and home, reduce food supplies and astronomically increase food costs.
The furor over itty bitty particulates of stuff in the air that might kill you if you live to age 195.
The industry-blamed acid rain scare which continues, despite the fact that a years-old $600 million study proved such rain had nothing to do with industrial activity.
The present SUV threat, the result of which will have all vehicle manufacturers make all their products the same size, weight and probably color.
The farce of forest depletion despite the fact that more trees are planted each year than are harvested.
The tobacco thing, an absolutely transparent tax to strip money from a single industry, whose product is a claimed health hazard if you use it, which if it is, should be banned like heroin so the black market can then peddle it in smaller quantities.
The idiocy of species preservation, which among a plethora of other goofy things has destroyed the tundra in northern Norway because of too many reindeer and is destroying forests in the Alps because spreading populations of protected deer, ibex and chamois are eating all the young sapling shoots.
Oil spills, which disappear in relatively short periods of time, but whose "long term" effects are always claimed to be a future catastrophe, just waiting to happen, but haven’t.
The apparent requirement that users of stud finders (the little magnets used to find nails in your wall studs, smart aleck) be cautioned to wear safety goggles by notices printed on their wrapping.
And finally, and maybe the most loony, the environutcake U.S. Secretary of Interior’s warning that invasive weeds pose a major threat to the American landscape and are creating levels of environmental and economic destruction matched only by floods, earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes and mudslides, and are apparently uninsurable against because he didn’t say where you could buy any.

Good grief. Mencken was absolutely right. But he should have added that "practical politics" is synonymous with lunacy.

Lloyd’s of London, the insurance people who’ve made (and lost) bundles on the oil industry, is all a-twitter about the latest coming planetary catastrophe scheduled for year 2000. And it is not the millennium bug thing, either.

It seems that on or about May 3 of that year, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, the sun, our moon and the Earth will all line up in that order. That will subject the latter to a horrendous gravitational pull that could cause tidal waves, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, according to some worrywarts. It may also cause a temporary crude oil glut, since the reduced gravity should allow the oil to get from the bottom of a well to the top a lot easier (well, if it’s going to make it easier for lava to flow, why not oil?).

One member of Lloyd’s has organized a study group to investigate to see if larger insurance premiums might be in order because of all this potential. Hopefully, Billy Jeff, Ozone, the U.S. Congress, the European Parliament plus bureaucracies everywhere won’t hear about this, or we’ll have to have a world tax increase to support all their studies.

We can’t wait for the movie to see Charleton Heston in the role of a pistol-toting, heroic insurance underwriter (well, he is the new president of the National Rifle Association) striving to keep rates reasonable — or at least a scheming disaster lawyer.

Stay tuned.