…of nikitas3.com

“Kerry: Pump Prices Unfair” screams a headline in the Berkshire (County, Massachusetts) Eagle, describing how our elite United State Senator John Kerry has received a “letter” from a small-town Massachusetts mayor describing the difficulties faced by his constituents over rising gasoline prices.

In response to the “letter” from North Adams mayor John Barrett, Kerry wrote to Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Deborah Majoras, “As escalating gas prices place a tremendous burden on households and businesses, we must ensure that our citizens are not subject to unfair prices,”

“I respectfully request that you initiate an investigation of reported gasoline price gouging in the western part of the state.”

“It’s not just the possibility of price gouging that’s outrageous,” Kerry continued, “it’s also the blatant inaction in Washington about our long-term energy crisis.”

Mayor Barrett, a serially re-elected Democrat, pulled out all the stops in his “letter” to Kerry. Blaming the price rises on alleged manipulation of the oil-futures markets, Barrett wrote to Kerry that “people who have to pay $700 for a tank of home heating oil, and skipping medication to pay for it, are in danger because of pure greed.”

Ho-hum. More Democrat talking points. So let’s get this straight right now.

First, Barrett’s “letter” was just a bunch of political theater. This is typical of how these do-nothing Democrats manipulate emotions to garner headlines and to frame serious economic issues.

Second, the price of gasoline is escalating because global demand for crude oil is rising rapidly while at the very same time the Democrats’ environmentalist supporters and donors are restricting energy supplies and refinery construction to the point of pure and unadulterated obstruction. When supply drops while demand rises, prices always go up. It is a law of economics, about which Democrats know nothing.

Meanwhile, Senator Kerry’s wife, the $1.5 billion heiress, gives huge amounts of money to radical environmental groups like the Tides Foundation, which block energy supplies repeatedly and relentlessly, making “green” enviro lawyers rich with endless lawsuits while our energy supply withers and our working people get poorer from rising prices.

The rich and the poor? Yes, it looks that way, does it not?

In Massachusetts, industry is folding up and leaving because energy prices are among the highest in the nation. Why? Because the extremist obstructionists in the environmental movement are making Massachusetts a test case of what will happen to the whole American economy if we continue to follow their prescriptions.

But wait… there’s help just over the horizon. Just 15 miles southwest of North Adams, a new 1.5 megawatt windmill has been erected on a mountaintop. (See the new Nikitas3.com editorial in the Public Square section called Big, Giant Humongous Windmills.) This is the environmentalists’ vision for the future – a few megawatts here and there, rather than rational production of large-scale electricity generation by the thousands of megawatts, which is what we need to keep electricity supply and demand in balance. The same for oil and natural gas.

And as far as Senator Kerry’s demand for a federal “investigation” of gas prices is concerned, this is more of the same that we get from the liberal left; investigate endlessly, but never create one kilowatt of energy to help the supply. The US Congress has held 13 separate series of hearings in the last 35 years to “investigate” the oil companies for price gouging, and not one single time have they found any proof of gouging.

And as far as Barrett’s charge is concerned that oil-futures markets are being manipulated, we never heard about those markets when oil prices were $10 or $20 a barrel for years and years at a time. But always count on Democrats to make a public scene only when natural economic forces take a turn that they can make political hay on.

Speaking of price gouging, Congress in the 1990s held one single set of hearings on the rapidly rising cost of higher education and found clear collusion among the colleges and universities in the United States. But nothing happened. Why? Because the liberal media are protecting their leftist college professor friends.

Perhaps Senator Kerry could drive 5 miles west from North Adams to Williamstown and ask the administrators at snooty Williams College (endowment is $1+ billion) why the cost of a college education has risen at 3 to 4 times the rate of the rise in a cost of a gallon of gasoline over the last 30 years.

But don’t expect any “investigations” soon. Kerry is supported 90% by the liberals in the university culture. The colleges get richer while the parents of America get poorer and poorer.

The rich and the poor again? Hmmmm….

And speaking of outrageous college tuitions, the Associated Press reported recently that “College presidents are getting healthy raises, and a dozen at private universities earn $1 million or more.”

Median pay for presidents at community colleges is $250,000, reports AP, while Michael B. McCall of the Kentucky Community and Technical College system earned total compensation of $611,000!

So much for “power to the people” from the lefties who run our colleges. It is more like “power to the professors and the college presidents…”

“Presidential salaries are facing closer scrutiny at a time when college prices continue to rise well above the rate of inflation…” says the AP story.

Oh, really?! Who let that fact out? Fire that editor!

So where is Senator Kerry’s ire about this decades-long problem of college tuitions, while his investigative hair-trigger goes off when gas prices rise for six weeks?

You wonder, don’t you.

This is just more BS from Massachusetts, from a bunch of politicians who have nothing but shabby publicity stunts in minds, but who have no interest in helping the real people who make America work. Perhaps it is time to “investigate” the inaction of Kerry and his environmentalist pals about why they have done nothing to ensure our energy supplies in a time of increasing uncertainty, but instead give us windmills on the mountaintops sticking right into the middle of their pie-in-the-sky.