Travis Cantrell | Don’t succumb to hippie propaganda

Hippies are ruining this country, and it is beginning to really sour my milk — if you know what I mean. If they want to stay in their marijuana dens watching River Monsters all day, that’s fine by me. But I really can’t stand when they start trying to get involved with this country’s policy-making process or make a big stink in the media. And that is exactly what is happening.

Last week on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, well-known hippie and former president Bill Clinton discussed some ideas to jump-start the economy from his new book, Back to Work. And, believe it or not, the ol’ son-of-a-gun spent half the time touting the positive economic effects of investing in renewable energy sources.

Heaven help us.

It is bad enough that the nutjobs over at Greenpeace are always blabbering on about the stuff — but a former president? It scares me that people might actually listen to this hack just because he led us through the most economically prosperous time this country has seen since my birth. So what?

Anyone who embraces Clinton’s ideas obviously doesn’t know anything about him — or his dark past. Did you know that, while in college, Clinton experimented with the Schedule 1 drug marijuana? A quick Wikipedia search reveals that marijuana is a psychoactive, or a drug that alters the chemical composition of one’s brain.

Hey, gather around guys! The drug addict with a mushed brain is going to tell us how to fix the economy!

Clinton even brought up Germany’s economic prosperity. He moaned on and on through his three-minute interview all about the positive effects the Germans have received from investing in renewables.

So what, Bill, if they have 367,400 people employed in the field of renewables, up from 194,000 in 2005? Yeah, that’s an 89-percent growth during a recession. And? In 2010, the Germans invested a whopping 26.6 billion euros into renewable markets. So what if they saw a return of 25.3 billion euros in renewable-related sales?

Bill, I don’t want to hear that only 5.8 percent of German people are unemployed, compared to our 9 percent. Bill, don’t tell me that Germany already has 11 percent of its total energy needs met by renewables, with that number looking to rise to 35 percent by 2020. These numbers simply don’t support my anti-renewable resource agenda, so they must be crazy!

It is a sad day when legitimate news organizations succumb to hippie propaganda.

The Bloomberg New Energy Finance team just found that top-of-the-line on-shore wind farms already produce power as economically as coal, gas and nuclear generators, and the average wind farm will be fully competitive by 2016. Bloomberg, a business news source, previously thought to be a Jewish-owned online florist, needs to wake up and smell the roses — hippies and their ‘renewable’ energy stink!

A recent analysis by Google revealed that the United States will lose $2.3 to $3.2 trillion in unrealized GDP and 1.2 to 1.4 million potential jobs over the next 40 years if we do not invest in renewables and research now. I want what the people at Google — based out of hippie California — are smoking! Kidding, any drug worth taking should be consumed intravenously.

More bad news this week. The White House ordered the developer of the Keystone Pipeline to reroute, delaying construction yet again. Apparently, President Barack Obama did not like that the proposed pipeline — which would carry oil from tar sands in western Canada to Texas — would pass through an aquifer that provides water to eight states or whatever. Ever heard of Dasani? It’s delicious.

It is truly a sad day when hippies can influence government decisions, and I think I spotted a tie-dye shirt poking out under Obama’s suit during his last speech…

Of all places, I thought Penn would be safe from hippies. But it isn’t so. Recently recognized as the leading purchaser of renewable energy certificates among institutions of higher learning in the United States, Penn purchases nearly half of its energy from renewable sources. In other words, our tuition funds some raggedy old dude’s trip to Bonnaroo every summer.

Penn should be a guiding beacon of tradition, stability and intelligence in the foggy world we live in. But with know-nothing hippies running the show, I think we’re bound to run ashore.

Travis Cantrell is a College junior from Glenmoore, Pa. His email address is tcant@sas.upenn.edu. Penn, Paper, Farce appears every other Tuesday.

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