THE EMBEZZLERS

In two television addresses and one news conference, President Nixon explained the measures to be taken to combat the energy crisis. They were not surprising; this newsletter had predicted or discussed most of them beforehand. The unknown and important point was this: Would the President plead for conservation as a self serving end, or would he exhort the nation to unlock America's full potential for rapid achievement of self sufficiency?

He chose the latter course. But his proposal of "Project Independence," a major concerted effort to make America self sufficient by 1980, was totally blacked out by the great majority of media. The embezzlers included not only the electronic media and the other chronic Nixon baiters, but also such alleged "corporation mouthpieces" as the Wall Street Journal and Business Week.

Far from displacing petty politics, the energy crisis is now being used to fan more lynch mob hysteria. Of the 18 proposals sent by Nixon to Congress in April of last year to avert an energy crisis (which was by then clearly threatening), Congress has passed only the Alaska Pipeline Bill, and that only after the Arab oil embargo, watergating away 8 precious months, and finally adjourning for the Christmas recess without passing the energy emergency bill or any substitute for it.

Yet Nixon is now being hounded by many congressmen and large sections of the press for alleged failure to foresee the energy crisis, and more ludicrously still, for not having raised oil import quotas sufficiently which would only have made the Arab embargo more disastrous.

Typical for the energy demagoguery is Time, the weekly brainwashing magazine. A year ago, it ran a special issue on how science was out and mystic irrationality was in, and its mystic irrationality has ranged from parroting the drivel of the doomsday prophets to falling all over Saudi Arabia's oil minister Yamani (Or ya life). It has now started a regular Energy page, which is filled with all the hackneyed superstitions. Conspicuously absent from the initial Energy sermon was the obligatory ritual of berating the depraved oil companies. But then, the issue contained nine full page ads by the Exxon Oil Co. in glorious color, including green, to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars of advertising revenue. The following week, the juicy advertisements were gone. And the venom against the oil companies was back.