Have you seen the proliferation of Ad Council ads lately telling us how we should think and act? There’s no shortage of money these days, right, so let’s get those ads rolling. $750 billion left to spend… let’s make some ads! The Czars have been hired to “watch over” the money,  are accountable to no one, and are not part of any US Government structure we’ve ever voted for or approved. Let’s rock and roll! The Party of Spend (as opposed to the Party of Know.) After promising transparency, it helps to have Czars to which standard rules do not apply.

The Ad Council normally claims to make ads using funding given to them as charity and produced pro bono, and their words about funding seem innocent enough: General operating contributions from more than 375 individuals, corporations, foundations, and constituent organizations are the Ad Council’s principal source of funding. But the Ad Council does create ads in partnership with Government Agencies too: Each Ad Council campaign is sponsored by a non-profit organization or a government agency that provides the production and distribution costs and serves as the “issue expert.” And these days, the delineation between non-profit organizations (think Acorn) and government is very blurry.

One ad simplifies the world’s future approach to solving Al Gore’s energy crisis: Improve the economy and the environment by creating green jobs. Just the kind of pseudo-reasoning that Obama voters might buy into, and are they ever.

Another pseudo-brilliant idea floating around these days is the concept of a gas tax, and Thomas flat-earth Friedman is just the guy to spread it. And Diane Sawyer is just the person to lap it up. Right-wingers can’t be expected to be this brilliant, and people like Sawyer and Friedman have to explain it to us. (For example I saw this Jon Stewart quote on Glenn Beck’s inconvenient book as a hilarious non-endorsement: “Finally! A guy who says what people who aren’t thinking, are thinking.” — Jon Stewart. That about sums up what liberals think of conservatives.) But sometimes even left wingers resist the idea of a gas tax, as is evidenced by Sawyer’s conversation with Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change. Sawyer asked six different times in various ways whether the administration will implement a gas tax, being hip enough to parrot Friedman’s op-ed pieces from the NY Times. “If you really want to change the fuel patterns of this country, and if you want to reduce dependence on foreign oil, not by 2015 or 2016, but right now, there is one way to do it. It’s the way Europe has been doing it. And that is a gasoline tax,” Sawyer bravely stipulates. (MRC) (NewsBusters)

See, people up in the Northeast, they can drive 300 miles and pass through 4 states, and/or they could take a train. Here in Texas, I could drive over 700 miles west out of Houston and still be in state! And I may not have even a whiff of pollution once I leave Katy. But try telling that to Sawyer and Friedman. It’s the perfect selective tax liberals love. People that don’t really need cars that much approve, as people that don’t smoke or drink approve of taxing the hell out of cigarettes and booze. Meanwhile, companies that depend on fuel to deliver the goods to Sawyer’s posh residence will have to raise prices to cover costs, and in the midst of an economy poised to experience skyrocketing inflation, Sawyer urges for a gas tax. And based on the bar graph shown here, it seems government agencies have already had their thumb in the gasoline pie, haven’t they Diane?