POOR LITTLE RICH BOY
By Frederick Meekins
Feb. 7, 2001

Hard economic times have befallen the nation. It's time to take up a collection for the most unfortunate among our number who find themselves out of work. I am sure former Vice President Al Gore will appreciate every penny you can spare.

During coverage of the inaugural ceremonies, considerable attention was given to the financial, occupational and psychological well-being of Al Gore. Frankly, it was enough to make you sick.

Despite the media attention, this little pauper --- according to the National Taxpayers Union --- will earn a yearly pension of $95,000. It is also reported he could earn up to $80,000 per speech. Gore is also slated to receive $305,000 in "transition expenses". The rest of us should be so lucky when we switch jobs or find ourselves laid-off .

Ron Klain, former Chief of Staff to Al Gore, told USA Today, "He [Al Gore] is not independently wealthy." It has been disclosed that Al Gore is worth between $1 to $2 million. This indigent currently has more to his name than most of us will ever see in our entire lifetimes.

But then what can us lowly normal folks comprehend of the ways of those who find spacious Tudor homes in the Arlington, Virginia suburbs of Washington in which Al Gore currently resides as merely "upper-middle class". Ashame he has been exiled amidst such squalor.

Al Gore cannot be held accountable for the nature of the press coverage regarding his post-administrative existence. However, it does exhibit the kind of elitist mentality of which the former Vice President is himself a hearty partaker.

Luckily, Al Gore was able to find gainful employment before having to stand in line at the unemployment office or having to file papers to receive public assistance. Yet his new career path reveals just what a big-shot hypocrite he happens to be.

Al Gore plans to teach on the policy-related subjects of journalism and family issues at Columbia University in New York, at Fisk and Middle Tennessee State Universities in Tennessee, and at UCLA in California. From these academic posts he will lecture at Tennessee Community Colleges and at Black institutions of higher education around the country as well.

On the surface, it would seem there is nothing wrong with such career aspirations since Gore is moderately versed in these subjects being he has spent the majority of his life in public service even though he lacks the degrees the rest of us would need to even get a foot in the door. But upon closer examination, the transitory nature of this occupational arrangement violates many of the principles the former Vice President purports to hold most dear.

In his ecological tractate Earth in the Balance, Al Gore argues that modern technology as epitomized by the internal combustion engine --- apart from the existence of mankind itself --- poses the greatest threat to the health of the planet. Unless he plans to gallop about on a beam of light, how else does he plan to fritter across country dispensing knowledge students couldn't otherwise do without?

While Al Gore behaves inconsistently in relation to his professed corps beliefs, he is in fact embracing the party-line in regards to the double-standard employed by leftwing elites.

In Earth in the Balance, Al Gore proposes that the fundamental nature of Western civilization must be altered to comply with an environmentally compatible paradigm. This is to be accomplished through massive government intrusion into our lives in the forms of punitive taxation, population control, and restrictions on private property. Even religion will not escape untouched since Al Gore believes that traditional Judeo-Christian theism, with its emphasis on highlighting the distinctions between the Creator and the created, serves as one of the primary causes of environmental degradation in the world today.

While Al Gore reproduced on three occasions, vacations in the Caribbean and in Aspen as evidenced by his post-election excursions to these destinations, and now plans to gadabout the nation as a gypsy professor, he believes that your own fertility ought to be regulated by the state, your ability to travel severely curtailed, and that you ought to be made to live in tightly controlled communal housing complexes since traditional housing styles are supposedly a burden on environmental resources and promote urban sprawl.

Many leaders, regardless of party affiliation or position inside or outside government, view themselves as superior to and owed tribute by the regular people. Al Gore is merely one manifestation of this widespread social and political disease imperiling the well-being of the American republic.

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