The New York Times, the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, published an editorial last Saturday commenting on how President-elect Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress seem to have a clear vision of the auto industry they think the country needs.  Now the Times is suggesting a plan of execution to manipulate the Party, the market and force the people to buy fuel-efficient cars.

The editorial suggests that if Obama wants Detroit carmakers to manufacture fuel-efficient cars they will have to drive gas prices up and the way to do that, the Times says, is “to devise a variable consumption tax in such a way that a gallon of unleaded gasoline at the pump would never go below a floor of $4 or $5 in 2008 dollars, fluctuating to accommodate changing oil prices and other costs.”

And then they go on to support Robert Lawrence, an economist at Harvard, who proposes a variable tariff on imported oil to achieve the same effect and also to stimulate the development of domestic energy sources.

The editorial notes that,  “Americans have flirted with fuel-efficient cars before only to jilt them when gas prices fell.”

And so it seems that the Times is comfortable telling the Democratic Party, who it represents like no other publication, how to drive gas prices up, thus manipulating energy markets, and forcing consumers into smaller fuel-efficient, but unsafe vehicles.  I wonder if the powers to be at the Gray Lady were also thinking of population control by forcing us into smaller, less-safe vehicles, thus increasing the number of highway deaths in this nation?