Goopya Dupya in the White house

Rebirth of a Realist
In his state of the Union Speech the president said he would encourage the development of nuclear power
to alleviate the energy problem. I turned on the basketball game. I can take only so much of "goopya dupya"
I remember all the reasons I had to oppose the building of the plants back in the sixties.
The danger...the cost.. I remember pointing out at the hearings that the life span was twenty years and the cost to de-commission would be more than the cost to build. (It was) It would not(And did not) lower the cost of electricity to consumers. There is no plan yet to dispose of nuclear waste... uranium will cost as much as oil...all those reasons are still valid.
The real reason to build huge plants is for Utility holding companies to sell ,not more electricity, but wall street paper. It is the boodogle to end all boondogels. We are in a Capitalist society out of control.
The 2/2/06 Asian Tribune reports,

"The Fed's 1998 triennial Survey of Consumer Finances found that the wealthiest 1 percent of families owned almost half of all shares in the country and the top 5 percent owned three-quarters. The richest 20 percent owned an astonishing 96 percent, which meant that the other 80 percent of the population shared a mere 4 percent of all stock on issue. The result? The richest 1 percent of American families banked 42 percent of the market’s gains between 1989 and 1997, and the wealthiest 10 percent took 86 percent" (Peter Hartcher, Bubble Man, pp. 28-29).A tiny economic elite had a lot to lose from a fall in the market and much to gain from its continued rise and was therefore hostile to any action that would halt the share market spiral.According to Hartcher: "The Fed's 1998 triennial Survey of Consumer Finances found that the wealthiest 1 percent of families owned almost half of all shares in the country and the top 5 percent owned three-quarters. The richest 20 percent owned an astonishing 96 percent, which meant that the other 80 percent of the population shared a mere 4 percent of all stock on issue. The result? The richest 1 percent of American families banked 42 percent of the market’s gains between 1989 and 1997, and the wealthiest 10 percent took 86 percent" (Peter Hartcher, Bubble Man, pp. 28-29).A tiny economic elite had a lot to lose from a fall in the market and much to gain from its continued rise and was therefore hostile to any action that would halt the share market spiral."

In one of my books, "The State House," (a fiction version of the days during the building of the original plants)
The lobbiest and lawyer for the holding company(Remember Roosevelt said (Utility Holding companies must be smashed) tells the union leaders what a strike at the site of the new nuke plant would mean.

"Ok. I guess you are all waiting for me to respond," Peter said. "I assume that the company people have heard all of this before. I haven’t. I want to say first that this came as a surprise to me this morning. Our department had been informed that all was going well with the talks and I was informed of this meeting at the last minute. I was worried because I didn’t feel prepared to enter the negotiations at such a late date, but now I understand what is happening and why I was sent here. I could bullshit you people for at least a half an hour and show my boss that I was doing my job. I am, after all a lawyer and one half-hour of bullshit any lawyer can do standing on his head. We are off the record here, so I’m not going to act like a lawyer, but more like your father giving you the facts of life. First let me give you the overview from the political and the general public point of view. The public, the ratepayer, hates this damned plant because they have to pay for it and they are scared to death of it. They are not on your side. Now, we have a fairly new man who is chairman of the board. . No, let me revise that. He is not a man. He is a walking, talking computer. He looks at the figures on this project and his computer brain goes click, click, click, and out comes some troubling answers. Answers that say that teamster’s trucks that are empty are going in and out of the gate and the company is being billed for full loads. Click, click, click, electricians are logging eight regular hours and at least one hour overtime a day and they actually spend two hours on the job. Click, click, click laborers are getting eleven dollars an hour and they are sitting on their ass waiting for a truck load of cement that was purposely delayed because the project was moving too fast. Click, click, click the contractor is billing us for materials that have never arrived on the site.
Now, the Governor knows these things because the state’s attorney has told him about them. He lets it ride because it is not good politics to smear up the labor unions at this time, before an election, and of course, it is always very bad politics to oppose the concentrated political power of the Utility companies. So where does that leave us? Old computer brain knows what’s going on, but it all comes out of the rate payer so he simply doesn’t give a shit, unless it means a problem for the sale of company stock. Then he really will get agitated. The poor customer hears all of these stories and thinks that he knows what is going on, but feels helpless to do anything about it. As I said that customer is mad as hell because he is paying for it and he is looking for somebody to hit. You people could help him get rid of some of his frustrations with a strike.
Now, we have all been riding this gravy train and it has been lovely. The brokers are making money so fast that they can’t take the time to count it. My company is merging and merging and merging. My own salary now, including my override, is twice what it was just one year ago. Paychecks are going out of here that are so fat that my bank is thinking of setting up a branch out there on the parking lot."

The point is there will be many tradesmen who need the money and would support the building of nuke
plants, so would their union, suppliers, banks and of course Wall Street brokers will love the idea.
Prepare yourself, another fight looms.