THIS IS JIM HIGHTOWER SAYING . . .
DON'T DUMP ON
YUCCA MOUNTAIN
Have you noticed that when corporate lobbyists and our lawmakers
get together in Washington's back rooms, we hear a great, big wet smooching
sound?
When they get to romancing, we folks are the ones who get schtooked. Take
the case of when the nuclear lobby and congress conspired to choose a spot
for dumping all of America's high-level nuclear waste.
You see, the big utilities know that they can't continue with nup;clear
power plants if they can't figure out what to do with their deadly piles
of radioactive waste. So the industry ran to Washington and. . . Yucca Mountain,
Nevada, was designated as America's permanent nuclear waste dump.
Problem solved, right? After all, this is waaay out in the desert, a long
way from our major metrop;politan areas. Hey, stick the stuff out there,
burying it 800 feet into Yucca Mountain - safe for the eons, out-of-sight,
out-of-mind.
Well, not exactly. Federal researchers have now discovered that -oops!-even
though this is a desert area, the water that does fall out there seeps through
the rock fissures to where the waste would be stored not over thousands
of years . . . but in only 40 years!
And that water could corrode the waste-storage tanks, slowly dissolve the
radioactive waste and spread it into the water table that supplies H2O for
the people of that whole region. By the way . . . Las Vegas is only 100
miles down the road from Yucca Mountain - talk about gambling!
Not to mention that this chosen dump site sits on top of geological fissures,
or that all this radioactive waste would be transported by trucks and trains
through your towns and cities.
There are totally-sustainable and cheaper alternatives to nuclear energy.
And since the nuke industry and its congressional playmates don't know how
to dispose of the waste safely . . . why keep making the stuff?
LOBBYISTS PLUCK
STRINGS OF POWER
There's a very compli-cated piece of music for mandolin-pickers called,
"To Do This You've Got To Know How." Well, it's the same with
big corporations that pick the strings of government like a musical maestro,
plucking out all kinds of tax breaks, subsidies, regulatory advantages,
trade deals and other benefits that profit them . . . at our expense.
To do their picking, they hire lobbyists who've got plenty of know-how.
Take Boeing, the huge aircraft builder. According to Harper's magazine,
Boeing has not one lobbying maestro in Washington, not a dozen or two dozen,
but 70 - all pulling strings and making music for this global conglomerate.
Nancy Bratton is one of them. Her specialty is called "tax mitigation,"
and she is verrrry good. In 1995, Boeing made $ 783 million in profits,
but Ms. Bratton and her tax-pluckers saw to it that the company not only
paid zero tax, but actually got a tax rebate of $33 million from us!
Elizabeth Nash-Schwartz is another skilled player, specializing in getting
government subsidies for Boeing. When the company merged with McDonnell
Douglas, for example, she strummed the chords in the Pentagon, which is
going to deliver a billion dollars in taxpayer cash to the company to pay
for the expenses of this private merger, including millions in bonuses going
to the top executives of the two firms.
Want to know why Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich and the rest are perverting
our country's trade policies to make them favorable to the dictatorial,
bloodthirsty rulers of China?
One big reason is that Boeing has big plans to do business with the butchers
of Beijing, so they have hired seven, high-powered and well-connected Beltway
Lobby Shops to stroke the policy-makers . . . and make them hum Boeing's
pro-China tune.
This is Jim Hightower saying . . . When Washington lobbyists sit down to
play . . . We the People get plucked.
Copyright 1997 - Hightower and Associates, Inc.
Contact us directly at: hightower@essential.org
http://www.essential.org/hightower/ Jim
Hightower
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