A Line Drive in the Box Score
By David Glenn Cox

He’s been called Mitt the twit and Mitt the unfit and he has successfully made John McCain look like a master politician and even the incompetence of Sarah Palin has faded into a distant memory. Romney made a smile and wave trip to Great Britain earlier this year for the Olympics and within 24 hours had created an international incident by questioning British security. Now wait a minute, sure, it’s hard to run for President, but if George W. Bush can do it twice, without wetting his pants or appearing without shoes, then Romney should be able to manage it.

My father was an amateur boxer and for years used to say, “When the champ trains himself, the champ is going to lose.” Could that be the case? Could Romney be incapable of taking advice or of staying on the script? Something is going on here, for the second time in as many tries the Republicans have chosen a total incompetent as their Presidential nominee.

Okay, the Republican’s aren’t necessarily the brightest bulbs of intellectual thought; they are dogmatic and ideological, Bibles, bullets and tax cuts. Still, this should be easy peasey for them and yet it has turned to disaster, a Republican Dukakis. Things were going so bad for the campaign that Romney announced his running mate Paul Ryan, even before the convention. The choice of Paul Ryan as Romney’s running mate was either a stroke of political genius or political suicide.

Bloomberg – “Unfavorable Views of Romney Cloud His Message on Economy”

“Republican Mitt Romney’s negative ratings are preventing him from capitalizing on President Barack Obama’s vulnerabilities in the race for the White House, according to a new poll that gives the incumbent a lead heading into the first of three presidential debates.”

Fifty percent of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Mitt Romney while the other fifty percent just don’t like him at all. So the idea of choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate was? Ryan has all the appeal of a cold plate of spaghetti and his politics are down right offensive to the mainstream electorate. Paul Ryan’s budget plan was viewed in a negative light by close to 80 percent of Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, so why choose him? Because Romney was so unpopular he had to choose Paul Ryan just to shore up the base in his own party.

The Republican field of candidates was so weak as to be laughable. Let’s be honest here, I don’t agree with Republican politics, but these folks aren’t so stupid as to pick a nit wit to be their candidate, are they? I mean, true, they ran George W. Bush and got a way with it, but let’s remember Bush’s best campaign tactics went on behind the scenes. Romney’s campaign is a fiasco; if the powers behind the throne tried those election stealing stunts with Romney, there would be blood in the streets!

Now, let’s look at this thing from the other side, looking from the Republican perspective is Obama unbeatable? Hardly, Obama has done his best to alienate the left of his own party. He is the first President to ever keep more of his opponent’s campaign promises than his own. John McCain proposed freezing government spending, Obama, enforced it. John McCain proposed more nuclear power plants and Barack Obama funded them. John McCain and Sarah Palin proposed “Drill baby, drill!” Barack Obama proudly boasts of increased drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Barack Obama’s policies are center right. If Obama ran for office against Richard Nixon, Nixon would be the Democrat. Obama never saw a corporation, a free trade deal or a tax cut he didn’t like.

In his jobs bill, Obama proposed allowing workers to continue drawing an unemployment check while working for corporations. The corporations would be allowed to hire workers for 90 days before they would be obligated to pay the workers. At the 90 day point, the corporation could either elect to keep the worker and start paying them or choose new workers from the draw pile and start to 90 day clock all over. This is the sad and lamentable state of Democratic politics.

Something’s way wrong here, in a real world, in a real election, wait, let’s go back, in the year 2000, the Presidential election was stolen by a Supreme Court which intervened illegally in an election. The Supreme Court of the United States stopped a vote count, no differently than some strong man in some banana republic. In 2004, the votes of the people of Ohio were stolen. Not maybe, but demonstratably, it was done crudely and without sophistication but with the blessing of Kenneth Blackwell, the Secretary of State and a complicit media who neatly buried the episode like a Tabby would in a cat box.

In 2008, there are rumblings, that the United States needed a clear winner and an unquestioned vote count. From out of the field of candidates, a bright shining star appears on the horizon. He’s young, handsome with a beautiful wife and adorable children. He’s part Jack Kennedy and part FDR, his politics are left leaning, his delivery polished and confident. Okay, I admit it; I bought into this sap sucking bullshit, but who wouldn’t? After eight years of that drunken little weasel and the Machiavelli Cheney I’d have voted for the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. But not this time, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice and we go to that dark place.

So we anoint this Bozo messiah and his only serious competition for the throne is Hillary Clinton. There is bad blood between them and yet suddenly, all is forgiven and Hillary throws her support for Obama. Hillary is named to the post of Secretary of State and for the last four years has acted as almost a co-president. She is almost an independent agent. She is never reported as flying back to Washington for consultations with the President. When Gaddafi’s death was reported, Mrs. Clinton smiled gleefully, while rubbing her hands together saying, “We came, we saw and he died.” This is American foreign policy in the twenty first century, coups, assassinations and war?

This isn’t hope and change; this is all just very, very strange, who gains by this? Why did John McCain go to Florida four years ago to tell a room filled with seniors about the need to cut Social Security? It was almost as if he wanted to lose the election and then choosing Sarah Palin, well for me at least, that sewed it up, he did want to lose the election.

Flash forward to now, after the election, what will be the number one issue before Congress? Budget cuts and sequestration are set to take place automatically in January, immediately after the election. The President’s Bowles – Simpson cat food commission couldn’t even get their report passed out of a Congressional committee, but what did Obama call Bowles –Simpson, he called it a good start. There is an old expression in baseball when someone squibs a ball through the infield for a bloop base hit, “it will look like a line drive in the box score.” So as Mitt the unfit prepares for the worst drubbing since walking Wendell Wilkie, we must ask ourselves, just what the hell is going on here?

Could the Republicans be anymore incompetent in the midst of a banker inspired, second Great Depression as to nominate a smarmy investment banker and a black hearted Neo-liberalist? Could Mrs. O’Leary be elected Mayor of Chicago on a platform of more cows and lanterns, or is the public being manipulated yet again?

How can the public be encouraged to vote for a weak sitting President, with no real record of accomplishment, save for passing more tax cuts than Ronald Reagan. Barack Obama is the most right wing President ever to sit on Pennsylvania Avenue and the only way to get a public energized to vote for him is to do just what is being done. To find a candidate, so awful and so hideous as to scare the Bejesus out of the American public.

So here we sit five weeks before the election and… well, it’s gonna look like a line drive in the box score, isn’t it? Then come January you will be introduced to someone you have never met before, the real Barack Obama and the first words out of his mouth are going to be about his electoral mandate.

“…for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.” – Upton Sinclair

“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” – James Brovard

I’ve heard Enough, I’ve had Enough
by David Glenn Cox

When the farce exceeds absurdity the gauntlet most be thrown down. If this country were being led by El Duce fist pounding the lectern with his corpulence contained in a medal bedecked uniform the need to resist would be obvious. Yet farce has exceeded absurd as our own corporate El Duce declared to the people with a straight face, “Mindful of the risks and costs of military action, we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world’s many challenges.  But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.  That’s what happened in Libya over the course of these last six weeks.”

But the corporate invertebrate can be excused, this was a mere formality. A banal explanation to a dead eyed war weary nation why when it has no resources for its own people it can spend billions to protect “our interests” in Libya. There was another event going on in New York the other night, this one just for the insiders, for the schmoozers and users, those animals more equal than others. In carefully crafted and joyously delivered remarks the invertebrate said the following “We still have a lot of work to do on energy, Let’s increase domestic oil production. Let’s also invest in solar and wind and geothermal and biofuels, and let’s make our buildings more efficient and our farms more efficient.”

Bloomberg- “According to the administration officials, the president will argue today that the best way to secure U.S. supplies is by increasing domestic production, encouraging production of energy-efficient vehicles and spurring the development of alternative fuels.”

The invertebrate wants to offer incentives for the oil companies drilling on Federal lands and offshore. The incentives include, giving oil companies a lower royalty rate if they produce within a certain period of time or lowering the royalties paid to the federal government for the leases. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop, or to be thrown, perhaps if we cut the royalty rates enough oil companies will be drilling so much more oil domestically that revenue to the treasury will actually increase, Reaganomics ala Obama? It’s not like this nation is in a budget crisis or anything. The corporate invertebrate has always got a plan to cut corporate taxes and expenses if only to help the poor struggling Americans out there. I propose that he call his new program “Drill baby drill!” no wait, that name has already been taken.

Not to be left out of the absurdities Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell has proposed blocking Environmental Protection Agency regulations to limit greenhouse gases. McConnell said, “Letting the rules take effect “would raise energy costs for every business in America — and lead to untold lost jobs for more American workers.”

Republicans are always worried about Americans losing jobs when there is money in it for them. Why not say that space monkeys would fly out of our butts and take over the whole world! I’ve heard enough, I’ve had enough.

Bloomberg- Democratic Senators Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Bill Nelson of Florida have introduced legislation that would require oil and gas companies to pay an annual $4-per-acre fee for unused lands. They estimate that $874 million would be generated in 10 years.

Four dollars an acre! How about $40-per-acre or $400-per-acre, I mean, after all, we are talking about the richest corporations on planet Earth using or sitting on the assets of the people of the United States. The estimated $874 million in revenue won’t cover the first two days of the Libya campaign. A tax on oil companies? Even at $4-per-acre the Menendez – Nelson bill has no chance of passage, none what so ever, nada, zip, zero!

These days have been thirty years in coming, promises made by an Alzheimer President who only had one oar in the water to begin with. The old git got government of your back by raising your taxes and turning the hell hounds of Wall Street loose on an unsuspecting public. Attacks on unions, wages, school lunches and pensions but they were just warming up. Grenada, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The first Gulf War and our first CIA President. A Savings and Loan disaster and watch the criminals walk away! A Pro-business Democrat who endorses Free Trade, a Democrat who agrees with Bush and Reagan. Free Trade is great you’re going to love it; it will bring new jobs for you just like those tax cuts for the rich did! Then a stolen Presidential election and a Supreme Court that violates the constitution while prostituting itself. What we need is a new Pearl Harbor and lo the sky falls and we have not one but two new wars!

I’ve heard enough, I’ve had enough; The constitution is shredded as another election is stolen. “We know where the weapons of mass destruction are. They are around Tikrit” The war will pay for itself our soldiers will be greeted with flowers and candy. Saddam is executed with Machiavellian precision and I don’t know where Bin Laden is, I don’t give it much thought really.

Roll up, roll up, see the show, the grumpy old organ grinder man and his talking monkey show! More of the same, more than insane. Our hero enters from stage left, walking in from Sunrise at Campobello cooler than a body on ice. Come to save the day come to offer hope and change. But wait, there is a problem it seems Wall Street is in trouble, send up the rat signal! They need lots of money stat! $14 trillion and they’ll pay it back off of the backs of those still working people as the people subsidize their free money policy! Over ten million homes foreclosed. Forty million people displaced and the invertebrate chants his mantra “tax cuts!”

The invertebrate sides with corporations against the people, sells out the people on health care reform, sides with Wall Street against the people. Sides with George Phucking Bush against the people. A Supreme Court Justices lies about his income on his tax returns for a decade, so? No big deal, right? Corporate personhood, monopolies, oil spills and plans for new nuclear power plants subsidized by the taxpayers. I’ve heard enough, I’ve had enough.

The cat food commission, Pakistan, cuts to Social Security and Medicaid. The invertebrate calls for one hundred thousand new school teachers as 100,000 school teachers are laid off nationwide. Mutilated and massaged unemployment numbers but Wall Street is recovering! Not enough to eliminate their public subsidy, their license to steal, but enough to pay out their mega bonuses again. Banks fail in record numbers and the criminals walk away! A consumer protection agency that doesn’t have the authority to order its own stationary. A Food and Drug Administration that works for agribusiness and the pharmaceutical companies. An FCC that works for the communications conglomerates. One hundred thousand people protest their rights being taken away and the media couldn’t be bothered.

Eric Cantor says Social Security can’t survive as fiscal conservative Michele Bachmann wants 800 million dollars for a new bridge because Real Estate developers don’t like the old bridge. Jesus ain’t coming, FEMA’s not coming, Obama can’t be bothered. We are wearing a cement overcoat and they’re taking us for a long ride on a short pier.

When Fidel Castro waged his revolution from the mountain jungles of Cuba the US supported Batista while he was torturing and murdering his opponents. Batista’s jails were filled to the rafters with political prisoners. When Castro came to power he instituted land reform, and established a free public educational system and free health care. Tribunals under chief prosecutor Che Guevara began public trials of the enemies of the state. Hundreds were executed and thousands more were jailed as the crowds cheered.

In the end, the same numbers were incarcerated by Castro as were incarcerated under Batista with the difference being that the children were being fed and educated. They had a free health care system and the people who had exploited and used the Cubans unmercilessly faced firing squads or fled in terror but the children were being fed and educated.

“I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime. I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will even go further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear.”
John F. Kennedy

The problems that we face in this country are the problems created by defective corrupt leadership. These problems were created by human hands and so they can be corrected by human hands. The Democrats offer us nothing but watered down Republican me tooism. The Republicans are insane, lunacy, El Duce and worse. Accept the truth; the truth shall set you free. Understand that there is no hope or promise in following these Judas goats up the loading chute. There are no jobs, no justice, no education, no retirement, no Social Security up this path. There is a target painted on your back or do you think that perhaps an angry petition might be in order?

Power backs up only in the face of more power, we need revolutionary change, we must build a new political front based on Jobs, Justice and the Environment. We must make demands on which there will be no equivocation. Yesterday, the nation of Egypt passed a new provisional constitution and in it Egyptians are guaranteed the right to form labor unions. Think about that for a moment; think about how the Egyptian people made that event come about.

This is not about you and I anymore, any improvement in our situation will take years if not decades. This is about what kind of country your children will live in and what kind of life they will have in it. Either an educated citizenry living in decent homes that they own or a generation of Wal-mart greeters and unemployed masses living in rental slums. Either a free people with the right to join a union or herded masses spied upon and watched by an autocratic corporate fascist regime presided over by a rump Duma and a corporate El Duce demanding more and even greater sacrifices for the sake of  “our interests” in East Asia.

These are not ideas that can be; these are ideas that must be. This struggle is not about what you want to do; it is about what you must do it is a struggle that validates your existence. It is a struggle not for the soul of a nation but for the soul of man. Prepare yourself, open your mind to revolutionary ideas, understand that the night is long but the dawn is coming.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
John F. Kennedy

A Place of No Pity
By David Glenn Cox

Mankind’s reach has always exceeded his grasp, that much is well known. But sometimes in our technolicism we forget the things that are really important. When the keel of the RMS Titanic was laid the plans called for an adequate number of lifeboats to be installed.  The British Admiralty law however specified the number of lifeboats required was by the tonnage of the vessel. Since the Titanic was the largest craft ever built at the time it created a loophole in the law but that wasn’t the reason that the Titanic failed to have enough lifeboats, it wasn’t even money, it was aesthetics.

All of those extra lifeboats ruined the graceful lines as designers rationalized they would never be needed anyway so why burden her beautiful decks with lifeboats and davits? The engineers had bought into their own grandiose technological superiority myth. Man conquers the oceans man conquers nature. What is important to remember is the loss of life, the lives needlessly cut short, the lives impaired. Fifteen hundred terrified people died in cold icy waters and thousands mourned their loss because engineers wanted clean lines.

This is who we are as human beings we become obsessed with an idea and we lose sight of everything else. We want clean lines or to build the world’s largest ship or we want to make the largest pile of money and we lose our moral compass. We sit in the cubicles of our modern technology and we push paper or push buttons and say that’s not our department when moral issues confront us.

I was sitting in a restaurant one day, the one that sells those tiny square hamburgers. As I was eating the manager was interviewing a prospective employee. “It says here that you can’t work on Sunday.”

“Yes,” the woman in her forties answered, “I go to church on Sunday.”

“Could you work Sunday afternoons or evenings or maybe every other Sunday?” the manager asked.

I’m certain that this manager doesn’t think of himself as a son of a bitch, but he is. That woman had written down that she couldn’t work on Sunday for religious reasons and for the benefit of the company he was pressuring her to put aside her religious beliefs in favor of peddling little square hamburgers. Leveraging a poor woman’s beliefs against the money she needed to survive. She had offered to work any hours six days a week but that still wasn’t good enough!

How quickly we will remove the coat of humanity and dance a strip tease for the coins thrown at us. Our imagination empowers us while our lack of scruples debases us and our hubris is used to protect us with the armor of “we didn’t know”, or “how could we have expected” or “it was for the good of the company”.

I was reading an article in the Moscow Times the other day and a nurse that worked in the area around Chernobyl said, “Chernobyl isn’t an event that occurred almost thirty years ago. It is an event that is still going on.” The Russian government estimates the cost for a new sarcophagus to encase the crippled reactor at six to seven hundred million dollars. More importantly, people are still getting sick with cancer. The deformed children have moved on into adulthood their lives terribly and tragically altered for an experiment at the power station. Could the power station still generate electricity while shutting down? Managers could earn brownie points and maybe even move upstairs by an increase in productivity. Those who feared the experiment held their tongues, out of apprehensions for their own careers.

In the post World War two atomic age nuclear power was heralded as the answer to all of mankind’s energy needs. The engineers had bought into their own grandiose technological superiority myths, man conquers the atom man conquers nature. Nay sayers were shouted down and the full corporate press was applied. The dangers were hypothetical after all. Fifty mile evacuation plans were created like lifeboats on the Titanic, they would never be expected to be used. Then the accident at Three Mile Island occurred, in reading the transcript operators had so trusted gauges and needles that they were as clueless to the actual threat as a baby playing with a loaded handgun.

Then the Chernobyl accident and now Fukushima and we lose sight as we watch the gauges and needles ourselves. Tens of thousands of people’s lives have been irrevocably altered, if your house fell on you or your relatives in the Fukushima evacuation zone around the plant then you died as rescue efforts were suspended in the evacuation area. People left their homes with just what they could carry and they might never be allowed to return to their homes. Those pinned under debris were left behind to die never knowing that they were being sacrificed on the alter of greater good.

The plant operators at Chernobyl denied the problem for four days and at Fukushima international nuclear regulators have denounced the twenty kilometer evacuation zone and Tokyo Electric’s erratic and spotty reporting of radiation. In dribs and drabs like pulling teeth Tokyo electric only slowly, bit by bit, releases the data on the severity of the catastrophe. Recklessly putting more people in danger as if, if they ignore the danger perhaps it will go away. Believe in our technology they proclaim; our experts have the situation under control. We’ve doubled the watch in the crow’s nest and closed the water tight doors, full speed ahead and icebergs be damned.

How in the wake of all that has transpired since Three Mile Island can any politician in good conscience propose more nuclear power? How could anyone in their right mind recommend building any facility that requires a fifty mile evacuation plan? Promises of “we’ll do it better next time” or “we’ve worked those problems out” only rhyme with “we didn’t know” or “how could we have expected” or “it was for the good of the company.” Have we as a species finally devolved to a place of no pity? No pity for the victims of our technological failures, no pity for the death and damages that they must pay for with their lives and property?

Primitive man burned sticks of wood to stay warm when we reached the end of that possibility they moved onto coal. After learning the dangers of coal mankind has made half hearted attempts to move on forward into the future. In their desire for profit and with claims of expediency the coal industry has created the myth of clean coal. While they move their mouths with pronouncements they move more product destined to generate electricity in Asia. Your government calls shipping coal overseas non-mineral organic exports, heedless that it will be burned and pollutants will go into the same sky they are outlawed from entering in this country. It argues that as a species  we are fatally flawed, world wide fish catches are falling and yet the nations of the world refuse to enforce catch limits until someday in the very near future ocean fishing will collapse for the same reason that Chernobyl blew up and for the same reason a poor woman is pressured to work selling hamburgers despite her beliefs.

European nations have made serious progress in moving away from fossil and nuclear energy towards wind, solar and geothermal. European nations lack powerful coal and nuclear lobbies. Let the Fukushima catastrophe stand for something more than just another terrible accident. Let it be the third strike against nuclear power. All ready the nuclear industry is ginning up a response to the catastrophe blaming the Japanese for using old reactors and for not planning properly. At Three Mile Island the accident was the operators fault at Chernobyl it was said to be the Russian’s fault. It is always someone else’s fault with nuclear power.

Humans will design the reactors and humans will operate the plants and humans make the safety plans and we are stuck with that fact and because of that fact nuclear power will always be unsafe, incredibly toxic and incredibly expensive. Tens of millions of Americans live within a fifty mile radius of nuclear power plants. Do you know your evacuation route? Look around the room, what would you take with you if you only had one hour to evacuate? Can you take your pets? What would you do if you weren’t at home? What would you do if your children were at school when the evacuation order was given?

We assume nothing will go wrong, we were promised that nothing would go wrong. The promises are hollow, the evacuation plans are paper. How could we evacuate New York City in an emergency? We can’t and we are ignoring that there aren’t enough lifeboats on this nuclear Titanic. We trust that the Captains know what they’re doing and so we trust that those pressured or bullied or worried about their jobs and retirement to make the correct choices for us about decisions which could affect the lives of millions.

Can we be so blithe as to believe that it can’t happen here? A country where nuclear power plant workers are trained by their for profit employers? A country where government actively pursues breaking down workers rights to put in place autocratic management? A country with an aging fleet of first generation nuclear reactors in a place with no pity for its victims.

The Future’s so Bright, I’ve Got to Wear Lead

by David Glenn Cox

(I first published this article a little more than a year ago and when I came across it today  it seemed more relevant than ever)

The third Bush/McCain term courses on like a runaway, coal-fired steam train. Mr. Obama, CEO of Gopasskiss, Incorporated, formally known as the United States of America, has announced that Gopasskiss, formally USA, will offer up $8.3 billion in loan guarantees to build two new nuclear power plants in Georgia.

This was the centerpiece in John McCain’s energy strategy. McCain wanted to build 45 new nuclear plants. McCain claimed to be a supporter of the free marketplace, as does CEO Obama, so why is Gopasskiss subsidizing the free market nuclear power industry? Why at a time of massive budget deficit, when the United States Senate can only come up with $15 billion for the unemployed, can they so quickly come up with $8.3 billion for two small plants in Georgia?

In Norway they are using a different approach; plans were recently announced to build the world’s largest wind turbine. The turbine will have a rotor diameter of 475 feet and produce ten megawatts of electricity, or enough for 2,000 homes. This will be a new generation turbine with reduced weight and fewer moving parts. The prototype will be built at a cost of $23 million and tested for two years before going into full production. So for the cost of Gopasskiss, Inc.’s nuclear monstrosity we could build 415 state-of-the-art wind turbines generating enough electricity for 830,000 homes. No nuclear waste problem, no terrorist security problem, no fears of meltdowns or nuclear contamination.

In Britain, business Secretary John Hutton announced in 2007 a plan by European energy leaders to dot the British Isles with over seven thousand wind turbines. Enough, Hutton says, to light every home in the UK with green electricity by 2020.

“Our traditional sources of North Sea energy – although still hugely important, are declining,” Hutton said to a group of European energy industry leaders. The UK produced 1.87 million barrels of oil per day in 2005, mostly from offshore drilling; by 2009 that’s expected to fall to 1.38 million barrels per day. “It’s time we sourced more energy from our abundant natural resources – sea and wind,” Hutton said.

Haven’t they read the memo from Gopasskiss? Nukes are the way to go, with lots of super expensive technology and government subsidies that guarantee profits a future so bright that you gotta wear lead!

In Europe a consortium of 12 large companies are working on the Desertec Industrial Initiative. Their goal is to build a massive solar power plant in the Sahara Desert. The amount of solar energy in the Sahara Desert is so large that a plant measuring 90,000 square kilometers could produce enough electricity for the entire world from a tiny speck in a desert that covers 9 million square miles.

Low-tech collectors would collect solar heat, which would be converted to steam to turn turbines to generate electricity. No atomic piles or nuclear regulators, no spent fuel rods or high tech security barriers. Heat makes steam, steam makes electricity. Desertec estimates that a 250 Mega-watt plant, with a salt storage capability allowing the plant to run for up to seven hours after sunset, will cost around $2 billion. It will, however, run almost forever and will never need fuel, as similar plants set up in the Mojave Desert during the Carter administration are still running with almost zero maintenance.

The tiny island of Samso in Denmark began 12 years ago investing in ten wind turbines at a cost of $4.4 million dollars each. The wind turbines belong to the islanders themselves and investors recouped their investment in only four years. Before the wind turbines Samso received regular deliveries of heating oil by ship, and cables brought coal-generated electricity from the mainland. The islanders began to use solar electricity and geothermal energy. They even make their own synthetic diesel oil from rapeseed found on the island to power their tractors.

Within eight years the island was producing 40% more electricity than it used and has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions to virtually zero.

Paul Erik Wedelgaard was the guiding hand behind the Samso project. He was a man in his seventies, at the beginning, who believed, “We have to do something for the children.” He sold half of his own holdings, worth almost a million dollars, to be an early investor in wind turbine number six. 

Soren Hermanson has continued the project. “Everyone can do what we are doing,” he says. “Everything has to belong to the people. Big companies are not permitted to own anything, which was a big selling point. You can’t do anything from the top to bottom; everything has to belong to the people. It has to become their project.” I don’t think that Gopasskiss, formally the USA, would much approve of this approach.

Hermanson explains, “The question was: How can we all continue living on Samso? In the year before, the slaughterhouse had closed down putting hundreds out of work. It was our Great Depression; the plan is better than the slaughterhouse.” The community has taken their profits and built five more offshore generating plants and the proceeds nets the islanders roughly $4,000 per day, or three times their revenues from raising cows. Hermanson laughs, “I think the weather is always good, when the wind blows, the rotors turn. When it rains the feed for my cows grows and when the sun shines, I take my boat out for a spin.”

Japan has a plan for a string of geothermal plants to generate electricity. In Australia the plan is to build a 50-megawatt geothermal test plant producing enough electricity for 75,000 people to be followed up by a 500-megawatt plant which is expected to be on line by 2016. New geothermal plants are being built in Germany, El Salvador, the Philippines and Iceland. Geothermal is good for generating baseline electricity; unlike solar and wind it is dependable and constant.

Geothermal electricity construction costs are generally lower than building a nuclear plant. Capital costs for geothermal are $1,150 to $3,000 per kW vs. nuclear at $1,500 to $4,000 per kW. Geothermal also has lower operating and maintenance costs than nuclear plants. Geothermal costs .4 to 1.4 cents per kilowatt-hour versus 1.9 cents per kilowatt-hour for nuclear plants. Large tracts of land in the western United States are ideally situated to build geothermal plants, but Gopasskiss, Inc. says no. A Bush-era law passed in 2005 set aside $18 billion to aid the nuclear power industry, because in this case the free market needs help.

The promise of the new nuclear plants is the same promise that we’ve always been given: safer, cleaner and cheaper. It is the same promise we’ve heard so many times before, the unsinkable ship, the safety of Zeppelins and double-hulled oil tankers followed by the same explanations of a strange anomaly or an unexpected event. Stuck valves, broken pipes, and we have only sixty years’ world experience in nuclear power. The margins of error are too thin and the price of failure is too high and the risks are too great to keep building nuclear Hindenburg’s. Time marches on and it’s time to look towards the future instead of repeating the same toxic monuments of failure from the past.

The answers are out there, and they are cheaper, they are cleaner, they are wiser and they are truly renewable. Gopasskiss, formally know as the USA, wants to build nukes because big business wants to build nukes and that’s all that matters to them. They want to spend your $18 billion because it’s burning a hole in their pocket. They want you to forget Three Mile Island and Chernobyl because there are big bucks to be made in nuclear energy, subsidized by your tax dollars. When, in fact, for the economy it offers us nothing. A future so bright you’ve got to wear lead.

Brought to by the Bush/McCain reelection committee, Barack Obama, chairman.