Lieberman and Warner Try Pulling a Fast One To Push Nuclear Industry
Talk about sneaky senators; Lieberman and Warner are trying to pull another fast one.
Senator Joe Lieberman, the lack of integrity hypocrite, who compares Pastor James Hagee to Moses as the so called Christian minister preaches hate and fear of homosexuals, claims Jews are responsible for the Holocaust, and the Catholic Church is the "great whore," and John Warner, a hard core conservative Republican who has bouts of flip-flopitis, are trying to cheat the American taxpayer and fill the pockets of a dangerous nuclear industry.
From OneWorldNet via CommonDreams.org: "Major environmental groups are up in arms against attempts in the U.S. Senate to pass a bill that they believe includes a thinly-veiled attempt to promote the interests of the nuclear industry under the guise of climate protection.
"The climate change bill, sponsored by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. John Warner (R-VA), is likely to be discussed by the Senate in the next few weeks.
"In a statement, Blackwelder and leaders of five other environmental organizations and public interest groups described the Lieberman-Warner bill as 'the biggest federal handout in the history of the nuclear industry over the past 50 years.'
"They fear that, if approved, the bill would not only cost billions of dollars to U.S. taxpayers in subsidies for the nuclear industry, but would also slow down efforts to fight climate change and its adverse impacts on the national economy and the environment.
“The bill contains nearly half a trillion dollars that can be accessed by the nuclear energy industry under a vaguely entitled category for ‘zero and low carbon energy technologies,’” according to FoE.
“ 'It’s significant that the authors of the bill tried to conceal the nuclear funding under ambiguous language,' said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, a Washington, DC-based advocacy group. 'Why are they hiding? Because the environmental movement in this country is serious about addressing climate change and will not tolerate a reversion to dangerous, dirty, and expensive nuclear energy.'
“ 'After 50 years of unresolved safety and waste disposal issues, it perplexes many Americans why Congress would support massive subsidies for the nuclear industry,' said John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA.
"To Passacantando, the nuclear industry is “a dirty and dangerous distraction” from real global warming solutions. 'When both Wall Street and Warren Buffet think nuclear is a risky investment,' he said, 'Congress should not waste American tax dollars to further subsidize this 1950s technology.'
"In criticizing the Lieberman-Warner bill, Sandra Schubert, an activist with the Environmental Working Group, argued there was little support for nuclear energy outside of its own industry because the technology has never been “financially or environmentally viable.”
This was included in a piece I wrote in April: "Christian Parenti has an excellent article "What Nuclear Renaissance" in The Nation that debunks the recent attempts by the nuclear industry to lie and deceive the American public.
"Just a few excerpts, then go read it.
"In an effort to jump-start a 'nuclear renaissance,' the Bush Administration has pushed one package of subsidies after another.
"The fact is, nuclear power has not recovered from the crisis that hit it three decades ago with the reactor fire at Browns Ferry, Alabama, in 1975 and the meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. Then came what seemed to be the coup de grâce: Chernobyl in 1986.
"As Dieter Helm, an Oxford professor and leading economic expert on energy markets, has found, there never has been and never will be a nuclear power program totally dependent on the market.
"The fact that new nukes make little economic sense does not mean that old nukes are not profitable. In fact, these nightmarishly complex radioactive boondoggles have recently been turned into cash cows. Utilities achieved this remarkable transformation the old-fashioned way--they used socialism.
"And increasingly the question is what to do with the accumulated waste--the extremely radioactive spent fuel rods. This is dangerous stuff. If exposed to air for more than six hours, spent fuel rods spontaneously combust, spewing highly poisonous radioactive isotopes far and wide. This spent fuel will be hot for 10,000 years."
So, Senators Lieberman and Warner plan to support Bush's idiotic plans to give one of the biggest handouts of billions of taxpayers' dollars to the nuclear industry while screwing the environment, the common good, and the American taxpayers.
Lieberman should stop the hypocrisy and officially declare himself a Republican which he is except in name. Thank goodness Warner is retiring (which he should have done long ago) and will cease to ruin this country with his conservative Republican myopic votes.
Both senators are sponsoring a hypocritical bill: under the guise of climate protection they are giving away taxpayers' money to a flawed, failed and dangerous nuclear industry...albeit one that lines senatorial campaign or other types of pockets. This terrible bill must die.
Senator Joe Lieberman, the lack of integrity hypocrite, who compares Pastor James Hagee to Moses as the so called Christian minister preaches hate and fear of homosexuals, claims Jews are responsible for the Holocaust, and the Catholic Church is the "great whore," and John Warner, a hard core conservative Republican who has bouts of flip-flopitis, are trying to cheat the American taxpayer and fill the pockets of a dangerous nuclear industry.
From OneWorldNet via CommonDreams.org: "Major environmental groups are up in arms against attempts in the U.S. Senate to pass a bill that they believe includes a thinly-veiled attempt to promote the interests of the nuclear industry under the guise of climate protection.
“This is a covert attempt to bolster a failing nuclear power industry in the name of addressing climate change,” said Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, an environmental group opposed to the use of nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuel-based energy sources.
"The climate change bill, sponsored by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. John Warner (R-VA), is likely to be discussed by the Senate in the next few weeks.
"In a statement, Blackwelder and leaders of five other environmental organizations and public interest groups described the Lieberman-Warner bill as 'the biggest federal handout in the history of the nuclear industry over the past 50 years.'
"They fear that, if approved, the bill would not only cost billions of dollars to U.S. taxpayers in subsidies for the nuclear industry, but would also slow down efforts to fight climate change and its adverse impacts on the national economy and the environment.
“The bill contains nearly half a trillion dollars that can be accessed by the nuclear energy industry under a vaguely entitled category for ‘zero and low carbon energy technologies,’” according to FoE.
“ 'It’s significant that the authors of the bill tried to conceal the nuclear funding under ambiguous language,' said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, a Washington, DC-based advocacy group. 'Why are they hiding? Because the environmental movement in this country is serious about addressing climate change and will not tolerate a reversion to dangerous, dirty, and expensive nuclear energy.'
“ 'After 50 years of unresolved safety and waste disposal issues, it perplexes many Americans why Congress would support massive subsidies for the nuclear industry,' said John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA.
"To Passacantando, the nuclear industry is “a dirty and dangerous distraction” from real global warming solutions. 'When both Wall Street and Warren Buffet think nuclear is a risky investment,' he said, 'Congress should not waste American tax dollars to further subsidize this 1950s technology.'
"In criticizing the Lieberman-Warner bill, Sandra Schubert, an activist with the Environmental Working Group, argued there was little support for nuclear energy outside of its own industry because the technology has never been “financially or environmentally viable.”
This was included in a piece I wrote in April: "Christian Parenti has an excellent article "What Nuclear Renaissance" in The Nation that debunks the recent attempts by the nuclear industry to lie and deceive the American public.
"Just a few excerpts, then go read it.
"In an effort to jump-start a 'nuclear renaissance,' the Bush Administration has pushed one package of subsidies after another.
"The fact is, nuclear power has not recovered from the crisis that hit it three decades ago with the reactor fire at Browns Ferry, Alabama, in 1975 and the meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. Then came what seemed to be the coup de grâce: Chernobyl in 1986.
"As Dieter Helm, an Oxford professor and leading economic expert on energy markets, has found, there never has been and never will be a nuclear power program totally dependent on the market.
"Warren Buffett's MidAmerican Nuclear Energy Company scrapped plans to build a plant in Payette, Idaho, because no matter how m any times its managers ran the numbers (and they spent $13 million researching it), they found that it simply made no sense from an economic standpoint.
"The fact that new nukes make little economic sense does not mean that old nukes are not profitable. In fact, these nightmarishly complex radioactive boondoggles have recently been turned into cash cows. Utilities achieved this remarkable transformation the old-fashioned way--they used socialism.
"Beginning in the 1990s, most American energy markets were deregulated one state, one region at a time. In the process many old utilities were broken up into different firms: some generated power, others sold it, still others handled transmission. One of the crucial details of deregulation was allowing utilities to pass on to rate payers the 'stranded costs'--the outstanding mortgage payments of their nuclear power plants.
"And increasingly the question is what to do with the accumulated waste--the extremely radioactive spent fuel rods. This is dangerous stuff. If exposed to air for more than six hours, spent fuel rods spontaneously combust, spewing highly poisonous radioactive isotopes far and wide. This spent fuel will be hot for 10,000 years."
So, Senators Lieberman and Warner plan to support Bush's idiotic plans to give one of the biggest handouts of billions of taxpayers' dollars to the nuclear industry while screwing the environment, the common good, and the American taxpayers.
Lieberman should stop the hypocrisy and officially declare himself a Republican which he is except in name. Thank goodness Warner is retiring (which he should have done long ago) and will cease to ruin this country with his conservative Republican myopic votes.
Both senators are sponsoring a hypocritical bill: under the guise of climate protection they are giving away taxpayers' money to a flawed, failed and dangerous nuclear industry...albeit one that lines senatorial campaign or other types of pockets. This terrible bill must die.
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