For many, Memorial Day marks the official start of summer or the end of the school year, but we at CER are preparing for our next history program for DC charter school students, Why America? The Armed Forces, Memorial Day and the Flag, and so have been studying the origins and meaning of Memorial Day.
Since the end of the Civil War, Memorial Day has been observed as a solemn occasion honoring the American soldiers who gave their lives in war. The values those individuals fought to defend form the essence of our country: freedom and the rights of the individual.
Since 1948 the US Army Old Guard unit has performed “Flags In” on the Thursday before Memorial Day, during which they place flags at every grave in Arlington National Cemetery (more than 228,000 graves).
The Army Flag Code of the United States requires that on Memorial Day flags should be flown at half-staff from sunrise until noon only, then raised to the top of the staff until sunset. This unique custom is a means of honoring those who died in battle during the morning, while the rest of the day is meant to honor the living veterans – recognizing those who have sacrificed and those who are still with us.
To all members of the Armed Forces past and present -
thank you for your service!
Fake news about energy, clean and dirty
by Tom H. Hastings
1043 words
I used to listen to Freakonomics, an interesting podcast, until it called nuclear energy clean and nonpolluting. I haven’t listened to any since. I really don’t appreciate fake news and junk science.
Radiation kills, okay? It causes cancers, birth defects, and if one gets enough of it, radiation kills promptly, as it did in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Fukushima. What is the difference if the radiation comes from a bomb or a power plant? It still kills, sometimes in days, sometimes by planting latent cancers that consume a person a few years later.
But what are the alternatives? Back to the Steam Age?
Actually, we never left. That is how nuclear power creates electricity, by making steam—as if we can’t make steam in other, less polluting ways. As if we can’t turn turbines—the entire idea behind generating electricity from hydro power, wind, or nukes—in many ways.
Using a massive nuclear reaction to make steam, noted someone years ago, is like using a chainsaw to cut butter. Let’s match the least destructive means to the desired ends.
We are paying the price every day for our nukes. Just this past week in southern Ohio the Scioto Valley Local School District announced it was closing Zahn’s Corner Middle School, because neptunium was in air samples from the school and that causes bone cancer. Right next door is an abandoned uranium enrichment plant that the Department of Energy ran for both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, and is paying to have cleaned up.
The uranium was enriched at taxpayer expense. The site, closed now for some 17 years, is being remediated at taxpayer expense. Still, when those who argue for nuclear power claim that nukes are scarcely subsidized and that solar and wind are the ones getting the really massive subsidies, they are wrong at every level. They never include all these massive costs, mostly taken from government (taxpayer) budgets, from exploring for uranium to mining it to transporting it to enriching it to fabricating the rods—and then to endless very costly attempts to manage the waste. Private industry basically plugs in for the profit-taking section of the nuclear chain.
This is not even considering the dealbreaker that private utilities needed fixed before they would take the risk of trying nuclear power way back in the day. They refused to get into nukes unless the government capped liability in case of accident. After all, how much has Chernobyl cost? Fukushima? What if corporations had to pay actual insurance rates or had to cover damages above and beyond what insurance would cover? The corporations aren’t stupid; they made that demand and Congress dutifully passed the Price Anderson Act, limiting how much the utilities would be on hook for in case of a meltdown.
The ratepayer and the taxpayer are the fiscal victims in these cases—the government gouges the taxpayer to cover huge expenses so nuclear power is affordable for the utilities. The government forces the utilities to charge the ratepayers for a special fund that is supposed to help with radioactive waste disposal. Good luck collecting enough for thousands of years of caretaking that radioactive effluent.
Indeed, if the true invisible hand of the market were allowed to operate (i.e., remove all subsidies to all forms of electrical generation) nukes, coal, and natural gas would be more expensive than solar and wind.
Imagine the true costs of nukes, coal, and natural gas if the human health and environmental costs over time were required to be a part of the rates. Put the ecologists and insurance bean counters in the same room for a while and we would know the extrapolative estimates that would make some jaws drop.
Certainly the number crunchers from the International Monetary Fund and researchers from UC-Davis found some stunning numbers that revealed the aggregate subsidies for fossil fuel corporations: “Estimated subsidies are $4.9 trillion worldwide in 2013 and $5.3 trillion in 2015.” Whopping subsidies per year for the big polluters and in the US the clean power subsidies over decades barely reach less than $35 billion, a tiny fraction of dirty power government gifts—truly “lemon socialism,” that is, take from the poor and middle class and give to the elite owners. Nuclear, coal, and natural gas power corporations are true welfare queens.
Thus, the true voodoo economics of nuclear power are, for the most part, simply not understood by many “researchers,” such as those who produce Freakonomics, so imagine how well politicians understand, let alone regular folks with busy lives trying to pay for it all.
During the Obama years clean v dirty energy subsidies were mostly reversed. That’s all done now, of course. Back to planet-wrecking business as usual.
No to coal. No to nukes. Yes to low-head hydro constructed to not harm fish migration. Yes to solar. Yes to wind. Yes to conservation.
I write this as I am in my late late sixties, closing next year on 70. This is not for me. I teach hundreds of young people every year at my university. I look at them and think of the fake news false dichotomy fed to them by so-called experts—do you want coal and global warming or do you want ‘clean’ nuclear power? How about neither?
I read of the kids in the Zahn’s Corner Middle School, exposed to bone cancer-causing neptunium—three young students in this tiny school of just 360 students have died from cancer in the past few years and others have been diagnosed. The nuclear facilities, from uranium mining tailings to enrichment feed plants to actual nuclear power generating stations to waste management sites, all emit ionizing radiation, usually for a long time before they are made known to the public—if ever. It is the Midas Touch in reverse. Everything nuclear power touches becomes life-threatening for long periods, some more than a quarter million years.
No one has to mine for the sun or wind or rivers. No wind machine and no solar panel will need to be buried deeply in the earth, encased in vitrified material and guarded for thousands of years. None of these alternatives does anything but protect the climate and protect the quality of our air, our water, and our children’s health.
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Dr. Tom H. Hastings is PeaceVoice Director and on occasion an expert witness for the defense in court.
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Dear Editor:
Please consider this timely analysis by foreign policy expert Dr. Mel Gurtov of Trump's further machinations supporting the murderous Saudi regime under the flimsy cover of a Fake Emergency. For PeaceVoice, thank you,
Tom Hastings
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Another Fake “Emergency”
by Mel Gurtov
400 words
Just a few months ago Saudi Arabia’s leader, Mohammed bin-Salman (MBS), was on the defensive. He had authorized the murder of an independent journalist, his domestic “reforms” had turned out to be fanciful, and the US Congress had moved to deprive him of the military support he had counted on continue his war crimes in Yemen. But MBS had crucial support from the Trump administration. Trump was unwilling to accept the CIA’s finding that MBS probably ordered the assassination of the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, and Jared Kushner evidently persuaded Trump that continued support of his friend, the crown prince, was essential to US ideas about a Middle East peace.
As a result, US policy toward Saudi Arabia did not change one iota. And now, we see that far from distancing the US from Saudi Arabia, Trump has found a false reason to tighten it. Based on accusations of a new security threat from Iran, Trump has authorized the dispatch of 1500 additional troops to the Middle East and the sale of several billion dollars in “precision-guided” weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The arms sale is being made without Congressional authorization or consultation, on the argument (made by Pompeo) that an “extreme emergency” eliminates the legal requirement to make the case to Congress.
There is no emergency. No evidence has been presented to show that Iran is taking any action that threatens US or any other country’s interests. On the other hand, evidence is abundant that US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran, the sanctions imposed on Iran, and threats of regime change do present a security threat—to Iran. As for Saudi Arabia, selling arms to a murderous regime that consistently violates human rights and is committing war crimes in Yemen is simply unconscionable.
Trump’s latest moves are perfectly in line with the insidious
way he conducts his office. He declares an emergency when none exists, as with the use of the US military for border security, now in litigation. And he
ignores Congress when it suits his political purposes, as with his refusal to
honor House of Representative committee subpoenas and requests for documents. Trump thus further cements his authoritarianism, and Congress members are left to ponder at what point they will draw the line and defend our form of government from an imperial president.
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Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University.
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Perdue: Government can be a powerful force for good, but government dependency has never been the American dream
Utah an example of boosting self-sufficiency
By Secretary Sonny Perdue
Salt Lake City Tribune
May 24, 2019
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With hard work and dedication, you can accomplish great things. That’s the American dream. And when times are tough we pull together to solve problems, and we look out for each other, knowing that next time, we may be the one who needs a helping hand.
In Utah, you have a unique system to provide temporary food assistance. The Utah Department of Workforce Services provides SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits, as well as services that help SNAP participants look for work, improve their skills, or enhance their careers. And it works closely with employers to help them recruit and hire individuals who have the skills they need.
…
One of the best things about Welfare Square is that it’s non-discriminatory and its doors are open to all. As part of the church’s larger Welfare Program, all aid received at Welfare Square is based on personal responsibility, thrift, and work; recipients of aid may be asked to volunteer their time after receiving help. This is a beautiful system – one that provides a safety net for those in need but encourages accountability and self-sufficiency.
We have been working to reinvigorate those values in recent years through SNAP. SNAP provides essential benefits to ensure folks facing the loss of a job or other difficult circumstances can put food on the table. But, just as important, it provides connections to employment and training in the clear expectation that folks will seek to move beyond those benefits to work and independence.
President Trump’s policies are unleashing a booming economy. He’s putting people back to work and increasing wages. Last month’s employment report – showing a national unemployment rate of 3.6 percent, the lowest since December 1969 – highlights the robust state of our economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there are 7.5 million job openings in the U.S. and 5.8 million unemployed. There are more job openings than there are people to fill those spots thanks to Trump’s actions to cut taxes and remove strangling regulations.
Our SNAP program should be structured to work with our changing economy, not be stuck in the past. This is why I made it a top priority to work with states and the private sector to ensure people have the tools they need to move away from SNAP dependency and back toward self-sufficiency.
…
Americans are an exceptional people. We are uniquely independent, but we are also a giving people, willing to help our neighbor in their times of need. Any one of us can face tough times, and as a community we come together to help others. At the same time, we expect those who we assist to in turn take responsibility for themselves. Government can be a powerful force for good, but government dependency has never been the American dream. We need to move people with a helping hand, not a giving hand — promoting self-sufficiency.
