Vanity Fair has a thought provoking article about the Trump Administration’s incoming staff of the Department of Energy. It’s a long, but VERY important read:
Why The Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming From The White House
Now for my commentary on that piece/issue:
This is one of the most important articles I have read in a long, long time. It is a combo about the Department of Defense (what they do) and the ignorance of the Trump Admin (see Sec of Energy, the dumbo with the glasses, Rick Perry), and how they have no intent to fund it. It is also very representative of how incompetent and uncaring Trump is about how much of our government’s work is truly important, valuable and necessary (we all know about the State Department jobs that are unfilled).
Trump is a very dangerous egotist who must be stopped. This is the Bob Mercer’s plan to shrink the fed gov’t to the size of a pin head (tRump’s?). The implications are vast.
The article is quite long but very well written, keeps you reading. Wait until you get to the final segment, which I have had some knowledge of for years. What a mess we created 75 years ago.
I have been thinking and wondering why a news network like MSNBC has not found just one of its show anchors to do an in-depth, ongoing expose on the real effects of tRump not staffing our federal gov’t. When you read this article I think you will agree that this nation needs to wake up as to how bad the Orange Ass is. Do the members of Congress know what is in this article?
I have known about the plutonium plume in Hanford for many years now, have flown both north and west of the area, but not over it (Do I wanna glow?).
I learned about the New Mexico leak earlier this year by watching TV, one of my favorite quasi-beneficial past times. I was walking to an SF Giants baseball game two months ago and had a ticket to sell. Came upon a woman who was heading in the same direction. I asked if she was going to the game, she said yes. I sold her my adjacent ticket. I asked if she was visiting and she also said yes, in San Francisco for a pro-nuclear convention, she being from NM. I asked her if she knew about the leak, she said no. So, what does that tell me (you)? Either she lied or she knew far less about the underground storage facility in her own “backyard” than I, someone who is not attending pro-nuke conventions. I surely wished that I got her contact info so I could enlighten her (or at least try). That she responded how she did was both sad and scary. I didn’t go into the matter further with her as we arrived to the park. Fake news, huh?
This is a very comprehensive follow-up article to the leak and subsequent cleanup:
For any doubters, even Fox News wrote a short article on the leak (available via a browser search).
I have been opposed to nuclear energy since the 1970s (went to U of CO, Boulder, just up the road from Rocky Flats Nuclear Disaster Waste/Plutonium site). My mother’s second husband, Sherm, was a nuclear engineer, a career WWII Naval dude and colleague (then) of James Earl Carter (who I liked/still admire). Sherm had a nuclear power plant consulting company. In about 1981, I stated to Sherm that the future of nuclear energy in the US/world was not looking promising. I suggested that he expand his firm’s line of work, which he did into chemical plants.
Jimmy was right then about solar energy (and many other issues as well). How close-minded so many were, encouraged by the petroleum complex. And now we are late to our own future.
Tedward
Indiana Jones
September 25, 2017 at 6:11 pm
Good article — yours and the one from Vanity Fair (although it is pretty long).
I agree the Trump administration is off in a different direction than what most people would do if they were president. But I guess being president gives one the prerogative to make decisions his/her way. Isn’t that why elections are so hard fought?
What you are doing is fine — protesting, spreading the news, etc. but let’s be prepared to accept that Trump will do the job his way regardless of what we all think.
Trump is appealing to his electoral base. At least, that’s what he said. He’s fulfilling his platform promises. To say it as bluntly as he did may not be politically advantageous but we’re kinda used to it by this time. But if truth be said, previous presidents have always appealed to their base even though they said they were the president of “all” America.
I just hope that his “priorities” (protecting our borders, pumping up the economy, attacking the NFL [Jeez!], building the wall, supporting FEMA, etc.) will keep us “alive” long enough for the next administration.
Tedward Onward
October 1, 2017 at 1:08 am
Indiana J. – Thanks for your approval! Nothing wrong with optimism, however, I don’t have any real hope nor trust in tRump’s approach to running things. His lack of experience, shallow administration and severe under-staffing of key positions, coupled with his self-focus are just three of many reasons why we all should be very concerned. This nation can’t wait how many years for the next administration to actually address the many issues that need real solutions.
David Alexander
October 9, 2017 at 8:02 am
In response to Tedward’s article and comments:
I found the article very informative, and though it took quite a while to read, it was well written. As it is lengthy, I won’t be able to address all relevant issues, I wanted to offer a couple of thoughts for consideration.
One of the problems I often think about when government grows too large is that it becomes nearly impossible for one individual or even a group of people to manage effectively, and we can often have unreasonable expectations for what the heads of these departments should or shouldn’t know. We of course want our elected and appointed officials to be well informed when they occupy positions of such importance and we should always seek out those who have the right knowledge for the job. However, no one can be an expert on every form of conventional energy, alternative energy, climate change, and the myriad of other topics contained in the DOE. You want someone who has at least a working knowledge of a number of relevant issues, and where he or she lacks such knowledge, is humble and willing to learn from those underneath them in the organizational structure. From the testimony of the article, it seems that those sent from the Trump administration to help run the DOE were ideologues unwilling to learn and uncaring about several important functions of the DOE. If true, this is a shame.
Though I believe much of what the DOE does is unnecessary for the federal government to do, this article certainly sheds light on some of the more necessary functions such as the protection and management of our nuclear materials. Perhaps unlike other conservatives, I’m in favor of government sponsoring research and development of new or existing technologies, especially those that have applications in national security. Sometimes, such endeavors turn out well. Sometimes they don’t. Even when experiments fail, they provide valuable information for the scientific community. As it often happens, some innovations come completely by mistake. Either way, an increase in scientific information from either successful or unsuccessful experiments can have a positive trickle down effect in multiple industries. Of course, we need to keep a watchful eye so that taxpayer dollars are being well used and that cronyism is rebuffed every chance we get. Ultimately, I believe the free market will do most of the legwork, but that’s not to say that government can’t help play a role in finding solutions to common problems. Technological innovation is going to be far more effective in overcoming challenges like climate change rather than something like capping carbon emissions or other solutions often pushed by the left. But that is a larger discussion for a different time.