The American Spectator

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Whole Taxes

8.26.09 @ 6:01AM

WASTING INDUSTRY
Re: Max Schulz's Obama Nuclear Waste:

Max Schulz's piece on "Nuclear Waste" offers the USEC loan guarantee decision and the Yucca Mountain repository cancellation as two examples of politics interfering with sound science-based policy making. True, but he identifies the wrong interest groups benefiting from these Obama policy choices. Hint: it's not the environmental crazies.

The beneficiaries of the Obama decision to deny a loan guarantee for USEC's new uranium enrichment plant are its competitors: three foreign-owned suppliers of enriched uranium. They are the European consortium URENCO, the French nuclear giant AREVA, and the Russian state uranium company, Techsnabexport. The Obama decision does not take us along the road to energy independence. For this and the reasons cited by Schulz, look for the Obama administration to reverse the decision denying USEC a loan guarantee.

The political beneficiaries of the Yucca decision are less obvious. However, many federal and state politicians currently say. "I like nuclear power, but will not support construction of new nuclear plants until there is a solution to the nuclear waste disposal issue." The cancellation of Yucca, a perfectly sound solution to the nuclear waste issue gives them an excuse for not supporting new nuclear plants. The un-built plants would provide affordable carbon-free electric power. Who benefits from deferring nuclear construction? ... the fossil fuel competitors to nuclear fuel. Base-load nuclear generation does not compete with the windmill, sunshine, ethanol, and small hydro power sources so beloved by Obama supporters. Nuclear competes with carbon producing coal and natural gas. The shrewder members of the environmental community have already figured this out, and the rest soon will. Look for the Administration to reverse its Yucca decision in early 2011. That will be after the Administration's Blue Ribbon Commission reports that Yucca is the best place for disposal of non-recyclable nuclear waste and the voters of Nevada have turned Sen. Reid, who won his last two elections by a whisker, out of office.
-- C.J. Milmoe
Wilmington, North Carolina

RATIONING CHRISTIANITY
Re: Jeffrey Lord's Honey, Jim Wallis Shrunk the Church:

"There's a God." Respectfully: Nope. There's God and there are gods.

As for "Smiling' Jim Wallis being the "Preacher," well, no, I don't think so in the sense of Solomon, who wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible's Old Testament; or the preacher mentioned in the five-fold ministry in the Bible's New Testament.

Maybe, though, something in the New Testament does apply to Wallis? In it, Christ Jesus says, "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."

Wallis might remember -- we all would do well to remember -- something else the Christ said: "Those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts…false witness…"

And as for Wallis' rebuke of Sarah Palin: "Please don't invoke your 'Christian faith' anymore and embarrass the people of God even further"? As one of the people of God, I challenge Wallis to practice what he bloviates about.

It's interesting, isn't it, how those of the liberal/leftist persuasion, particularly those who support and surround the president, but including Obama himself, increasingly expose their underlying pettiness and prejudice regarding anyone who dares disagree with them and their agenda?

It's a heart-sickness thing. Maybe they should invoke God's spiritual healthcare plan. He'll give life, not take it.
-- C. Kenna Amos Jr.
Princeton, West Virginia

The other problem with "rationing" is that it always seems to come at the expense of the providers. You never hear about cutting the folks with the sweet government jobs who run the system, or furloughs. They, who take about 70% of the revenue (my estimate), just keep getting fatter while all the cuts come at the expense of providers and recipients!! Wonder who all those union members are voting for these days.
-- Bob M

They surely will not rid us of the AIDS patients, they could become indispensable tools to further ravage mainly the black populations and help realize Margaret Sanger's dream of reducing the inferior races.
-- Edgar

SHOOTING THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT
Re: Matthew Vadum's Obama's Plan to Desecrate 9/11:

Letter to the Editor