I went to a dinner party Friday night, and one of the guests, a gifted raconteur, related a recent experience he had while waiting for a table at Park Café in Sylvan Park. Bill Frist and a group of his cronies were also waiting for a table. Apparently, Tennessee's favorite cat-killing former senator (and future governor?) was regaling his attentive hangers-on with musings on the merits of nuclear power, and he expressed his frustration with those who are less than enthralled by the practice of splitting atoms for energy. The exact quote escapes me, but the dinner guest's recollection of Frist's comment went something like this: More people are killed by wind turbines each year than by nuclear accidents. Without missing a beat, another guest at my dinner party chimed in, "I suppose Don Quixote would be one." Hearty laughter all around.
What a maroon Frist is.
Ha ha. Okay, ex parte communications are out of order, your honor! I got it. Hearsay, yada yada. But Frist did support nuclear power in the budget-busting energy bill (which I believe finally passed in 2005), which gave tax credits to nuclear power facilities:
Even the lowest potential cost of the tax credit is an unnecessary hand-out to what is an established and mature sector of the energy industry. That nuclear power has failed the economic test despite having received the lion’s share of federal energy research and development funds over the past several decades should indicate that it is less deserving of federal assistance—not that taxpayers should continue to provide bail-outs.
The nuclear tax breaks contribute further to breaking the federal bank, which makes this energy bill potentially subject to several budget points of order—one of the obstacles Sen. Domenici is trying to overcome. HR 6 would make both the Finance Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee overrun their FY 2004 budgets. Additionally, since the Federal budget is already in deficit, the costs in this bill must be offset but currently are not.
Ah, 2004 and 2005. Remember way back then? That was the good ol’ days, when Republicans didn’t give a shit about Federal spending and the only people raising a stink about the budget deficit were dirty fucking hippies like me. Of course, no one ever listens to us. Certainly not the “liberal” media, which continues to ignore the left on issues like the war in Iraq, the healthcare bill, the PATRIOT Act, Gitmo, the budget deficit, the wage gap, you name it. These things only get discussed ad nauseum in the media when a rightwinger brings them up. I don’t know why that is but I’ve pretty much accepted that to be true and decided to move on because clearly there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. Maybe we need more ** SIRENS ** on our blogs and tricorn hats at our rallies.
Anyway, in typical Republican fashion, Frist decided to give tax giveaways to the nuclear power industry while ignoring the impact such things have on the budget. Of course they did. That’s what they always do. We’re giving tax breaks to oil companies too, when they’re already insanely, disgustingly wealthy. But that’s another discussion.
Meanwhile, Lamar Alexander is also on record touting “cheap and reliable” nuclear power, which is just patently false. Let’s just ask the people of Japan how cheap and reliable their nuke plants are, shall we?
I don’t know why so many politicians in Tennessee are big pro-nukes guys. Is this a TVA thing? It may be: Other politicians in the Tennessee Valley have taken a similar stance. Then again, maybe it’s just more fuzzy-math short-sighted Republican stupidity. Anything if it punches a hippie.
