Stop $50 Billion Nuke Bailout by Harvey Wasserman; Nuke Jobs Stink! by Ace Hoffman

January 30th, 2009

Dear Readers,

By all means, CALL YOUR CONGRESSPEOPLE, as Harvey Wasserman suggests! I had the honor of looking at the draft of Harvey's statement, so I went ahead and called my Senator's office (they gave me Feinstein's when I called the Capital switchboard) before the lines got busy, and told them I was against ANY nuclear bailout, ever, and told them that the proper way to get energy is from OTEC and AVEs (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion and Atmospheric Vortex Engines) and that we need to close all the nuke plants. They don't even want your name, they don't care -- they just want to know you're in their Congressperson's district. At the end of the conversation, I said I was the author of "The Code Killers, which I sent the Senator a couple of months ago." but I didn't think he was even really writing anything down, except so he could keep the conversation going until I got as bored as he was and hung up. It took about three minutes, maybe less. I should follow it up by sending Feinstein a CURRENT copy of the book, since she got one of the earliest editions and there have been a lot of improvements (and more than a few typos corrected, and so forth)!

I also called the EPA last week -- and got bounced around from office to office a few times, and then left a brief message on somebody's machine, who never called me back, of course. But I think it was a pretty good message, if they actually listened. "Please let me know what scientific studies were used for these extraordinary increases in allowable limits for Cesium-137, Strontium-90, Tritium and so on." That sort of thing. Maybe it helped -- maybe I got sent to the right person. Anyway, something worked for that one item, that one time, but stopping the nuke bailout? It cannot be stopped forever unless we stop the whole wicked system.

Either we (the taxpayers) give them money, or they won't be able to build new nukes. They have no choice -- nuclear power is not economically viable. Our government has been nuke-crazed for too long. It hurts to see the Obama Administration pick up where Bush left off on an issue as important as funding for new nuclear power plants. But we all had a warning, what with his coming from nuke-happy Illinois and making vague remarks about nuclear being "part of the mix." I grieve to see so many people -- including, I think, Obama himself, who surely is a good man -- misled by the nuclear industry into believing it is safe, cost-effective, or necessary.

Yours,

Ace

Included below:

1) Article by Harvey Wasserman
2) Letter from Ace Hoffman to Mark Haim
3) Mark Haim's request for information

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(1) A $50 Billion Nuke Power Bomb is Dropping Toward Obama's Stimulus Package by Harvey Wasserman:
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The desperate, dangerous nuclear power industry has dropped a $50 billion
stealth bomb meant to irradiate the Obama Stimulus Package.

It comes in the form of a mega-loan guarantee package that would build new
reactors Wall Street wouldn't finance even when it had cash. It will take a
healthy dose of citizen action to stop it, so start calling your Senators
now.

The vaguely worded bailout-in-advance provision was snuck through the Senate
Appropriations Committee in the deep night of January 27. It would provide
$50 billion in loan guarantees for "eligible technologies" that would
technically include renewable sources and electric transmission. But the
handout is clearly directed at nukes and "clean coal."

The Stimulus Package is explicitly meant to create jobs within the next two
years. But according to sources at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, no
new reactors could be licensed for construction within that time. Nor could
any new coal plants. And thus the funds in this rider are to "remain
available until committed." That means their "stimulus" might not go into
effect for many years.

But the nuclear industry does have the ability to spend large sums of money
on "site preparation" and other busy work prior to being licensed. Though
the guarantees could technically be used for truly green sources such as
wind and solar, the provision's backers, including Senators Robert Bennett
(R-UT) and Thomas Carper (D-DE), have made it clear that this money is meant
to go for new reactor construction.

In late 2007, nuclear power's Congressional Godfather, then-Sen. Pete
Domenici (R-NM), stuck a similar $50 billion loan guarantee package into
that year's energy bill. A grassroots uprising, joined by virtually all
national environmental organizations, helped defeat the package. Among
other things, the fight inspired a music video from Bonnie Raitt, Jackson
Browne, Graham Nash, Keb Mo and Ben Harper (www.nukefree.org).

In late 2008 the industry came back again with a blank check package that
went down in flames along with the stock market.

Still unable to get private financing, the industry is back yet again. In
the interim, the projected cost of building new reactors has soared to more
than $10 billion each, and continues to climb steadily. Many of the
previous generation of reactors came in hugely over budget. According to
the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, one DOE study places the overall
average overruns at 207%. But reactor projects such as Seabrook, in New
Hampshire, New York's Shoreham, Pennsylvania's Beaver Valley, California's
Diablo Canyon, and many others, far exceeded that.

The Congressional Budget Office now predicts that half the nuclear utilities
using such a loan program will go into default. Some $18.5 billion in loan
guarantees has already been approved, apparently for such use. But its
legality is being hotly disputed, and the money has not been distributed by
the Department of Energy.

Washington insiders believe this latest attempt at a pre-arranged bailout
has again come from Domenici, who has stayed in Washington to lobby for his
radioactive benefactors after apparently retiring from the Senate in
January.

This guarantee package was not part of the Stimulus Package that passed the
House. Its secretive, late night inclusion on the Senate side is
reminiscent of how former Vice President Dick Cheney did business for the
fossil/nuclear corporations that funded much of the Bush
Administration. The reappearance of this kind of back door dealing has not
been well received, especially in the House.

Numerous national groups, including the Nuclear Information & Resource
Service (www.nirs.org) are providing sign-ins for sending e-mails to the
Senate. They also urge that you call your Senator at 202-224-3121.

Time is fast slipping by for the nuke power industry. As the popularity
of renewables and efficiency escalates, the most obvious source of new jobs
and prosperity has become truly green technologies. Atomic power has long
since been priced out of the market. Only massive federal and ratepayer
subsidies could bring it back, to the direct detriment of the revolution in
renewables.

Defeating this latest money grab will help drive another nail in the coffin
of the 20th century's most expensive failed technology. It is an essential
step toward a truly green-powered future.

-----------------------------------------
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, is at
www.harveywasserman.com. He edits the NukeFree.org web site, and is senior
editor of www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.

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(2) Nuke Jobs Stink! (Letter to Mark Haim regarding jobs in the nuclear industry):
-----------------------------------------------------

January 31st, 2009

Dear Sir,

Did you see the NIRS statement the other day with the figure of $1.5 million in investment money per job in the nuclear sector? That's way more than for solar, wind, or any renewable energy job, I'm sure!

I was talking to Bill Johnson yesterday, a retired physicist who lives near (and opposes) Calvert Cliffs, and he said that the U.S. government will NOT promise to remove ANY spent fuel waste from ANY new nuclear plants which might be constructed.

From a trade union perspective, this means there will almost surely be a few very dirty, very boring, very dangerous, very menial jobs which offer at best only mediocre pay and the most minimal benefits possible, so when you get cancer from that close exposure, the utility doesn't have to pay for your illness, let alone, when your family gets sick. There won't be enough security workers to stop an overwhelming terrorist force, let alone, a force of nature. These are certainly NOT good jobs for anyone, whether they are union jobs or not!

Good jobs are building things which last, which help the community, which you're proud of later. Nuclear jobs are nothing to be proud of, and nuclear employees have been "running scared," as whistleblower Bruce Gordon put it, for 30 years. Now, with all this talk of a nuclear renaissance, and $50 billion or more in loan guarantees this time and tens of billions last time, and with Steven Chu being put in charge of the Department of Energy, they feel GOOD. "Like coiled springs" says Gordon.

And they should not feel that way. They should be wondering why they don't learn to hang wind turbine blades, or wire solar rooftops -- the unions want those renewable energy jobs to all be guaranteed to be union labor, or they won't support them. We all want licensed contractors doing the labor, and unions are in general a good thing, not a bad thing. But sometimes their demands are excessive and unworkable. Millions of renewable energy jobs will be opening up, and I don't think anybody can promise they will ALL be union work. But renewable energy will ALWAYS beat the alternative -- sickness from radiation poisoning for the electrical workers and other nuke plant employees (and their families). If they fail to do their jobs right, every bloody-handed one of them, well, then it won't just be some crane crashing down from the 40th floor of a high-rise and killing hundreds of people on the ground, which could happen any day in America -- it will be a meltdown, killing hundreds of thousands. Three orders of magnitude worse!

Union jobs are supposed to be safe jobs. That is not possible in the nuclear industry.

Furthermore, Davis-Besse's near-meltdown in 2002 should have been a klaxon warning to America, but it was successfully covered up and no large media hype ever ensued. That battle was won by the spin doctors. According to Gordon, there have been at least a hundred equally-severe, risky, near-meltdown events, which the industry is well aware of through their own organization (known as INPO), that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the public do not know about. According to Gordon, who had access to the records for several years, the NRC is NOT officially allowed to see INPO records, and probably doesn't see them at all, in most cases. (Wikipedia states: "The results of INPO plant evaluations are not shared with the public, and any related information shared within the nuclear industry does not typically include the name of the plant.")

There will be a meltdown in America some day. Either we close the whole fleet, or it's inevitable. Statistically speaking, we've been incredibly lucky so far. Our luck, the planet's luck, cannot hold out forever. There will be a meltdown.

The workers at the plants are getting long in the tooth, they are retiring, dying of heart attacks and cancer, dropping like boomer-babies do. They are viciously protective of their local plants, lest they have to retrain at half their current bloated salaries.

In the nuclear industry, workers are so scarce, THEY control the cards. They are hard to fire when they fall asleep on the job because they are hard to replace. Every one of them is a criminal in one way or another, and many of the work-related crimes reflect the general attitude at the plants of being outlaws to the world, criminals doing something with more than a touch of evil attached to it. (Look at their in-house worker tee-shirts, for instance. The logos are remarkably similar to the "death from above" flying eagle patches you see on paratrooper's shoulders, and the logos for various nuclear submarine crews, where most of the operating-room employees, and in fact, many of the workers throughout the plants, came from.) They all have "cowboy" attitudes towards law enforcement. In their mind, the NRC is the enemy, and hiding things from the NRC is perfectly alright. They are aided greatly in their ability to hide things from the NRC by the fact that the NRC employees who supposedly are "on site" 24/7 are actually restricted to where they can go and what they can look at, and what they can report on (and what their bosses will pay attention to, if they DO file a complaint of some sort). The NRC employees are on short leashes, and like it that way.

The leading jobs in America these days are high-tech. Nuclear power plants are generally 50-year old technology, and almost all of the operating plants are several decades old. This work is so specialized, with each reactor so complex and unique, that workers are reluctant even to be moved from one plant to another within the same site! Let alone, go from a BWR (Boiling Water Reactor) to a PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor), or vice-versa, or be retrained outside the industry. No, these people want tomorrow to be just like today. They want to be making waste and profit at other people's expense and sorrow.

The industry is simply in denial about the dangers they pose to others and to themselves. Certain workers at the plants, known as "Health Physicists," tell them their exposure is below legal limits, after taking rough measurements and doing even rougher calculations on those measurements. Beyond that, the culture at the plants is that nuclear radiation is not only SAFE, it is like a little invisible vitamin -- sort of a "sunshine vitamin" which will light you up -- in a good way -- from the inside.

In this respect, they are utterly crazy. Yet every plant worker believes in "Hormesis," the theory, debunked decades ago and repeatedly ever since, that a little radiation is good for you because it "stimulates the immune system." They "prove" this by pointing out that radiation therapy for cancer victims prolongs lives, which, of course, is sometimes true (my own cancer, however, was surgically -- and successfully -- removed, for example), but largely irrelevant.

All these circular arguments benefit the polluter, the bandit, the stealth murderer, the child killer, the nuclear industry. Children are 100 to 1000 times more susceptible to radiation's poisonous effects: Their cells have many more divisions left to complete, so a small error will multiply more greatly in them. And their cells are still increasing in number -- one becomes many -- while adults are simply replacing dying cells at steady rates -- one becomes one. For very young children, infants, fetuses, zygotes and sperms and eggs, the damage is more likely to be serious or fatal. These people and protoplasmic globs do not vote; they have no chance to protect themselves.

Tritium, one of many products -- not BYPRODUCTS, but PRODUCTS -- of the nuclear fuel cycle, gets into our bodies pervasively. (Electricity is a by-product of nuclear reactors; cancer is the main end-product; tritium an intermediate product.) Tritium, being radioactive hydrogen, gets everywhere hydrogen gets -- which is everywhere. One protein molecule inside your body might have thousands of hydrogen molecules, each one precisely placed. If one suddenly decays and becomes helium plus a beta particle, then that protein is damaged -- probably ruined or even turned poisonous. And the beta particle is hazardous, although the nuclear industry pretends tritium's beta particle is safe, because it is "low energy" compared ONLY to other beta particles, but it is much stronger than any chemical bond, by thousands. Thus, in slowing down, the beta particle WILL destroy thousands of other atoms, for example by ionizing them (which is why it's called "ionizing radiation"), and it will destroy complex molecules used by your biological system -- DNA, RNA, proteins -- or perhaps it will "just" add to your inflammation, weaken your immune system, or literally "break" your heart -- harm it's signalling system, or start a rip, which turns into a tear...

The union electricians and whatnot at the plant know none of this. Even the so-called "experts" there -- those HP guys -- don't learn much about the biology of radiation damage, and instead, just learn to calculate dosages nine ways to Sunday, and then tell you it's safe. They don't know about long-term effects like heart disease, which is just being recognized as being caused by radiation (as well as many other things). Many HP "professionals" don't even believe radiation causes ANY excessive cancers in the population, or in the plant workers. To them, any legally-approved dosage is SAFE, maybe even good for you.

American cannot live in the fantasy world of the nuclear worker, be they union, management, federal lab, or university. This close-knit, closed-off, self-serving, secretive, well-funded and extremely powerful cabal of criminals must be stopped.

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA

Author, THE CODE KILLERS: AN EXPOSE
www.acehoffman.org

---------------------------------------------------------
(3) Re: MO: Looking for Info on Jobs& Nukes issue
---------------------------------------------------------

At 04:02 AM 1/31/2009 -0500, Thinkcivic@aol.com sent:

>NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)
>
>
>Hello friends,
>
>I'm looking for help. We are locked in a real battle here in Missouri over the CWIP issue. One of the problems we are encountering, especially with Democratic lawmakers, is that the buildings trade unions are leaning on them heavily to get behind the repeal of our voter-enacted ban on CWIP charges. To them, it's all about jobs.
>
>I know that work has been done documenting how many jobs are created per x-number of dollars spent in multiple categories of spending. And I know that when I saw these numbers in the past, efficiency improvements and renewables were more labor-intensive than nukes, both in terms of construction/installation jobs and in ongoing/permanent jobs operating and maintaining.
>
>What I don't have at the moment is easy access to up-to-date sources of such info.
>
>Can anyone point me in the right direction on this? I need the info ASAP. I have a meeting with a legislator tomorrow, and this would be good to have by then.
>
>Please feel free to post me off list if you'd like, or, perhaps this info would be of more general interest.
>
>Many thanks,
>Mark
>
>
>Mark Haim
>1402 Richardson St.
>Columbia, MO 65201
>(w) 573-875-0539
>(h) 573-442-2360
>
>E-mail: mhaim@riseup.net
>

----------------------------------------------------------
Contact information for Ace Hoffman:
---------------------------------------------------------

Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers: An Expose
Carlsbad, CA

www.acehoffman.org
Email: ace@acehoffman.org
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A tale of two F-4 Phantom pilots: A hero named Sully versus a sullied reputation

January 17th, 2009

Dear Readers,

The "miracle on the Hudson" earlier this week forced me to think about a traumatic event that occurred just over three years ago, when another ex-F4 pilot used his skill and training for another purpose. An evil purpose: Attempted murder-suicide.

WAS it the event that triggered Gonzo-gate and helped destroy the Bush Administration? The event everyone is looking for but no one can find? Since the Bush Administration destroys information with alarming regularity, we may never be told the truth.

So here once more is a fresh recounting of the events of November 25th, 2005, about 8:35 pm, when Randall Harold "Duke" Cunningham, who was then the United States Congressman from my district, attempted to commit suicide. First, Cunningham tried to flip his car in a lone accident. When that failed, he tried to smash the car he was driving head-on at high speed into the car I was driving, a Honda Passport.

The full story of how I avoided him is available online in an animation I created in 2007, shortly after surviving another harrowing experience -- bladder cancer. I figured I better lay it down for historic purposes while I'm still here.

I recognized Cunningham as the assailant three days after his attack, when he appeared on television to resign from Congress. Then, I realized that my wife and I were not only the victims of a vicious and unconscionable attack, but that the aftermath was a clear case of "celebrity justice" of the worst sort, for it was combined with additional special privileges for high government officials.

When U.S. Airways Flight 1549 ditched in the Hudson River -- the first time a commercial jet had successfully ditched in any body of water -- another F4 pilot showed what Cunningham's training could have been used for. Like Sully, Cunningham was also an F4 pilot -- the last ace there will ever be, with five "kills" in Vietnam. He probably trained Sully.

As Cunningham attacked us, in his mind he must have been back in combat, attempting to get one more kill. Out of bullets in his warped fantasy, he was going to ram us. My wife and I were objects, enemies, non-humans, inconsequential. We still are to him, and to the legal system which protects him.

The letter shown below was sent to Mr. Cunningham at Tucson State Penitentiary in Arizona, where he currently resides on unrelated charges. Copies were also sent to the DoJ and to the judge who sentenced Mr. Cunningham in the other cases., and to the District Attorney. I don't expect any answers, but nor do I expect to be sued for libel or charged with filing false police reports, making false statements, etc.. This is what really happened.

I don't think the sheriffs who helped Cunningham that night could keep their stories straight to the Internal Affairs office, especially if the Federal agent I'm sure was involved told even half the truth to his employers, in the hope of leniency for himself. Of course, that assumes that, behind the scenes, the DoJ actually DID investigate this affair at least a little -- before people started getting pulled from the case -- especially Carol Lam, who is in some part culpable for what happened.

Lam was the U. S. Attorney who made the government's deal with Cunningham, in the days before his suicide / murder attempt. So the Bush Administration wanted to get her out of office, to keep the matter quiet. To cover the firing of one U.S. Attorney without any apparent reason, they tried firing a slew of U. S. Attorneys. The Bush Administration had problems with other attorneys and liked the idea of a mass-firing, but everyone seems to agree that it was Lam who was most targeted, and I believe her role in what you are about to read is the real reason.

For more information, please visit my web site and click on "Seven Seconds in San Marcos."

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA

---------------------------------------------------------------------

To:
Randall Harold "Duke" Cunningham
Federal Prisoner Registration # 94405-198
USP TUCSON
U.S. PENITENTIARY
P.O. BOX 24550
TUCSON, AZ 85734

January 17th, 2009

Mr. Cunningham,

Earlier this week in New York, Chesney B."Sully" Sullenberger III showed what an F-4 Phantom pilot can do. What they can use their training and experience for. It could have been you receiving those accolades.

Not only did he ditch the Airbus A-320 aircraft successfully in the Hudson River after a flock of birds knocked out both engines, but afterwards, he and the other four crew members helped get all the passengers off the plane. Then Sully walked up and down the plane again -- twice -- to be sure everyone really was off.

You, on the other hand, used all your skill and training as a fighter pilot to try to crash your Chevy Tracker head-on in a Kamikaze-style attack into the Honda Passport I was driving on the night of November 25th, 2005, on Mission Road in San Marcos, California. And then you drove off into the darkness. Then, you colluded with the San Marcos sheriffs, who undoubtedly helped you abandon your car -- and probably even gave you a ride home after your attempted murder-suicide! Astounding! But that's how bad things had gotten in the Bush years.

After I successfully foiled your evil plan, you still hit -- with hostile intent -- the back of my car. A flick of your wrist AWAY from me at that final moment would have avoided an accident entirely. But you, consciously and deliberately, chose to hit my car, with me and my wife in it -- a very dangerous move, even if it isn't as dangerous as a head-on collision.

Three days later you resigned from office, confessed to other crimes, and pretended to the public that you were a changed man, now cooperating with police. But you did NOT cooperate with ALL the investigations! You did not cooperate with ANY of mine.

As we passed just inches apart, my wife didn't think to look at who was trying to kill her and me that night. I, however, looked. When you resigned from Congress the following Monday, I recognized you as our assailant from the prior Friday evening.

Not long ago, I heard that you hope to be pardoned by George Bush. Perhaps, in one of his last acts as President, he WILL pardon you.

I hope not, because I only feel reasonably safe from you while you are in jail.

But it's not just me. Others would also be in danger. So, if the state lets you out of jail for ANY reason, including simply that you've done your time, I'll immediately charge the state with endangering the public. And I'll have a very strong case. You think you're some kind of special person, who can get away with murder, or at the very least, attempted murder. I don't blame you for thinking that, based on what actually happened. But nevertheless, the danger such thoughts cause for the rest of us citizens is real. I've experienced your recklessness AND your anger -- and your arrogance.

You are NOT a responsible person. Who will you kill next time you feel like committing suicide for any reason? Or will you hunt ME down when you get out of jail, or help others to do so, in order to silence the only witness who saw your face (except those in law enforcement)?

If anything happens to me, every one of my friends and family will already suspect you or the police involved in helping you that night.

You'll never be like Sully, but every day, you have the chance to redeem yourself -- to tell the truth about what you did that night. Then, the psychiatrists could be held accountable, because they negligently helped you when you should already have been in jail, instead of in Congress and driving around San Marcos knowing you're supposed to resign soon.

I know that the deal had already been made with Carol Lam. My father, Howard S. Hoffman, a World War Two combat veteran and experimental psychologist (who has since passed on) suggested the Google search which revealed that information. You were given the Thanksgiving holiday week to put your affairs in order and write your resignation speech.

Instead, you used that time to decide that suicide was a better option, and went out the night after Thanksgiving by yourself, and tried to flip your Chevy Tracker -- basically a later-model "Suzuki Samurai" (which you apparently borrowed from a friend) in a lone accident. Undoubtedly, you knew at the time that those types of cars were famous for rolling over in accidents. I saw your last attempt to flip it, but heard from witnesses immediately after the accident that you had been driving extremely dangerously just beforehand. You may have been drunk, as they thought, but you weren't so drunk you didn't know you were trying to flip your own car.

But it wasn't working. What you didn't know was that the designers and engineers of the Chevy Tracker / Suzuki Samurai had worked very hard to solve the rollover problem. As you surely know from your pilot days, a little tweak here and there to the balance or configuration of a plane, car, bike or motorcycle can greatly effect the handling characteristics.

When you couldn't flip your Chevy Tracker, you did the next-best-thing (in your mind): You aimed for my wife and me in our Honda Passport, which was just a pair of headlights to you at that distance, more than two football fields away. After your last attempt to flip your car, you saw my headlights and aimed right at them.

I had already alerted Sharon (my wife) to your crazy driving. I immediately nudged her shoulder and pointed straight ahead and said, "LOOK AT THIS GUY!!" The alarm in my voice could not have been mistaken. I had seen you almost spill your own blood on the street, and you were right in front of us -- already in our lane, but aimed towards your proper lanes. At that moment, I had a good profile view of your vehicle.

You immediately straightened out your car -- in MY LANE! And I could see you were accelerating -- the two lights were separating, and getting bigger and brighter, too. A friend had a Suzuki Sumurai, so I knew the comparative handling characteristics of our two vehicles, which were this:

Your's could turn tighter, accelerate faster, and brake in less distance. You had all the advantages.

So how did I win?

It wasn't easy. First, I turned to the right. I exaggerated the motion, because when you went crazy in front of me I had immediately braked to a much slower speed -- around twenty miles per hour. When you started coming straight at me, I turned to the next lane over to my right, and tried to give you my original lane, since you seemed to want it for some reason, and were coming fast and furious. I thought you were being chased by cops. Boy was I off about that!

You didn't want my lane, you wanted ME. You immediately moved into my rightmost lane too -- two lanes from your closest legal lane! When it was clear that you were doing this, I moved back over to my original lane -- again at relatively slow speed, but with greatly exaggerated motions so that you could clearly see what I was doing. You continued to accelerate.

When you saw me move back to my original lane, you followed immediately and exactly -- I could not shake you. Your precision was absolute.

I straightened out in my original lane because that seemed the best way to let you know exactly where I would be, so you could decide how best to get around me. Part of me still HOPED -- despite several moves which PROVED the contrary -- that you were NOT REALLY trying to have a head-on collision.

But you were. We were still about a football field away, and your speed was already over 30 miles per hour, and you were still coming right at us, no matter where I went. That meant you'd be going at highway speeds when we collided. Every clue screamed out that this wasn't a game.

At that point, I could "hope" no longer. I turned to prayer, instead. "Oh, Jesus." I said. I didn't know what else to do. You were coming at us, and there was no way to turn away. Every time I tried, you followed immediately and precisely. If I kept trying, it was obvious to all -- you, me, and my wife, in the seat next to me -- what would happen: Three people were about to die. For no reason -- it wasn't going to be an accident, though you were obviously hoping it would look like one. It would be murder and suicide.

But it turned out that waiting, doing nothing, was actually the right thing to do! By God's grace, I had recently learned exactly how to handle a case like this, from a trained driving instructor who just happened to have a relative who had been through something very much like what you were doing.

It took more than a year to remember where I learned it, but just before talking to the "CLERB" (the powerless and toothless citizen's review board for the San Diego Sheriff's Department), it came to me: It was a local (Carlsbad) driving instructor's video shown on public access cable television! And here's what you MUST do: Wait, and let the other driver (in this case, YOU) gain speed.

That was the right thing to do, and I just sort of found myself doing it. Lucky me. Lucky you. Lucky Sharon.

I slowed down even more, to give you even more time to gain speed before you got to my car. Than, I accelerated directly at you without turning at all, so that you could not know until I began my turn, which side I would turn to. When I turned, I turned to my left -- normally, your side. I figured: You weren't using that side, and weren't planning to. Because this was no game.

With our speed differences, my car would have more maneuverability than yours would, and I could evade you even if you followed my turn -- but only if I waited long enough, and then accelerated fast enough, and turned tight enough to avoid you. And got lucky, too.

As expected, when you saw me suddenly turn at the last moment -- after we both had been going straight at each other for about three seconds and you had been chasing my lights for about six seconds -- you turned towards me, and continued to try to have a high-speed, head-on, FATAL collision.

In the end, I thought we would pass each other by inches, but instead, you purposefully and angrily hit the back end of my car -- a very dangerous move for both of us -- and it almost flipped your car when you did it. Then you sped off, and the cops helped you get home.

You STILL have the chance to tell your side. If you don't, you will never know what could have been. If they let you out on the streets, I will wonder if you are trying to contact your friend who owned the Chevy Tracker, to check on your story for that night. Or the cops who helped you. Or the psychiatrists who knew you were having "suicidal ideations" as one put it, but didn't take away your keys or do anything to protect the public.

For your continued arrogance and uncooperativeness in this matter, I recommend you stay in jail as long as possible. Being eligible for parole, or even completing your sentence, should NOT be a reason to let you out on the streets again. You remain a threat to society.

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman
Sharon Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA

************************************************

Now we know the real reason the "powers that be" let Obama win...

January 13th, 2009

Dear Readers,

Now we know the real reason the "powers that be" let Obama win: He's vehemently pro-nuclear.

Obama's nominee for Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, is utterly pro-nuclear. And in sworn testimony today before the Senate energy committee, Chu proved that you can win a Nobel Prize and yet still not know enough to get by productively in today's world. The guy needs an education in dozens of nuclear issues, and his confirmation -- almost certain -- will be a calamity for honest energy decisions in America. Or for any hope of productive change in our society. Yeah, it's that important. Energy is a huge chunk of our economy and the secretive cabals that control it -- Dick Cheney's infamous energy policy meetings being only the tip of the iceberg -- need to be exposed, and brought down. Corporations like AREVA. People like Steven Chu.

If nothing else, Dr. Chu proved today that you can win a Nobel prize in physics and not know much about radioactive waste. Supposedly, his current studies concern "biological systems at the single-molecule level" (according to Wikipedia). Clearly, though, damage to populations from radiation has escaped his attention (even though it all starts at the atomic and molecular level). Perhaps it's too statistical for him, or too abstract, or too real, or too complicated, or too simplistic, or whatever. One way or another, he overlooked it.

So for more than an hour he promoted "recycling" of nuclear waste, which is actually still known as "reprocessing" among most people, including a number of the Senators at the hearing. Apparently the new term is "recycling" because it sounds more eco-friendly, and was portrayed that way by Chu and by various Senators.

But whatever you call it, reprocessing nuclear fuel ISN'T eco-friendly. However it took Chu more than an hour of promoting it before he admitted that he doesn't actually know much about it. He did, however, admit it -- in sworn testimony!

Then he went back to promoting nuclear fuel "recycling."

France was cited as a bastion of successful recycling. What France actually does with its nuclear waste, and the waste from probably more than a dozen other countries (I don't have the exact number; it's hard to obtain, but is surely in that range), is grind up, chop up, and then melt down, burn up, or chemically dissolve the highly poisonous spent fuel rods. However, each gram of spent fuel contains over 500 DIFFERENT radioactive isotopes, representing the ENTIRE spectrum of known elements!

What is called a "success" in France is really just isolating the plutonium and uranium from these other elements, and then isolating specific isotopes of those two elements (and perhaps thorium). All this creates large amounts of chemical pollution, at a huge cost, and with the concomitant loss of vast quantities of radionuclides into the environment, Noble gases, for instance, are simply released to the environment. their quantities are barely even estimated. Many other elements such as Strontium-90, Cesium-137, Iodine-131 -- France releases them all into the environment in order to accomplish "recycling." It's not clean. It's not safe. The industry lies at every step so as not to annoy the public -- and has plenty of help from the government in the form of covert operations against legitimate activist groups and official cover-ups of wrong-doing, leaks, etc.. Is this what we want in America?

Chu apparently doesn't know any of this, but he's all for it anyway.

But that's not the silliest thing about Chu's performance today before the Senate committee. Surely the silliest thing about his ambitious nuclear plans is that he believes that nuclear spent fuel rods can be safely stored somewhere. Obviously, he means "on-site" in something -- some container -- NOT Yucca Mountain.

Not that he opposes Yucca Mountain. He wants it to keep crawling forward. There is no Yucca Mountain, by the way. One activist today told me she thought it was already being filled with waste. It isn't.

Another citizen witnessed, first-hand, what is called "safe" by Dr. Chu:

"Are they building another reactor at San Onofre?!?" he asked me this morning, after a recent fishing trip brought him close to the local nuclear reactor. "No, that's the spent fuel storage facility you saw. Soon it will be the #1 terrorist target in Southern California. If a small group of terrorists pierce that casing and light the spent fuel rods that will be stored there on fire, or if anything else causes them to burst, we'll be dead within minutes (we live about 12 miles away) and SoCal will be ruined forever. And one millionth of a gram will kill you many times over."

"They were as big as a cruise ship! It had to be seven stories tall! Is it going to be all steel?"

"No, it will have a lot of concrete around the steel. But not enough."

Those "dry casks" have other problems, too, which Dr. Chu conveniently doesn't acknowledge. There have been corruption issues with the design, the construction, and the implementation of NUMEROUS INSTALLATIONS of dry casks.

The security staffs protecting these spent fuel installations fall asleep on the job. This has been reported in -- yep -- NUMEROUS INSTALLATIONS in the past. And even if they're fully awake, there aren't enough guards at any one plant to overcome a concerted attack.

There never could be enough guards, because a concerted attack will STILL come from the air. It will be swift, it will be over in seconds, and it will be devastating. There is no defense planned, and Dr. Chu doesn't care. To him, these casks are safe -- despite the dangers from earthquakes and tsunamis (not to mention asteroids, improper construction, and a thousand other possible FATAL -- to 500,000 people or more -- FLAWS of spent fuel storage.

The operating nuclear power plants are an even greater threat -- in terms of probability of an accident -- than the spent fuel. But in terms of how many citizens could die from an accident? That's a toss-up. Short-lived radionuclides would be released in a reactor accident -- seal the windows and doors carefully with duct tape, don't use up your oxygen too fast, eat canned food and drink bottled water for a few weeks and you'll be fine, unless whatever exposure you do get (and you're sure to get some) results in a cancer later, or heart disease, or inflammation, deformed children, or a thousand other ailments. If you're outside or otherwise unprotected at the time of the accident, you will die a horrible death, wherein your cells are broken down by the radiation which gets inside your lungs, your gut, and is absorbed through your skin. Certain organs in your body are targeted by some radionuclides, other organs, by other isotopes. Either way, it's often very painful, it can last a long time, it is usually accompanied by an agonizing and unquenchable thirst, and it will happen to perhaps half a million Southern Californians if we don't close the plants and properly secure the waste. Such deaths -- known as "acute radiation poisoning" -- will occur as much as 500 miles downwind, and in broad swaths in every direction. You will not know where to run: The poison is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Roads will be crowded, or crowded with the dead. Or both.

Support Dr. Chu, and you support this fate. Chu's policies are deadly. They are irrational. They will be expensive to implement, expensive to undo, and a million times MORE expensive if -- and when -- they fail.

And no, Yucca Mountain is not the solution. And yet, there is no known better solution! In fact, the Yucca Mountain team was allowed to suggest anything they thought was a better idea, other than simply choosing some other site and basically doing the same thing there instead of at Yucca Mountain.

I do not have a solution. But I assure you, neither does Dr. Chu. The difference is, he's probably going to be confirmed as head of the most notorious promoter of nuclear power on the planet, the U. S. Department of Energy -- and I'm one citizen out of nearly seven billion. And I DO have a solution to the GROWING problem of nuclear waste -- STOP MAKING MORE.

Nearly every Senator asked about renewable energy solutions or "clean coal" which invariably meant "carbon sequestration." And Dr. Chu always had an answer for these -- he was all for biomass, and all for ethanol from sugar, and all for wind and solar, etc.

But don't be fooled! This man will continue the death-train of nuclear poisons -- created, released, ignored.

Dr. Steven Chu should not be confirmed, but he surely will be. Republicans love him. Democrats love him. The status quo loves him, because the status qua is to keep the 104 operating nuclear plants in America open -- until an American meltdown shuts them. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), who has a degree in "Industrial Management" and wants "300" nuclear power plants in America, loves Chu. Senator Corker and others want to help Chu find more and more ways for the federal government to finance so-called "private industry" to restart the nearly-catatonic (thank goodness -- but it ain't dead, by any means) "Nuclear Renaissance." They want nukes in THEIR state. Big money loves Chu. And everyone at our corrupt National Laboratories loves Chu too, of course.

And worst of all, with all Chu's talk of renewables, environmentalists who don't know any better will probably love him, too.

I think the Obama Administration's great secret has finally been revealed: They're no different. They won't stop using Depleted Uranium munitions in war. They won't shut the nuclear power plants. They won't solve the nuclear waste problem (because that is a physical impossibility, as ANY physicist worth his degree knows, and 60+ billion dollars and 60+ years put into finding a solution should prove it "prima facie" to everyone else), and they won't do anything to stop the criminal backroom deals that have allowed the nuclear industry to keep moving forward, despite the deaths it causes.

I do not believe Dr. Chu believes everything he said today. Maybe I just don't think you can be that dumb and still win a Nobel Prize. Maybe I think his occasional rapid blinking and other mannerisms suggest blatant dishonesty. But either way, I am convinced Dr. Chu lied under oath. Well, we're used to that, after the Bush Administration.

Come next Tuesday, when Obama is sworn in, it will be Business As Usual in America. And don't expect any kind of national health care to pay for your illness when you get cancer!

It should be noted that it was surely not an accident that the biggest media event of the confirmation hearings -- Hillary Clinton's day in the sunshine -- was the same day as Chu's all-important Energy Committee hearing. This kept the press off the nuclear issue, so people wouldn't hear the bad news.

Expect more Davis-Besse near-disasters, more Three Mile Island nearer-disasters, and a few Chernobyls (real full-blown nuclear disasters) in America during, or some time after, the Obama Administration. Don't bother being surprised when it happens.

Radioactive death for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Americans, is as inevitable as sunshine and rain now. Chu is a shoe-in for Energy Secretary. Our fate is sealed.

Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Author,
The Code Killers: An Expose of Nuclear Crimes Large and Small, High And Low, Far and Wide
www.acehoffman.org

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Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers: An Expose
Carlsbad, CA

www.acehoffman.org
Email: ace@acehoffman.org
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