“Send her back! Send her back!”

The chant: Is it merely a case study in collective stupidity or is it a signal of rising fascism? When I look at the viral video — the latest manifestation of Trumpism and the freeing of good old American racism from the constraints of political correctness — I can’t help but think of the 8-year-old girl I met the other day, who traveled two years with her mother to reach this country from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Monday, July 29, 2019, 4:00 – 6:00 PM 

Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Thornton Wilder’s perplexing play The Skin of Our Teeth is arguably a precursor to the Theatre of the Absurd. It opened on Broadway in 1942 as America entered World War II and Wilder described it as “the history of mankind in a comic strip.” Speaking of strips, the surreal two-acter borrows from Burlesque’s bump-and-grind conventions, and in the production currently on the boards at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, Willow Geer portrays a buxom, ginger-haired seductress gloriously clad much of the time in a cross between a French maid’s outfit and lingerie. Her character is named Sabina (rhymes with…?), and she alternates between being a housekeeper, beauty queen and warrior, often with great comic panache.

I feel that we got the final wake-up call at Fukushima and that we need to phase out and shut down the 104 reactors in America.  I will put it very bluntly:  We need to kill them before they kill us.  – S. David Freeman, ninety-something former TVA head who holds the record for shutting down utility reactors than any other administrator

The Age of Nuclear Energy is winding down.  The Age of Nuclear Waste is just beginning.  – Gordon Edwards, Co-Founder, President Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility

The New Radioactive Gold Rush – Privatizing Nuclear Waste Management

Since Friends of the Earth Senior Consultant David Freeman made the above statement in a 2011 interview, seven U.S. reactors have been shutdown. 

As of this writing, there are 97 nuclear reactors operating in 29 U.S. states.  By 2018 approximately 80 thousand metric tons of spent nuclear fuel had accumulated at reactor sites around the US, with 2 thousand metric tons being added each year.

          It was supposed to be just another round of pork in Columbus. The nuclear power industry, which was flush with success from winning billions in bailouts from state governments in New York and Illinois was again prepared to play Ohio's government like a fiddle. Ohio had, in the past, ponied over $9 billion in subsidies for such flimsy reasons as "stranded costs" to keep the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants running. This time, though, it's proven to be much more complicated. Fierce opposition from every part of the political spectrum meant a reduced payoff, and even though Governor DeWine signed House Bill 6 (HB6) into law on July 23, the money may never be delivered.