Operators maintain a nuclear test reactor at Idaho National Laboratory. Worker safety has been monitored by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. Credit: Idaho National Laboratory Flickr
A small government safety organization tasked with protecting the workers who construct America’s nuclear arsenal and with preventing radioactive disasters in the communities where they live is under new siege in Washington.
The Trump administration, acting in an open partnership with the profit-making contractors that control the industrial sites where U.S. nuclear bombs are made and stored, has enacted new rules that limit the authority and reach of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, created by Congress in 1988 amid broad public concerns over civil and military nuclear safety lapses.
The administration’s new rules eliminate the board’s authority to oversee workplace protections for roughly 39,000 nuclear workers and also block its unfettered access to nearly three-quarters of the nuclear weapons-related sites that it can now inspect.
In a separate move, the board’s new acting Republican chairman has proposed to put more inspectors in the field but to cut its […]
Stephan, I see your regular calls for getting out the vote in this Nov.’s US midterms. Many believe as do you, that that those elections will extricate the country from what ails it.Sadly that sentiment is unlikely, even with a Dem Senate *&* House.
Not exactly named in the article is that the problem is capitalism itself, merely implied but never suggested.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/trump-is-not-the-problem/
John — I have no illusions about the Democratic Party, but we have a two-party system and I always choose the least horrible most life-affirming option. There is nothing wrong with making a profit, as long as it fosters well-being. When a capitalist system morphs into one in which profit is the only social priority, which is where we are now, that capitalism becomes a cancer. A system based on fostering well-being, as the first priority, but allowing for profit, in my view is the way to go. When profit degrades well-being, you know it has gone too far.
I think, unless the voting apparatus is not working properly for whatever reason, we do have a chance to overcome the current administration and the past administrations whose goal was the same. We can elect new social minded people even if they are “social-democrats” or some version thereof.
We’ve been having these ‘debates’ for years, up north of the 49th as well. The problem is that the old forms of electoral democracy were okay when there were only two parties, both south and north of the 49th. Now there are far more. No party should be allowed to govern and receive 100% of the power with only 40% of the vote. That’s the way it is here now where I live. In the US, there are now 3 legitimate political parties counting the Greens. Here, we have these interminable discussions about ER relating to PR (Proportional Representation)
It’s been suggested by others, that Bern the turn became a traitor when he dumped all his support to Hillary in 2016. Strong words. Yet, even in The Guardian’s article by Sanders with a response from Yanis yesterday, neither mention the word Capitalism as the disease. For me, Stephan, the only real existential issue is our runaway climate breakdown emergency. Will we make it as a species?
Therefore the time spent in wrangling about which group of folks can best fix a broken and toxic economic system seems to be an elegant distraction, as the corporate coup gains more traction and profits more handily. Who knows or cares what they’ll do with their lotted gains? A possible solution is to simply use whatever methods allow us to draw back from this madness and create alternatives with the little money and energy we have remaining.
BTW, a currently Canadian emeritus philosophy professor, Dr. John McMurtry penned a tome: “The Cancer Stage of Capitalism”, back in 1999.