Thursday

PAPIER MACHE' PANDERING ?




There's a papier-mache' mockup of Indian Point, faithful in many details to the real original Indian Point, and it lives in journalist's communal psyche as a dependable knock. Write a few words about aging, ailing, leaking, distressed, woeful, etc., and you've got yourself a story. It's not even required to leave one's chair to investigate,.... all the needed parameters spring right to hand, out of communal memory of a nice hot purple flashing story angle, and blink on the page, obligingly, for our journalist, drawing attention, readership, and the satisfaction of having served up a palatable piece of work.

The only drawback, is that the leaking purple papier mache' model is not the real Indian Point.
The real Indian Point is apparently wearing a cloak of journalistic invisibility, kind of like Harry Potter.
Who built the cloaking device? I must state out front, that I don't believe journalists began the deception on their own... (except for one poor schmuck, who was fired for it). The list of perps is short, 2 organizations, and maybe 8 or 10 individuals, but buoyed by internet chumminess, and the active trading of techniques for capturing press attention, they hovered around their phones, and their letters-to-editors keyboards, and carefully applied papier mache',-- bit by bit, slopping on the bogus concern, the overdrawn and bathetic complaints, until the purple model of the domes rose high enough to obscure the real place ,and a journalistic staple, a dependable hot-button brouhaha, was hatched out of thin air, and activist chutzpah.

Do away with Indian Point? I can't wait! I am sick to death of the lurid claims, the carefully posed mock concern, the politician's sanctimonious puppet acts, mouthing less-than-credible complaints hatched for them by deluded and pushy place-grabbers, the kind of people who sneak to the front of democracy's feeding-line, and eat up all the deliberative attention for their own bogus complaints, leaving the rest of us screwed, annoyed, and without effective politicians, since ours are all tied up mired chin-deep in papier-mache'.

Yes, let us do away with Indian Point immediately--- the papier mache' version, that is.
While the Axis-Of-Anxiety (journalists, politicoes, and activists) fritters away weeks and months in their cute glue-spattered artist's smocks, carefully placing little Al Qaeda action figures on their toy domes, and making "brrrrrr---brrrrr" lip noises, while holding little model airplanes aloft above their papier mache masterpiece, the rest of us have to live here, and not get screwed.

We need an affordable Hudson Valley. That need, slipping ever so steadily out of our grasp, ought not be forgotten by our oh-so-ethical (they say) new Democratic administration, despite Riverkeeper's 5000 name mailing list,....... 5,000,000 of the rest of us need to hold the line, AND DO THEY CARE? Maybe not... you see, we are not pre-captured for them into a convenient voting bloc, like those 5000.

We need the power that the real Indian Point provides us, and I hear no construction plans coming out of Cuomo junior's lips, or new Governor Spitzer's planning office, so I know they have no plans for new power plants.Tell me--- HOW DO YOU ETHICALLY PROPOSE CLOSING INDIAN POINT WITHOUT BUILDING NEW PLANTS?

Short answer--you don't.

Even the National Academy of Scientists told us just that last year,.... but this new administration can only deal with papier mache', and so Cuomo jr. is hell-bent on ignoring both NAS, and us. So...... sadly, indeed, .....that makes new AG Cuomo's latest press-blast against Indian Point into a pandering exercise. Pandering to papier-mache', and a mailing list, while the real Indian Point hums away quietly, powering the last days of Hudson affordability.

If we stripped away the papier mache'---what would we see? We would see an environmentally proactive Entergy Corporation, remaking, improving, and cleaning up the mess Con Ed left here, gathering their national expertise to provide us what we have almost forgotten that we need, helping our communities with charity, volunteers, and positive interaction, maximizing power, minimizing damage, maximizing security, minimizing hype, maximizing value, minimizing loss..... in short..... doing a lot of the functions local and state government might be doing for us---IF THEY WERN'T POSING IN THEIR CUTE LITTLE BERETS AND ARTIST SMOCKS, in front of the big purple papier mache horror castle, for a vid byte to be shown to Riverkeeper's 5000 name mailing list, because Cuomo junior's political ambitions don't end with the state attorney general position!

Therefore, Let us all consider this question:

IS CUOMO JUNIOR'S POLITICAL FUTURE IMPORTANT ENOUGH , TO LET HIM SACRIFICE YOUR FUTURE FOR HIS?