OPEN FORUM: Why Not Try A New Angle!

Our state budget is now a house of cards on top of a second house of cards on top of an open earth quake fault beside an active volcano with a visible tsunami on the way. Now we’ve borrowed half as many dollars as we need to shut this gapping, hemorrhaging wound, which I don’t at all understand.

In retrospect, fourteen odd years ago, I entered a letter into this very newspaper, carefully explaining what I’d learned, regarding the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and how the provisions enumerated therein could be and should be used to benefit us, the occupants of the state of Nevada. There are no longer any odds through which our state will not be named as the national site for permanent storage of our country’s spent nuclear fuel, until further plans are made for the reprocessing of this material, as is done in all of the other countries that use nuclear produced electricity. We’re SO far behind!

The state of Nevada now has some scientific input into this equation, however, it looks to me like they are also just quoting the party line, and as far as I can see, that’s not helping us any. Is it?

Why not try a new angle? Benefits. The Nuclear Waste Funds provides millions of dollars for schools and roads and first responders and parks and infrastructure and medical facilities and scientists to protect us, etc., etc., there’s no ceiling. We can ask to be I.R.S. tax free for “X” number of years. All we would have to do would be to form a committee, county wide, write up a proposal in triplicate and trot it over to the proper committees in D.C. We know people in Lincoln County who were involved in just this sort of thing. They even asked for all of the jobs and the training involved with this product as it is shipped through their area. Why don’t we ask them how they did it?

We’re trying to keep our schools open. That shouldn’t even be a topic for discussion. We should have done this negotiating years and years ago. It’s free money that we deserve. These funds cannot be legally used in very many venues. One is to educate ourselves as to things nuclear. Another is to compensate us with goods and jobs and services and funding for us and our children and for things that we need for our future. Why haven’t we even begun this process? Will we wait another year or two or five? Or will we dally until the people in charge of these funds get tired of messing with us?

In my not so humble opinion, we’ve allowed the “powers that be” to neglect this avenue for acquiring some of the things we need, for way to long. One of them, a Mr. Bob Loux, who I picked out as a fraud all those many years back, finally was stopped from some of the activities in which he and his office have participated over the years wherein they misappropriated and misspent this federal funding. Now, if only they had to give it back. Or even better, suppose we had the power to have them put that funding into our state or county programs so we could all share a piece of that federal pie.

We can each contact our state legislators and our federal congress people, and at least let them know that we are aware there are untapped resources out there that are ours for the asking. We’ve been doing it for years, to no avail. Why wouldn’t we try something new? Wake up people!