No One Asked Me But… (February 6, 2019)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… Apparently the new Governor is unaware of the fact that 84% of what he thinks of as the State of Nevada belongs to the federal government and they can do as they please with the land.

Gov. Sisolak is upset that the National Security Administration shipped a half ton of military grade plutonium from South Carolina to the Nevada Security Site without his permission.

Of course, most of us know that area as the Nuclear Test Site. The name change was a move to disguise the fact that the main purpose of this huge section of Nevada, as far as the federal government is concerned, is the testing of nuclear weapons and the storage of nuclear waste. Other states in the Union have decided that the deserts of Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona are of little value and, therefore, little is lost when portions of these states are contaminated with nuclear waste.

The only redeeming factor of the storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain would be that the watershed of the area goes directly to California.

The State of Nevada had, in fact, filed for a temporary restraining order to prevent the Energy Department from shipping plutonium to the Nevada Security Site. The hearing took place in the U.S. District Court under Federal Judge Miranda Du. She failed to rule, but expressed the hope that the federal government would not ship plutonium to Nevada pending her decision.

In the meantime, a federal judge in South Carolina ruled that the Energy Department had to move a metric ton of plutonium from South Carolina in compliance with national environmental laws. Therefore, the Energy Depart secretly shipped the plutonium to the State of Nevada.

Judge Du has now decided that since the plutonium got here without incident, she would deny the State of Nevada a temporary injunction forbidding its move to Nevada. She feels that Nevada’s claims of irreparable harm to lands, citizens, and environment are “merely a theoretical possibility….” She also feels that the South Carolina court ruling “outweighs the hardships to Nevada based on speculative harms.”

To reach Nevada, the plutonium was most likely transported through Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona. One must wonder about the evaluation of the worth of citizens along the route to Nevada. What the federal government is saying to those citizens is that your state and your citizens are of less value than those of South Carolina.

The federal government has been saying that about Nevadans for generations. After all, the state has been used as an experimental region for testing nuclear devices for years.

Since the federal government has been contaminating the desert of Nevada with Nuclear tests it may very well make sense that the Nevada Security Site, i.e. Yuca Mountain, would be the place to store nuclear stock piles and waste. However, if a state creates the waste, they should have to store it.

This incident is another example of the fact that the State of Nevada is really not a state as depicted on the traditional map of the United States. Nevada is strange shaped creature made up of incorporated cities along the I-80 and I-15 corridors. The route of the plutonium was not released for security reasons. However, once the shipment reached the Nevada border, the plutonium may have never crossed state owned land.

One must understand that those who own the land get to decide what to do with it. There is no home owner association to determine what the federal government can or cannot do with the land it owns.

It is interesting that a federal government that is so intent on protecting tortoises, sage hens, and Joshua trees from ranchers cattle, have little interest in protecting the citizens of Nevada from the hazards of nuclear waste. One must wonder how 300 cows on 300,000 acres could be more of a problem for the environment than a ton of nuclear waste stored in a facility less than 90 miles from the cultural center of the State of Nevada, housing over two million people.

No one asked me but… The government is now open for three weeks while a compromise is reached on the immigration crisis in America. A bi-partisan panel of legislators is trying to cobble together a plan that is acceptable to the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the President. The President and the Speaker of the House have indicated that they will not move from their positions on the border wall, fence, or barrier. Speaker Pelosi says she will not present a bill to the floor of the House that has “one dollar” for a wall, barrier or fence. President Trump has stated he will not sign a bill that does not include $5.7 billion dollars for a border wall. This is going to make the job of the bi-partisan panel an impossible task.

Cooler heads need to prevail. The Democrats need to remember that they, under the direction of President Obama, built over 700 miles of border wall and this drove those wishing to enter the country illegally to the Texas border, just beyond the Democrat fence. President Trump should compromise by accepting $2.3 billion for fencing and allow the Speaker a victory on the DACA issue with a pathway to citizenship for those who fall under the DACA designation.

It is time for the Democrats and Republicans alike to stop the opposition for opposition’s sake, and to start running the country again. Did the Russian’s attempt to influence the 2016 election? Of course, they did. We don’t need Robert Mueller to tells us that. Did Hillary Clinton violate the law in the handling of Top Secret material when she was Secretary of State? Of course, she did. Congress needs to forget it and get back to governing the country.

America does not put the losing candidate in prison and they don’t depose a duly elected President. These are things of third world countries. Shut down the Mueller investigation, and if the Democrats are so upset by the way President Trump has run the country, they should pick a candidate that a majority of people, other than Californians, will vote for.

I see where a couple of moderate Democrat billionaires are talking about running as independents in the next election. If they could pick a liberal Republican as a running mate, a third party might have a shot.

Thought of the week…The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.