The demise of the ballot box

Trounced at the ballot boxes, the Luddites turned to economic warfare, legalistic sabotage and government decrees. Today nuclear power, harassed as never before, is back as the target of the no-growth, no-technology, no-defense, "America stinks" crowd.

How could the voters be so rudely overridden in a matter of months? Much of the answer lies in an ominous totalitarian trend: Politicians no longer tend to cater to the voters, but to the media that are brainwashing the electorate. And the media onslaught has been relentless. The events of January 17, 1977, when nuclear power saved the eastern half of the country from massive disaster, were strictly censored; but millions are fed a steady diet of garbage on nuclear wastes. The American information machine can now get away with branding profits as obscene while broadcasters' profits alone soared 60% to $1.25 billion in 1976 (we do not object to profits, but to hypocrisy); or with labeling the energy industry a monopoly while its own supreme power is concentrated in three networks and two wire services; or with almost anything else.

The Carter administration, initially embarking on a widely welcomed campaign for universal human rights, ran into the opposition of an elite: So Sir Neville Vance is now appeasing more obsequiously than Sir Neville Kissinger ever did, and the campaign has degenerated into human rights for selected humans.

Similarly, the breeder was to be scuttled as a sop to the alleged environmentalists in return for their tolerance of orthodox nuclear power; but that was not good enough for the new class, and so the proposal to simplify the licensing jungle (it now takes 11 years to cross it!) has been gutted to the point of uselessness. To add insult to injury, the interveners' obstructions are to be financed by the taxpayer.

For these poor devils only get billions' worth of free publicity by the networks, rock stars, para-religious cults and other nuclear experts; and the environmental organizations are too poor to pay for the obstructions.

How poor they are is evident from their annual budgets: Environmental Defense Fund, $1,600,000; Friends of the Earth, $670,000; Natl. Wildlife Federation, $3,500,000; Natural Resources Defense Council, $1,900,000; Mass. Audubon Soe., $2,400,000; Sierra Club, $3,000,000; Wilderness Soe., $1,700,000; Conservation Fndtn., $1,500,000; Worldwatch Inst., $500,000; and on and on. [Source: Environmental Agenda Projeet, funded by The Rockefeller Brothers Foundation.]

None of these poor devils disputes that nuclear power is safer than any other form of large-seale energy eonversion; they simply refuse to talk about the point.

And so the issue remains that of lust for political power versus the saving of human lives. But it has moved from the ballot boxes to the newsrooms of the media moguls, where politicians compete for favors.

The American voter is being disenfranchised