Another Corporate Bailout: Obama Goes Nuclear | Black Agenda Report

Another Corporate Bailout: Obama Goes Nuclear

Glen Ford, BAR executive editor

24 Feb 2010

🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

Click the flash player to listen to or the mic to download an audio in MP3 format.

The Obama administration is preparing another huge corporate giveaway – this time to an industry that has been moribund for 30 years. “Nuclear power was all but dead because private capital saw the industry as a bad risk.” But, with Obama's proposed $55 billion in loan guarantees, “Wall Street can prepare to process billions of dollars in new loans, knowing it doesn't stand to lose one cent because the public is taking all the financial risk.”

Another Corporate Bailout: Obama Goes Nuclear

A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Glen Ford

“Obama is determined to pull off a nuclear resurrection.”

Opponents of nuclear power have now joined the ranks of those who are bitterly disappointed with President Obama, who is proposing to triple loan guarantees to the nuclear power industry. Barack Obama has long been allied with nuclear power, as have his two closest confidants, political advisor David Axelrod and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. The Chicago-based Exelon corporation, the biggest nuclear power operator in the United States, was a major Obama campaign contributor. Obama’s support for nuclear power has never been a secret. If environmentalist Obamites were surprised by their president’s all-out push for nukes, they have only their own self-delusions to blame.

Back during the campaign, when Obama was getting huge checks from Big Nukes and Big Coal, environmentalists were giving him a political blank check for no other reason than Obama wasn’t George Bush. But it turns out that regarding nuclear power, Obama is worse than George Bush – three times worse. By boosting federal loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors from $18.5 to $54 billion, Obama is attempting to bring back to life an industry that has been all but dead for almost three decades. More than just a bailout, Obama is determined to pull off a nuclear resurrection.

“It turns out that regarding nuclear power, Obama is worse than George Bush.”

The demise of U.S. nuclear power is generally dated to the partial meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island plant in March, 1979. But nuclear power has always been a failed business model in the U.S. Construction costs consistently run amok, at three, four and five times advertised. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that loans for nuclear plant construction have a more than fifty percent chance of never being repaid. Environmental opposition to nuclear power is not the reason the industry has been moribund for 30 years. Nuclear power was all but dead because private capital saw the industry as a bad risk. So Wall Street helped elect a president who would put up the people's money. With public dollars reviving the industry, Chicago-based Exelon's stock should shoot through the roof. Wall Street can prepare to process billions of dollars in new loans, knowing it doesn't stand to lose one cent because the public is taking all the financial risk.

The public is also taking all the risk for the health hazards of nuclear power. Private industry will not insure against accidents, which could amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in damages. The public will ultimately pay for any cleanup.

Late-stage finance capitalism, like nuclear power, can only exist as a parasite on the larger society. The people pay all the costs: financial, safety, and health. The investment class puts up no money unless guaranteed a payback plus big profits. This isn't about the environment. It's about Wall Street stealing the people blind, through their bought-and-paid-for servants in the Congress and the White House. It's really a crime story.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.

More Stories

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Gerald Horne Discusses His New Book on Armed Struggle in California in the 1960s and 1970s
02 Aug 2024
Dr. Gerald Horne talks to us about his latest book, “Armed Struggle: Panthers and Communists, Black Nationalists and Liberals in Southern California, Through the Sixties and Seventies.”
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
The Abandon Biden Campaign Continues
02 Aug 2024
Hudhayfah Ahmad joins us to discuss how and whether the Abandon Biden campaign will change in the wake of Biden’s departure from the race and the elevation of Kamala Harris to the role of…
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist , Kim Iversen
Observer On The Ground In Venezuela Says US Is Threat To Global Democracy
31 Jul 2024
Ajamu Baraka, Chair of the Coordinating Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace, and columnist and editor at the Black Agenda Report, is on the ground in Venezuela and joined The Kim Iversen Show…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
How to Protest for Sonya Massey
31 Jul 2024
Sonya Massey’s brutal murder at the hands of the police has resulted in anguish and anger but no difference in how state violence is protested. Instead, we see surrender to the crumbs of condolences…
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: In Our Hands: Thoughts on Black Music, Bernice Johnson Reagon, 1976
31 Jul 2024
For the late Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Black music was a tool in the struggle for Black liberation, and not what it has mostly become today: a retrograde appendage to neoliberalism and white power.