The Bush Gang' plan for an authoritarian America
A bunkered government behind an iron veil
Also in this issue
- avoiding the real problem
- why shouldn’t the polluters pay?
- credit in the straight world
- Medical ties that bind
- 1001 uses for nuclear waste
THE 8,000-MEMBER GREATER GRACE TEMPLE in Detroit is the home church of many autoworkers, and its Sunday service on December 7 spoke directly to their troubles. The tone was set by the choir's opening selection, "I'm looking for a Miracle." The Pentecostal pastor kept the spirit moving with a sermon he titled "A Hybrid Hope," after which the congregation joined in a full-throated, hallelujah version of the gospel classic, "We're Gonna Make It." For the men and women who actually do the work in automobile manufacturing (America's quintessential industry), the only hope left for dealing with a catastrophic economic meltdown seems to be prayer. 

1001 uses for nuclear waste
If you’ve got lemons, make lemonade, right?
As recently reported by Mother Jones magazine, the brains at East Tennessee Technology Park realized that the lemons on their sprawling facility would make some mighty zesty lemonade. They have to be quiet about it, though, because what they’ve actually got is radioactive scrap metal.
This “technology park” used to go by another name: the Oak Ridge nuclear-weapons facility. It enriched uranium for America’s nukes, and now it has tons of contaminated metal on its grounds.
Until now, regulators have required the corporate operators of Oak Ridge and other nuclear facilities to dispose of their radioactive waste. But our industry-friendly Bush administration has come up with the bright idea of turning tons of this stuff into a moneymaker. How? By selling what they call “slightly radioactive” scrap metal to recyclers who can then resell it to manufacturers of consumer products.
But wait . . . doesn’t this mean that things like baby strollers, frying pans, bicycles, La-Z-Boys, jewelry, and whatnot could contain radioactive material? That’s correct, say those pushing the scheme, but—ha, ha—you don’t have to fret, because we’re rewriting the rules to declare that low levels of irradiated metals are “safe.” And to keep you from worrying, the Bushites won’t require any labeling of products made from recycled nuclear metals.