Nuclear Plutocrats
by digby
Here’s an interesting article about the world’s primary builder of nuclear power plants: GE. Read the whole thing, but this excerpt may at least partially explain why the administration became gung-ho on nuclear recently:
Back in November, President Obama was in India pushing that country’s government to pass legislation exempting GE from liability for nuclear “accidents.” That idea is probably not going to go very far now.
Jeffrey Immelt, the chairman and CEO of GE and a big friend of Obama’s (he was named to an unpaid post as “jobs czar” by the president earlier this year, despite the company’s long record of exporting US jobs to places like China and India), says it’s “too soon” to assess the impact on the company’s nuclear business prospects of the nuclear “accidents” in northern Japan.
I just saw a story on CNN about intense lobbying by the nuclear industry this week on the hill. They aren’t even waiting for the catastrophe to start writing checks.
Considering President Obama’s odd Reagan fixation, their friendship shouldn’t be any surprise:
There seems to be something of a misapprehension among Americans about the influence of Big Business in our politics began in the 1980s. It’s true that this gilded age really took off when the Reagan Revolution hit and they instituted their frenzy of deregulation and tax cuts. But it had long been in the works.
This comes from a speech by GE Chief Jeff Immelt at the Ronald Reagan centennial celebration, which GE is helping to sponsor:
Mr. Reagan walked every assembly line at GE. Every single one. He had lunch with employees in the cafeteria. He listened. He wowed managers and impressed our customers. He hit the Rotary, the local Chamber of Commerce, the Kiwanis, and the Elks.
Our CEO at the time, Ralph Cordiner, told Mr. Reagan: “I am not ever going to censor anything you say. You are speaking for yourself. Say what you believe.”
And so he did, writing and delivering the message that would become known as “The Speech,” his testament of faith in the virtues and abilities of free people and the great country they had built. In 1964, he gave a famous version of that speech before a national audience on behalf of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, and began one of the most successful American political careers of the 20th century.
GE saw his roving ambassadorship as a way to engage with its workforce. Mr. Reagan saw it as an education.
He had been interested in politics long before that, of course. He was a union leader. But when GE hired him they were grooming him. And he delivered.
Go poke around at that site for a while to get a sense of just how entwined General Electric and Reagan really were. It’s very creepy.
In fact, General Electric and the entire political class have been thoroughly entwined for many decades. And if the BP spill is any example, even Japan is unlikely to change that.
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