An Incredible Investment


After watching 60 minutes yesterday, and being impressed with the advances in nuclear technology displayed in France, I looked at a couple of corporations that are involved in nuclear, and asked Linda what she thought about investing in one of them. I was especially interested in the fact that the French reprocess all the spent rods instead of hiding them from themselves. We can't even remember six years ago well enough to agree on what happened versus what we were watching on television. The past is fiction.

Here's what she wrote back:

I didn't see 60 minutes last night, but it's on the Tivo. I'll watch it. I think the reason that we do what we do has a lot to do with how much money was spent getting into technology and when we got into it. Companies get locked into certain technology and don't want to abandon their investment even if it's for something better (they do the math, and there is no place in the math for making the world more safe).

I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that France has more government funds involved in their nuclear industry which allows them more freedom for radical shifts in direction and in technology - we have almost all corporate funds involved and there is the issue of answering to the stockholders. If we make it really imperative that coal fired plants be cleaned up and if the current exemptions that the coal fired plants have are eliminated, then there will be a shift.

The other problem we have in this country is that the attitude toward nuclear power would really need to be changed through education (I don't know, could you set up some kind of dancing, singing, nasty mean backbiting reality program in a nuclear power plant?). Many people have dug in their heels and won't support any kind of nuclear process. Education is difficult because the government has lost all credibility.

My wife is a fair person who doesn't exaggerate things. So although I'd be inclined to invest in a couple of companies focused into nuclear, she looks at things more inclusively than I do. That's why I am usually sorry when I don't defer to her on investment decisions. I'm holding practically worthless stock in Ballard Power because I thought we were going to move to hydrogen cells instead of occupation of Iraq. The idea was that we would have forces bordering Saudi Arabia and Iran, and secure the flow of oil. We might still do that, and at a cost of only a couple of trillion dollars. Why spend money on new technology with bargains like that for the plucking? And a good hard plucking it has been, I must say.

At first I didn't get the part about setting up a reality program in a power plant, but that's because I don't watch reality shows. So I was picturing the current state of media reporting in which any kind of invention is allowed so long as there is "balance." That doesn't mean balance between two points of view as often as it means balance between the reality on the ground and the countering propaganda conforming to the official party line.

The script writers and actors are cheap for "reality shows," and the name of the game is doing the math and making money this quarter. Straight, honest news reporting isn't sexy, so it gives way to the kind of drivel commercial television has degenerated into.

I didn't have any trouble with the part about the government's having lost all credibility. In a parliamentary system there would be a vote of no confidence and a new government would be formed. Here, we all adjust to the nut case who has handcuffed himself to the steering wheel and hope we survive another two years.

The publicly owned airwaves which could be used to educate and integrate the individual into a larger culture have been taken over by immortal giants. In that sense we have regressed back to the time of Cronos, who devoured his own children.

In the Reagan years the central feature of governing was to do away with government bureaucracy and power. Like the advertising campaign to do away with the inheritance tax, which affects only the super rich, the campaign to do away with government regulation was designed to do away with the power of the government to regulate Cronos. The effect of decoupling the goilem from Rabbi Loeb was seen after Hurricane Katrina. When the flood came, there was no functional relationship between the public need on the ground and the government priorities based in abstracted ideology. The New Orleans flood was a glimpse of what lies ahead for the rest of us should we need the public services we have been complicit in demonizing as "big government." We find them the object of a hostile takeover, stripped of assets and run by political hacks as part of the distribution of pirated booty.

Right now we do need to move quickly, and in the public interest, but we can't with the present administration because it is not independent. It belongs to the giants, just like their other material assets.

The bigger problem is that we may not be able to move no matter what administration comes to power, because the relationship has been lost between the government, representing the people, and the corporation, which was originally chartered to accomplish large and complex projects needed by the people. The charter expired at some point. Now when a Republican administration comes in there is a huge transfer of public wealth into private hands and a bankrupting of non-defense related public agencies, as they are taken over by privatization. The Iraq War is arguably more about wealth transfer than any possible threat to our security. As Deep Throat advised, (in William Goldman's script at least), "Follow the money."

As Linda patiently reminds me, corporations reflect the people who run them, and are not themselves good or bad. So what I am focused on are the corporations which put profit ahead of public safety and long term public interest. Certainly I would put Halliburton and Enron, the eggs from which Messrs. Bush and Cheney hatched, in the vassals of "The Empire" category.

There are corporations I love and am proud to support, like Apple Computer for example. I like my Nissan truck, and I like to go to Trader Joe's. But I don't like the huge military industrial congressional complex that is going to keep bleeding us like some crazy-assed frontier barber. I think corporations, like any other individuals, ought to be subject to charter revocation when they do not serve the public interest any longer. What serves in one period of time can be dead weight in another era.

The Swift Boating of Mr. Kerry was just a glimpse of the bigger picture of rule by smear and coercion. The rule of law is being replaced by the rule of enforcement power used as intimidation, imprisonment, murder and torture. As is typically the case when an ideology overrides long standing conservative principles, the ends justify the means. Thirty percent of people always support the most authoritarian position to the bitter end. That's the same percentage as those who believe in an authoritarian god.

There was a time when a corporation was not immortal, and certainly not an "individual under the law." If something really big needed to be done, a group of investors was gathered, and they invested in a corporation which was chartered to do that specific job, like digging a canal or building a dam. Then the corporation was disbanded, and what was built belonged to the public, and was managed by public servants. And the top GS levels get a fraction of what corporate CEOs get.

The private direction will always be toward increased wealth for the investors, not the long term public interest, as the first mover. Government has to lead. If we are going to move quickly enough to save ourselves, it can only happen if the government reclaims the power to charter private investment to promote the public interest, as the French did in their rapid move to energy independence. There has to be oversight and accountability. Right now the worst abuses at high levels are rewarded with medals and promotions. In such an atmosphere, there can be no public trust in government simply because it would be a stupid investment.

What needs to happen is a complete housecleaning, and the reason Senator Obama is receiving so much money from ordinary citizens is that he is the only candidate on the horizon who is addressing the root of the problem, and who has a chance to mobilize industry for the public, instead of the other way around.

That means we need to dress him in Kevlar and hope for the best.

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Posted: Mon - April 9, 2007 at 03:13 PM