Barak Obama sold out his constituents to the nation's largest operator of nuclear plants -- and one of his major contributors. The typical Washington cave-in happened when Obama's constituents were outraged that their drinking water was contaminated with radioactive tritium as a result of unreported leaks from a nearby nuclear power plant.
The company responsible for poisoning the wells was Exelon, the nation's largest operator of nuclear power plants. It has contributed $227,000 to Senator Obama's various campaigns.
Obama initially offered legislation to require reporting of all leaks, granstanded on it, quietly caved to industry allowing his legislation to be gutted, then lied about getting it passed.
Here's how the New York Times put it:
Mr. Obama scolded Exelon and federal regulators for inaction and introduced a bill to require all plant owners to notify state and local authorities immediately of even small leaks. He has boasted of it on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Iowa in December that it was "the only nuclear legislation that I’ve passed."
"I just did that last year," he said, to murmurs of approval.
A close look at the path his legislation took tells a very different story. While he initially fought to advance his bill, even holding up a presidential nomination to try to force a hearing on it, Mr. Obama eventually rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Senate Republicans, Exelon and nuclear regulators. The new bill removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators, whom it charged with addressing the issue of unreported leaks.
Now the fact is that Republicans controlled committee chairmanships at the time that Senator Obamba originally introduced this legislation and the Senate Environment Committee was headed by the nuclear neanderthal James Inhofe. But Obama went along, getting a meaningless voluntary compliance bill out of committee, quietly submitting while industry lawyers marked it up.
And, perhaps as the unkindest cut of all, Obama has reintroduced the same de-fanged meaningless bill in the new Senate, even though Barbara Boxer now chairs the Senate Environment Committee.
This is exactly how Clinton/Gore operated while they were in power. And after the years of betrayal on the environment by the Clinton Administration with its mouthing of green rhetoric while caving to industry -- selling out the ozone layer to Florida tomato farmers as just one of many examples, I've grown somewhat inured to how corrupt Washington pols deal with a conflict between the environment and their corporate sponsors. I'm disappointed in Senator Obama, though I'm not surprised
I plan to vote for Obama in Tuesday's California primary, though I hold no illusions about what he'll do when in power. He will cave to major industries and his corporate patrons unless we gather the political will and organization to force him to do otherwise.
Those people who treat Obama like he is the second coming are doing no one a favor.