Nuclear Power

Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania 1979, Chernobyl in Ukraine 1986, and now Fukushima Daiichi in Japan. Don't you think it is time we all re-thought the adviseability of this source of energy? I would also suggest that the use of nuclear power should not be the decision of one country. If the Ukraine opts for nuclear but Sweden and Finland have to suffer the conscequences of an accident then the decision should be not the Ukraine's to make. Japan has chosen to use nuclear power-knowing full well the negative effects of radiation-but many other countries and their citizens will suffer the effects now that an accident has occurred.

Federal Government Debt

The following sentence was from an article about the budgetary battle going on between Obama and the GOP. "The federal government's tax revenues are at their lowest level in 60 years, when measured against the size of the economy, largely because of a weak economy and the extension of Bush era tax cuts approved in December, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office". This should be front-page material on every newspaper in the country. Until this fact is acknowledged, all talk of cutting domestic spending-social security and medicare-should be put on hold.

(Source: "Battle lines drawn over spending" by Stephen Ohlemacher of The AP. In The Virginian Pilot on 3/12/11).

Wealth

The richest person in the world-according to an article in The Virginian Pilot today-is one Carlos Slim, worth $ 74 billion. It doesn't seem right or just that in a nation as poor as Mexico also has the richest man in the world. This source also notes that Bill Gates is worth $ 56 billion but is giving alot of it away to charity, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook worth $ 13 billion. Forbes magazine provides this information and tells us that there are now 1210 billionaires in the world and their collective wealth is $ 4.5 trillion; that is 199 more than last year. I wonder if the Bush II tax cuts put any other Americans in that group?

Democrats ?

Another non-democrat democrat wants to reduce the federal deficit by cutting domestic spending and altering social security. Hey, Senator Mark Warner, what about getting us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, stop sending our tax money to Egypt and end tax policies that are give-aways to the Plutocracy. I am waiting to see one major politician admit that we are in the federal deficit problem we are because of the Bush II decisions to make war at the same time he cut income taxes for the very rich; a course of action never before undertaken in this country. If the democratic party was really a separate political entity, they would make that case.