Re: Rumbles

[JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com]

Shelly,

I think you're right! Its finally the sound of digging in of heels as the
obvious waste of massive national resources in the name of environmental
protection, and more importantly public health and safety! especially while
not funding many very important environmental and public health and safety
matters that really cause human injury and disease, and environmental
degradation. That certainly does not apply to radiation releases which
expenditures are achieved only by creating and using unjustified fear in the
public so they will support giving away their wallets. Its debatable only at
what point fraud becomes a mugging (kind of like "your money or your life"
with a plastic gun :-) > 

>           Maybe that noise is the sound of the digging in of heels as we in 
>           the environmental community try to drag you into the 20th century 
>           where the public has some say in what kind of risks and 
>           regulations are appropriate.
>           
>           I couldn't resist the reply as long as we're making cute 
>           analogies. 

I thought the "mugging with a plastic gun" analogy meets our standards of cute 
analogies here. :-) 

>                          Looking Forward To Your Next Shot

No gun pun intended!        

>                                    Shelly Rosenblum

As a note:  I have no problem with all of us who have diligently undertaken to 
make the process of analysis and compliance as painless and efficient as
possible -- implementing policies and fabrications not of our making. 

But it has become time to stop and face the reality that the wasted monies are 
no longer incidental costs sacrificed to minor research and controls costs,
its becoming real money, especially with LLW costs and decomm costs in the
$100s Billions!  I did that a year and a half ago in discussing a public
"debate" in which the BEIR supporters were painted as the industry's tobacco
scientists telling us that smoking is good for us, against the Gofman's and
other "public interest scientists" who live on and fan the public fear for
hire, and who meet the needs of the high level Fed agency bureaucrats who seek 
political support to gain more authority and funding. (And those contractor
managements concerned only with "success" defined by billable hours, not the
quality and integrity of the premise or result -- and of those in the the
"private sector" who willingly comply without comment as long as the costs are 
wholely [and more, since electric utility rates return more on "pollution
control equipment" capital investments than on power producing capital
investments] passed on the taxpayers, ratepayers, insurance bills, etc;
and/or, as one corporate interest put it, the rules "do not reduce our
competitive position".) 

Even the industry-types had no real knowledge of the scientific data and
debate, and the substantial data and criticism of the linear model and BEIR
results, and when asked to identify candidates for the panel, could come up
with essentially no one except a few people that they themselves felt had been 
largely marginalized by the Federal interests. 

So we ended up with a debate on forming a government between Trotsky and
Stalin! Jefferson and Madison had been painted by BEIR with the same wide
brush as Lyndon LaRouche and the Ku Klux Klan.  (to trump our analogies here
:-) 

So the nation spends $10s Billions/yr for zero public health benefit -- a fact 
not even dependent on the linear no-threshold fiction, since even with that
model, we spend $10s Billions/yr reducing <1% of population exposures to <<1%
of population exposures, obviously with no meaningful benefit to the
population. 

I applaud your efforts to make the muggings efficient! On the other hand, the
victim never even knows a really good pickpocket or con artist is there! :-) 

Regards, Jim Muckerheide