The Real Triumph of Town Halls

By Henry Grabar, Slate

02 March 17

 

The crowded, boisterous, emotional events are doing much more than holding Republicans accountable.

en. Chuck Grassley stood in front of his constituents on Friday like a clown perched over a dunk tank. Picking questioners from the crowd of 150 or so, the 83-year-old Iowa Republican might as well have been passing out tennis balls at the county fair. The suspense lay not in when Grassley would fall, but in the arc, spin, and speed of each petitioner’s throw.

“I think that when you ignore your constitutional obligation to hold hearings for a Supreme Court justice, that’s a problem,” one woman began, to applause. “I have to ask you what makes you put party over country now.” The cheers grew louder. “In recent weeks, I have been appalled at being called a paid protester, because as far as I can see, the only person in this room that is paid is you, by Betsy DeVos and the Koch brothers.” Shouts of approval.

There were many reasons for Iowans not to come to this town hall. Grassley, who has served since 1981, just won another re-election campaign; he’s not going anywhere. The senator prides himself on the “full Grassley,” an annual visit to each of the state’s 99 counties. He had already hosted three town halls earlier in the week, and this one was in Parkersburg, a town with a population of 1,900, at 8 a.m. on a work day. The sleet blew horizontal outside; emergency signs on the interstate warned of a coming blizzard. But those were small barriers to getting a role in the best show in America: the GOP town hall. And Grassley’s event was a study in how an old civic stalwart has improbably become a viral video factory, a hot ticket, and the latest stage for the awakening on the American left.

All this began, arguably, on Jan. 14 in Aurora, Colorado, when Republican Rep. Mike Coffman snuck out early from a planned event at a public library, fleeing voters asking questions about Obamacare. That was a week before the inauguration and a week before the Women’s March made clear the level of left-wing activism that would greet the Trump administration at every turn. It was a sign of things to come.

By last week, the ritual that snared Coffman had evolved into prime-time television, as Republican representatives were thrust into humiliating confrontations with cancer survivors, 7-year-olds, Muslims, and other Americans angry with President Donald Trump and his party in Congress. Most Republicans have chosen not to hold town halls, canceling scheduled events or declining invitations from activists. House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz alleged attendees were being paid, a baseless accusation that has since been parroted by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre, and Trump himself. Aides to Sen. Marco Rubio initially said the recently re-elected Republican, who once lauded the events, would not attend town halls because he was in Europe, but Rubio later clarified: Organized activists will “heckle and scream at me,” he told a CBS affiliate in Miami. “These are not town halls anymore.”

There are signs that the town hall movement has achieved something more than scaring GOP representatives away from constituents. On Friday, Alabama congressman Mo Brooks said the fracases at town halls had given Republicans in swing districts cold feet about repealing the Affordable Care Act. “In the absence of a counter force, the protests will likely be successful in preventing an outright repeal of Obamacare,” he said.

And while it’s hard to summarize the political thrust of these events, which swerve from topic to topic with a sense of whiplash that mirrors the news, it is easier to recognize their appeal. They’re not designed to give a platform to legislators, but to voters. The point is not to pin down a representative’s position, to nail his hypocrisy, or to solicit an inexplicable response like the congratulations Sen. Ted Cruz issued to a woman living with multiple sclerosis—even if that is what makes headlines. The point is to suss out, question by question, the contours of this new resistance: to determine who is there and what they stand for.

Grassley, to his credit, both scheduled town halls and firmly dismissed the lie of the “paid operative.” But on Friday morning, Butler County Sheriff Jason Johnson spoiled the senator’s goodwill with an introduction: “If you came to be here, whether you’re being paid to be here or you’re here voluntarily—” The crowd erupted in boos. The sheriff gave a half-hearted apology, but the tone was set.

Here’s the list of topics shouted out, at Grassley’s request, by audience members at the start of the Parkersburg town hall:

• “Tax returns”


• “Enemy of the people”


• “Bannon”


• “Moral and ethical standards”


• “ACA”


• “Climate change”


• “Your voting record”


• “EPA”


• “Supreme Court”


• “Planned Parenthood”


• “Independent investigation”


• “Insane president”

“We don’t have enough time,” a voice burst out. But town halls—like film screenings, readings, and other forums where Americans ask public questions—are not built for exchange. They’re built for self-expression.

Managing his rowdy gathering, Grassley sometimes had the demeanor of an exasperated teacher trying to impress politeness into his class. At other times he seemed worn down by the vitriol. Fielding a long, critical question about why he had not fought to raise the federal minimum wage, the senator responded: “When did I quit beating my wife?” (That didn’t go over well.) But mostly, Grassley’s was a bit part in a show put on by his constituents.

One audience role at town halls is the pleading voter. On Friday, this part was played by a Republican with a young son who gave the senator his blessing to spend billions to stop climate change. The part of disappointed parent was best evinced by a woman who heaped praise on the senator’s past before expressing dismay over his blockade of the Merrick Garland nomination.

The role of determined lawyer was played by a portly, white-bearded man in a sweatshirt who bombarded the senator with a series of questions:

“You have high ethical standards, correct? Would that be a fair statement? I think you do.”

“I’d rather have you tell me,” Grassley responded.

“Well, I think you do. And I think you surround yourself with people who have high moral and ethical standards, correct? OK. And you’ve been a senator for how many years?”

“OK. Well you’ve got really nothing to prove,” he said. And then he laid it on. He ran through the sins of Trump: the mockery of women, of POWs, of Sen. John McCain. He talked about Russia, about the free press. “And we also have a guy who admittedly gropes women. Now, tell me where your standards are at, senator. How low are they, that these things don’t bother you enough that you will speak out and say: ‘Enough is enough!’?” Riotous applause.

At the end of the day, though, no one seemed too angry with Grassley. Older Iowa Democrats, and a good number of independents and Republicans in attendance, seem to see Grassley as a fallen figure, a symbol of the recent, radical intransigence of the Republican Party. (That the Iowa legislature has dismantled the state's collective bargaining law and is working on “stand your ground” legislation this year, the latter a model policy of the far-right American Legislative Exchange Council, is evidence closer to home.) Several irate Democrats in the crowd had once voted for Grassley. They have soured on him since, but they were here because of Trump.

Attendees often had two or three questions prepared. They were mostly Democrats, but armchair Democrats, who had realized their yard signs and votes were not enough. “I’ve lived in Iowa for 64 years, and this is the first town hall I’ve been to here,” said Debra Shoopman, who had driven from Waterloo, 30 minutes east.

Rather than grow irritated with what everyone agreed were lackluster responses from the senator, Shoopman and others were buoyed by the standing-room showing, the ovations, the witty one-liners, and the reminder that everyone around them was reading the same news and feeling the same way that they were. “It was encouraging to see that we’re not alone,” said Ashli Jung, a teacher who lived in town. It’s one thing to find that reassurance on Facebook, and another to hear it in the voices of strangers who had driven a hundred miles before sunrise to say so.

The next morning, I watched the same thing occur on a larger scale at Raritan Valley Community College in New Jersey. Democrats in Iowa complain that Grassley’s spectacle of access is a farce, given his choice of tiny venues in rural, deep-red counties. This was not the case in New Jersey, where Rep. Leonard Lance said he had found the largest venue in his district, a 1,000-seat auditorium, and added this Saturday morning event to accommodate attendees. Still, at his second town hall of the week, there were at least 100 people watching a live-stream from an overflow room and scores more protesting outside.

In some ways, Lance and Grassley are opposites: Grassley is an influential, popular senator with a fresh six-year term and a 25-point mandate. Lance will be up for re-election in two years in one of America’s 23 split districts, where voters pulled for both a Republican representative and for Hillary Clinton. Lance won by 38,000 votes and by 11 percentage points, a comfortable margin—but down from 17 points in 2012. He has never met Trump; his ability to separate himself from his party leader may determine whether he keeps his job.

Lance was poised and gracious onstage, drawing raffle tickets for questions. He was interrupted dozens of times as he gave his responses, each of which was detailed and eloquent but few of which were considered satisfactory. But again, it didn’t really matter what Lance said. “Politicians never answer questions,” said Caroline Sroka, a 16-year-old who had snagged a front-row seat with her mom, Eileen, before the event. “I’m here to show support for anyone who feels victimized by Trump. I have friends who are Muslim, black, LGBT, who don’t feel safe wearing a hijab or holding hands.”

As in Iowa, these Democrats were flexing a muscle they had never used before. Eileen Sroka had just joined a new organizing group that had formed online after the Women’s March. Jennifer Robinson, a wildlife conservationist who was protesting outside, had founded a local chapter of the Indivisible movement, based on the influential left-wing activism playbook published by former congressional staffers. Her group, Tewksbury Area Indivisible, had grown from a handful of people at its first meeting, on Feb. 7, to more than 80 two weeks later. “We’ve been making it up as we go along,” she said cheerfully. “None of us have ever done this before. Ours is a small group but one of thousands, and these groups are starting to coalesce.” It was like that old Heather Locklear shampoo commercial, Robinson said: You tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on, and so on.

In Iowa, I had watched neighbors run into each other and relish the surprise of mutual recognition. In New Jersey, a subsequent stage of activism was underway. One group had provided sample questions to attendees; another had handed out thumbs up and thumbs down placards to the crowd.

As in Iowa, people didn’t care for the answers (which they shouted over) so much as the questions. Crowd-pleasers included the German immigrant and professor at Rutgers who invoked the rise of the Nazi Party; the registered Republican whose query about Russia and press freedom prompted a thundering chant of “Free press!”; the woman who asked, “What are you going to do about Steve Bannon’s power in Washington?” to which a thousand roaring suburbanites responded: “Stop Steve Bannon!”

Lance had drawn his last ticket when a man in the crowd hollered, “This woman has a question.” The congressman gave her the floor.

Her name was Mary-Beth Brooks. She is a mother of two and first-time town hall attendee who had met the congressman at Boy Scout meetings and voted for him. “I’m very happy you’re here with us today,” she began. “But I have to confess that I’m even more happy that I’m standing here today. You see, I don’t look all that sick, but I’ve been diagnosed with a chronic degenerative disease that is slowly robbing me of my ability to use my hands and feet and eventually will move inward far enough to rob me of my brain and my spinal cord.” When Brooks began treatment, her medication cost an average of $9,000 a week, and without the ACA’s ban on lifetime caps, she said, she would be dead. “So I want to know from you, sir, if you will support the provisions of the ACA that protect people like me from being thrown into a lottery system such as a high-risk pool, and not being guaranteed receiving any insurance at all, and protect my children and my husband from going bankrupt to keep me alive.”

The congressman responded that he was opposed to letting insurance companies restore lifetime limits.

It would be easy to see Brooks as an avatar for a simple political shift, as the kind of ex-Republican beneficiary of the ACA that gives credence to Mo Brooks’ warning that town halls are swaying the health care debate. But at an event undefined by one political issue, her short speech meant something more. “I didn’t speak for myself alone,” she told me. “There’s a lot of us out there.”

Afterward, standing in the sunshine of the parking lot, Mary-Beth Brooks was still shaking as attendees approached her: “You broke my heart.” “Thank you for your courage.” No one was talking about Lance or his answers. They were talking about themselves and their lives, feeling momentarily that they, as much as their congressman, were here representing something bigger.

Ohio's Crumbling Nukes Face Judgement Day

By Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News

02 March 17

 

he likely explosion of an American nuclear power plant is the ultimate terror in the age of Trump.

Across the United States, 99 dangerous, decrepit, and disastrous commercial nukes are literally falling to pieces. With no private insurance and no meaningful regulation, the industry is poised to wreak apocalyptic havoc on our planet. While the industry bribes and strong-arms governors and state legislatures into massive bailouts, the next meltdown/blowup could very well cost you both your money and your life.

None of these nukes are nearer to the breaking point than Ohio’s infamous Davis-Besse reactor, near Toledo. It is poised to lose hundreds of millions of dollars for its owners and Ohio ratepayers. So, of course, the “free enterprise” Republican legislature is poised to give those nuke operators a massive bailout. To the tune of more than $4 billion (that’s not a typo).

Natural gas is cheaper. New gas plants are under construction throughout the state. Ohio has tremendous wind resources, far in excess of anything we will ever need and far more than it would take to replace DB. Thanks to spectacular technological advances in recent years, that wind power – along with new solar panels – is cheaper, safer, cleaner and more reliable than the nuke, and would create thousands of jobs beyond the few hundred at Davis-Besse.

But FirstEnergy, which owns both Davis-Besse and the legislature, does not own the gas or the wind. Davis-Besse is also poised to melt down and/or blow up. Six other reactors (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima 1-4) have already done one or both.

One of the world’s oldest reactors, Davis-Besse is literally crumbling. As Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear has shown, DB’s shield building has been pulverized by storms, internalized moisture that alternatively freezes and thaws, faulty maintenance, and corrupt decision making.

DB is infamous worldwide for its “hole-in-the-head” fiasco. That happened when boric acid ate nearly all the way through the reactor pressure vessel. It came within a fraction of an inch of another Chernobyl. Says Kamps: “FirstEnergy has admitted that it has known since 2011 that large chunks of Shield Building exterior face concrete could fall off – as due to an earthquake, or meltdown pressures – and fall down onto safety significant systems, structures, or components below, exacerbating the disaster, perhaps even leading to a meltdown, that the breached containment could no longer contain.”

But if the all-too-likely disaster comes, FirstEnergy will not be liable for the damages. You will pay, with your money, your property, and maybe your life.

The 1957 Price-Anderson Act was passed to encourage utility companies to build atomic reactors, which were essentially a happy face for the atomic bomb. The Atomic Energy Commission that both regulated and promoted nuclear power also produced America’s nuclear weapons. The power companies resisted the reactors because they feared meltdowns, which government reports at the time presciently warned could wipe out an area the size of Pennsylvania. The industry at the time promised electricity “too cheap to meter” and denied a commercial reactor could ever explode. Both statements proved to be epic lies.

Meanwhile a captive Congress let the industry proceed without liability insurance. A tiny ($540 million) fund was set up, essentially for show. That’s now up to about $13 billion. But considering Chernobyl did at least a half-trillion in damage and Fukushima more than anybody can yet calculate, the kitty is essentially an absurdity. A radioactive cloud pouring out of Davis-Besse would do $13 billion in damage to life and property within the first few miles.

The rest would be paid for by the public – you and me. After 60 years, American reactors still have no private liability insurance.

Protected by the government, FirstEnergy has no corporate stake in protecting the people or property downwind. Some workers might care. Some executives might be perpetually poised to flee the inevitable apocalyptic cloud as it hurtles toward their lakefront mansions.

But as an inanimate entity, the company itself is immune to radiation. Should the corporate shield crumble, bankruptcy is the easy and obvious option.

Which is what FirstEnergy may face at Davis-Besse. Among the world’s very oldest reactors, its operating and maintenance costs have soared. Even with the fake regulation provided by the rubber stamp Nuclear Regulatory Commission, DB faces massive repairs just to keep its turbines twirling. The building has already been slashed into four times to replace core components. It’s the equivalent of having four open-heart surgeries (if a reactor can be said to have a heart) through a rib cage that cannot heal, with each invasion accelerating general deterioration.

As Sierra Club energy expert Ned Ford explains, the economic crisis FirstEnergy now faces is of its own making. Many years ago, when it was known as Cleveland Electric Illuminating (and then Centerior, also encompassing Ohio Edison) the utility’s financial geniuses gouged out of the legislature a massive bailout for Davis-Besse and its compadre Perry reactor east of Cleveland. Together they took what energy expert Ned Ford estimates to be up to $20 billion from Ohio ratepayers.

At the time they argued (with straight faces) we’d all save millions in an open “free market” competition. But to get there, they insisted we underwrite the two lakefront nukes, which could not compete without gargantuan handouts that made a mockery of that old “too cheap to meter” pitch.

The legislature, of course, gave them all they wanted. We who testified against this outrageous stick-up warned that the “free market” reactor operators would be begging for re-regulation.

Why?

Because nukes can’t function without huge subsidies. Regulation guarantees a return on investment at ratepayer expense (which has never bothered a “free market” utility).

As Ned Ford has extensively shown, Ohio has huge excess capacity in coal-burners, though many are as decrepit and dysfunctional as Davis-Besse. It’s also over-built in gas burners, many of which sat unused when methane prices were high, but which now churn out juice far cheaper than any nukes anywhere.

Most importantly, northern Ohio has spectacular wind resources. The breezes in the middle of Lake Erie are as strong and steady as anywhere on Earth. The lake is relatively shallow and fresh, meaning there’s no salt to corrode the moving parts. The likely sites are also relatively close to Toronto, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland and other major consuming centers.

On-shore is even better. The winds aren’t as strong, but installation is cheaper and there’s plenty of transmission, many willing farm hosts, and good proximity to the cities. Alongside solar cells, wind is humankind’s fastest-growing new energy source, creating millions of jobs worldwide – tens of thousands of which are poised to pour into Ohio whenever the nukes finally shut. Advanced reliability has driven capacity factors constantly higher, with downtime increasingly covered by a revolution in battery technologies.

In 2010 a broad coalition of activists, working with Governor Ted Strickland, put a far-seeing energy plan in place to take Ohio deep into a green energy future. The pioneer package of goals and incentives was set to bring the Buckeye State an energy mix that was clean, cheap, cutting-edge, and poised to create thousands of jobs in an advanced economy that could have pulled Ohio far ahead of the rest of the rust belt and into a truly sustainable post-recessional future. Several billion dollars in investment capital – much of it focused on wind farms in northern Ohio – was ready to go.

But with the coming of John Kasich and a Koch-controlled legislature, all that disappeared. Kasich has since softened his anti-green tone. But the legislature is still run by far-right corporate Republicans who hate anything that’s not fossil/nuke, even if there are jobs and money to be made and a sustainable future to be had. They also hate anything that smacks of government interference or handouts – until a big corporate donor like FirstEnergy demands billions in ratepayer subsidies for uninsurable privately-owned reactors that put the public at risk.

Indeed, FirstEnergy is now unabashedly asking this “anti-government” legislature to guarantee its return on nuclear investments whose real dollar values are a huge negative. Massive quantities of radioactive trash have piled up at the reactor sites with nowhere to go. The pioneer American radioactive waste facility – New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Project –blew up three years ago at an estimated cost of $2 billion and counting. Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, decades from being completed if at all, will be even more unstable, with an ultimate price tag approaching $100 billion.

Both Ohio reactors are gargantuan liabilities demanding inestimable resources to decommission. Funds have been accumulated to allegedly pay for that, but nobody seriously believes there’s enough to do the job.

The nuclear industry has also adopted the astonishing lie that these reactors are somehow “zero emission” and therefore help fight global warming. It’s an amusing argument, coming from Republicans who adamantly denounce the idea that climate change might be real.

It’s also blatantly false. Davis-Besse, Perry, and all other reactors dump billions of gallons of heated water directly into the air and water. They thus “fight climate change” by directly heating the climate. They also emit Carbon 14 in their fission process, and many tons of carbon dioxide in the process of mining, milling, and enriching their uranium fuel.

Nukes also constantly emit radioactive gases and particulates that kill living things, both in their “normal” operating process and when they explode, as at Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Above all, they have been blown away economically by the revolution in solar and wind. More than 260,000 Americans now work in the solar industry and more than 100,000 in wind, far more than in coal, oil, and nukes combined. Every time a reactor shuts, opportunity arises to create thousands of stable, long-term, well-paying jobs in renewables and efficiency. The faster the reactors shut, the more jobs are created and the safer, cleaner, and cooler the planet becomes.

If Ohio’s legislature does re-regulate and hand FirstEnergy its radioactive ransom, lawsuits will erupt (as they already have in Illinois) from independent “market” utilities seeking to compete. The type of monopoly status the “free market” Republicans are poised to give FirstEnergy will be challenged in the courts and regulatory agencies in hugely expensive litigations. The only certain outcome is years of delay and a yet another massive price tag – which FirstEnergy would stick to the rest of us.

Also certain would be the devastating impact on Ohio’s economic future. As shown by the Sierra’s Ford, the billions sucked up by these ancient, obsolete nukes have poisoned the Buckeye economy and helped hollow out what was once an industrial powerhouse. The only jobs created will be among the attorneys adding their exorbitant fees onto the ratepayers’ tab.

The revolution in wind and solar that’s sweeping the planet should long ago have brought Ohio’s economy into the new millennium.

Instead, these massively subsidized, crumbling, obsolete radioactive jalopies keep on rumbling toward the inevitable atomic cliff. What melted TMI, Chernobyl, and the Fukushimas draws closer every day.

Likewise the shameless, self-serving, and unconscionable campaign FirstEnergy has launched to force us all to yet again fund our own economic, employment, ecological and biological demise.

FirstEnergy now says it will sell Davis-Besse and get out of the generating business. But the deal will be meaningless if DB continues to operate.

Somewhere along the line, Ohioans must find those two off-switches at Perry and Davis-Besse while turning on the revolution in wind and solar power that is bringing jobs and prosperity to so much of the rest of the world.

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Harvey Wasserman is author of SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, available via www.solartopia.org. He edits www.nukefree.org. This article originally appeared at www.freepress.org.