Chupacabra Report

News that gets my goat..

I’d like to pass on a bit I heard on The Monitor show on Pacifica. The host, Mark Bebawi, has been telling about a recent appearance on Hardball by Tom Ridge where he spoke of the need to build new nuclear power plants in this country to create jobs and achieve energy independence. Ridge was introduced as a former Governor and Secretary of Homeland Security. No mention was made of Ridge’s current employer, Exelon Corporation, the country’s largest nuclear power company, or the $500,000 compensation he’s received from them, or the $248,000 in Exelon stock he reported to the SEC in 2009.

Bebawi then turned to MSNBC’s sister station’s NBC News, where retired General and former Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey spoke about the need for the US to remain in Afghanistan for the next twenty years. Again, McCaffrey and NBC failed to mention that he is on the Board of Directors for Dyncorp International, which gets three billion dollars a year, 53% of their revenue, in Pentagon contracts for security and support services in Iraq and Afghanistan. McCaffrey joined the board in 2005. His compensation last year totaled $182,000 according to Forbes.com.

But it gets even better: General Electric owns 80% of NBC. They also provide reactors, fuel, and services to the nuclear power industry. And of course they are perennially one of the top fifteen US defense contractors, billing over a billion dollars every year.

This is why my eyes roll when I hear people decry the “liberal media.” I wish.

Remember that line from Upton Sinclair about how “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it?”

Atomic power may be an answer to our energy problems, and it may be in our interest to spend the next twenty years rebuilding Afghanistan. But when we consider these questions, I’d like to be able to get information from somebody who’s not already on the payroll.