Friends of the Wretched Child

Our opinion about Friends of the Earth swings a bit between annoyance and amusement – the former because the environmental group plays so loosely with facts, the latter because they are often quite maladroit even with their loose facts. Consider:

This week Congress will vote on whether to take teachers away from students so that they can give nuclear reactors a $9 billion preemptive bailout. We continue to be shocked that Congress brazenly puts the interests of corporations above the needs of regular Americans, including teachers and children. This is further proof our political system has been corrupted by corporate influence and special interests.

That brazen Congress! We fully expect to see Dickensian children in rags crowding the doors of local nuclear plants begging for alms if this horrid bill passes. Or would, if the cruel taskmasters of the nuclear energy industry weren’t also masterminding legislation to put those wretched children to work hauling overflowing bales of uranium up steep hills to feed the voracious maws of the flame-belching reactors.

Honestly!

(Funning aside, we should mention that the $9 billion is for loan guarantees, for which recipients pay a hefty fee plus interest. It’s not a direct charge against government revenues, which the schools portion would be. That would go back to the “loose with facts” part. But that’s our FOE!)

Mark Lester from the film Oliver! (1968). Lester left acting in 1977 and became an acupuncturist in his native England, where he currently has his own acupuncture clinic.