One Utah

After sixteen pages of ads and some news of various sensibility, the Salt Lake Trilbune with its new ownership, informs us that EnergySolutions wants to add 83 feet of nuclear material…..That’s eight stories high, folks, all above ground, better to reach and to serve you. Through your water, in your air, and in the ground they originally stole from you. This “low-level”nuclear waste, tick tick ticking away, only lasts, a lot of it, for two million years half-life (”half” life means forever). So of course, the buccaneers of private industry will be here, trust us folks, to see that you’re safely irradiated long after the children of your children’s children, from Adam to Zarathustra, are mouldering in radioactive dust.*

*Less than a month ago “A train carrying low-level radioactive waste in Salt Lake triggered radiation alarms from an unusually long distance” Article here.

Fellow citizens. Utah is the only state in the whole nation that allows private companies, let alone the pirates of the entire private sector, to own and regulate the continuation of life on this tiny blue planet, this little bit of life, this only bit of life of which we know in all God’s cosmos. Are we nuts? Or just corrupt? Choice three eludes me. I’ll assume, per Occham’s Razor (look it up), that following the money, honey, is damned good advice. There, we find both secular corruption, rampant; and ecclesiastical corruption, called Simony, after Simon the Magician, who tried to buy priesthood power from Peter and John. Simon failed. He like Energy Solutions, built an eight-story structure, climbed to the top and jumped off. Like Energy Solutions, perhaps, giving a few credulous folks the benefit of the doubt, he came to believe his own horse-pucky. He dove straight down, head first to hell. If God is in her heaven, and the devil where he belongs in Hell, then Energy Solutions should follow their leader. Like Energy Solutions the fires burn eternally, thermonuclear power all the way.

Many in the institutional church, any institutional church (an oxymoron, by nature?) since Simon succeeded. Put simply, Simony is apostasy. The purchase of God’s power with money. Everything, we know, on earth can be purchased with money. And corrupted beyond recognition. Apostasy from an original community, an idea from an original charismatic Teacher: the anti-Darwinian inclination of the bureaucratic ladder-climber toward the survival and the elevation of the least fit. That point where the Peter-Principle (not, please note, the original apostle) meets the opposite of Charles Darwin.

In our state, in our nation, the gift of Tom Jefferson’s democracy similarly is for sale. We’ve the best little state legislature money can buy. And it has been so compromised: lock, stock, and blatant ugliness. As ugly, as my Grandfather, Ed Firmage, and his boss, Mr. J.C. Penney used to say, as ugly as a mud fence, folks. Envirocare, by whatever name, has bought members of the bench. Many law firms. Many members of the United States Congress. Children of the good senators and congressmen working for EnergySolutions. Here is real serious nepotism married to their cousins, mothers, and brothers in a way never dreamed of by Warren Jeffs. And what an incestuous monstrous brood. Three eyes, four hands, heads as big as pumpkins. Almost like they were radiated in the womb.

And of course in the time-honored tradition, the regulators are paid off after “retirement,” by Energy Solutions in cushy jobs like many other government-related industries. Monied musical chairs. Look at the Interstate Commerce Commission. The Food and Drug Administration. Or the history, the recent history, of the regulation of nuclear waste in Utah. Or the history of the regulation of the nuclear industry in the United States. Envirocare by whatever-name have in their employ several journalists who work for a Salt Like City “morning newspaper,” that shall remain nameless, but it is not the Salt Lake Tribune.

Ownership and support for Envirocare extends into many church structures in our nation and in this state. Most especially the dominant religion, as we quaintly say, for us Mormons. Church leaders are of the firms that have Envirocare as their clients. The CIA is also represented in those august circles, not only Senator Bob Bennett, to see that the right people don’t get in to see the right people. One MX mistake, in their book, is quite enough for one generation. If I’m wrong here, folks, sue me. So I can safely name names, in court.

I don’t speak for any corporation. I never have. With a little bit of luck, after cancer, spinal surgery, home fires, legs and shoulders that no longer work and two heart attacks, I never will. But I do speak for the blood. I do speak for Brigham Young. And Zina, his wife, first married to Joseph Smith, in the Nauvoo Temple. When the same sort whom we now face off had murdered him, she chose Brigham Young, though whom I come. A later Zina in this line married a young Canadian cowboy named Hugh B. Brown, who became First Counselor to President David O. McKay. Hugh Brown was an ardent liberal Democrat and a protégé of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was a lonely little petunia in the onion patch of Republican leadership of the Mormon Church, all too often, the Republican Party at prayer.

But for some of us, the old vision remains. I’m not polyg’ing or monog’ing. But I still believe in Zion. And I’ll be damned if I’ll allow its ruination with radioactive crap. Or radiate our water and our air for two million years’ half-life. My friend and mentor, Hugh Nibley spoke to me often of mourning for Zion. Me too. And I won’t let the dream die. Not while I live.

Before this enlargement takes place, or any hotter than hell stuff comes here, I intend to keep my promise of years ago. I will strip stark naked, like Lady Godiva, but unhorsed, and afraid to ride side-saddle, I’ll walk down South Temple, nude. For Temple Square. Aiming for my holy house, the Mormon Tabernacle. After prostate surgery, alas, they can no longer catch me by the great organ. If you want to join me, start doing your push-ups. Sissies are invited to use pasties or panties.

Another suggestion to those of you who, like me, prefer Thomas Jefferson’s brand of democracy; as in his Declaration of Independence (our first and best Declaration of War, that part of the Constitution unused by a craven Congress and a Rogue president), and the United States Constitution: watch carefully the incessant television commercials done by EnergySolutions. The old owners were evil and crude. I preferred them that way. I respected their brutal honest. The new owners, inclined to the good- old-boy system of theocratic church and state we’re used to, are slick. They hire the best PR firms, run in other words, just like a church. Watch for example, the golf tournaments they sponsor. AND THEN BOYCOTT THE BASTARDS WHO MAKE THEIR MONEY BY DESTROYING THE PURITY OF OUR WATER, OUR LAND, OUR AIR, AND OUR KIDS. Like Channel Two. And Layton Construction Company, Rocky Mountain Power, the law firm of Siegfried and Jensen, the Utah Jazz (well, given my own weakness, let’s watch our home team, but I intend to turn down management’s efforts to lure me into playing center), Interform, Daines Goodwin & Co., Tuff Country EZ Ride Suspension, Utah Web Services, Diamond Rental, Ferrari Color, PGA Tour (again, weak-willed aficionados may watch, but resist blandishments to replace Tiger Woods after some last-minute illness forces him to cancel), and Nationwide Tour.

And a final suggestion for EnergySolutions (other than drop dead); hold the golf game at night. The players, and the audience, given a little time, will all glow in the dark — a real energy solution. Save electricity. Go nuclear. Like the Mills Brothers, always my favorites sing: “glow, little glow worm, glow and glitter.”

Ed Firmage
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

It should be noted that less than a month ago “A train carrying low-level radioactive waste in Salt Lake triggered radiation alarms from an unusually long distance” Article here.

This entry was posted Monday, October 16th, 2006 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Ed Firmage, Nuclear waste storage, Political Corruption, This Blog, Utah Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.