If the arsonist who burns down your house offers to help you find a new one, would that make everything all better? Of course not. Well now you know how the approximately 1,500 highly-trained, highly-skilled, highly-experienced engineers, scientists and other soon-to-be laid-off workers at Yucca Mountain must be feeling after reading the recent Las Vegas Review-Journal story that Nevada Sen. Harry Reid is offering to help them find new jobs now that he’s cut off their paychecks.
Whether you support the Yucca Mountain project or not, you can’t ignore the reality of the situation. The licensing process is ongoing despite Reid’s successful efforts to cut $108 million from the Department of Energy’s nuclear waste program. And there’s a better-than-even chance the repository will eventually be built and opened regardless of Sen. Reid’s rhetoric and bravado.
So how does it make sense to lay off the very workers who are best trained and the most experienced at assuring that the facility is operated as efficiently and safely as humanly possible? Most of these folks are going to have to leave the state to find similar jobs in their fields and won’t come back. This is a classic example of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
And just remember this little episode the next time some private company finds it necessary to lay off workers for financial, not political, reasons and Reid starts shedding crocodile tears for the workers and their families while bashing the heartless corporate managers who made the decision.
When it come to hypocrisy, Harry Reid is full of it.
Posted on January 28th, 2008 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada
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