Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: President takes a big Yucca-size bite out of Silver State

Friday, Feb. 22, 2002 | 3:28 a.m.

Nevada has been fighting for so many years to keep from becoming the nation's toilet bowl for deadly nuke waste. It's been a lonesome fight for the people of the Battle Born State, and we still aren't going to roll over and play dead because President George W. Bush has sided against us.

After the president said he was going to allow the energy moguls to use and abuse us, the Republican Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert told the press he would move rapidly to override Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's expected veto of Bush's action. He also told the New York Times, "After two decades of study, we know this remote location beneath the Nevada desert is a safe, secure and viable site."

Hastert went on to say, "Americans deserve the peace of mind that spent nuclear fuel will be consolidated into one secure location rather than scattered across the country in over 130 various sites." In other words he really doesn't care about the peace of mind he is taking from Nevadans.

Yes, this is the same Hastert who has come to Nevada to collect money for his party while trying to convince us to send another Republican congressman to reinforce his leadership position in the House of Representatives.

In contrast, House Democratic leader Richard A. Gephart told Matthew Wald of the Times that "The politics and the needs of corporate energy interests seem to be at the heart of this decision." Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, on national television, said the president's decision was a betrayal of Nevadans.

Last Sunday on "Meet The Press," host Tim Russert brought up the president's Yucca Mountain decision to Democratic strategist James Carville and GOP strategist Ed Gillespie. Here is the opening exchange on that national television program.

Mr. Russert: "Let me pick up on that issue of Nevada, the Yucca Mountain waste disposal repository. In the campaign Cheney went to Nevada and said, we have no plans to have an interim site there. This is the advertisement they took out. The president is now announcing there will be a permanent site for waste disposal of nuclear waste in Nevada. You won the election 271 electoral votes to 266. If those four Nevada votes, a state he carried by 20,000, had gone to Al Gore, Al Gore would be president. Has the president damaged his credibility by now supporting a permanent nuclear waste depository in Yucca Mountain in Nevada when he said he was opposed to an interim site?"

Mr. Gillespie: "Tim, I don't know if that will hurt him in Nevada in '04. It may. But I think you have to do what's in the best interests of the country in terms of policy. The fact is, if we don't have that site there, you end up with nuclear waste being transported across, you know, about 23 states. I think it is, as opposed to locating it in one remote, isolated location. This is in the public's interest. I think the president made the right call. And I don't think he thought about the Electoral College map when he made the call. I think he did what he felt was in the best interests of the country."

Mr. Carville: "I'm going to fall out of this chair. He didn't think about the Electoral College when he sent Cheney out there to say we'd never do it? I mean, this is the most ludicrous thing I've ever seen. Then they tried this fig leaf of the science. Well, the science has gotten worse since the election.

"This is a classic example of somebody going out and saying something a week before the election to get votes and then turning around, knowing they're going to do exactly the opposite thing, of seven nuclear lobbyists meeting with the vice president and, according to a trade publication, walking out saying that they're encouraged. Mr. Koon, who is the chief nuclear guy in the country, was the founder of the Pioneers Club.

"All you got to do is subpoena these records, look at these contributions, see what they made. They never had any intention, no intention, of ever keeping their word on this, and this is an example, again, every time that it's power vs. people, this administration sides resolutely with power and never the people."

Mr. Gillespie: "I would fall out of my chair if I heard Jim Carville talk about an issue that matters to the American people instead of talking about process."

Mr. Carville: "You don't think this matters to the people in Nevada?"

Mr. Gillespie: "Tell me about it before."

Mr. Carville: "You tell somebody in Nevada ..."

It will be interesting to see what happens politically at the state and national level during the coming months and years. Dog bite me once, shame on dog. Dog bite me twice, shame on me.

This White House took a big bite out of Nevada's posterior last week. Dog bite me twice, shame on me.