Fascinating investigative piece in Sunday's NYTimes about Obama's dealings with the Exelon Corporation.
It details Obama's backsliding on important legislation in the Senate that would have regulated the way in which nuclear power plant owners disclose radioactive leaks. Not only did he backslide so that it ultimately favored the plant owners, the top executives at the company that was being targeted are now the biggest contributors to his campaign:
Two top Exelon officials, Frank M. Clark, executive vice president, and John W. Rogers Jr., a director, are among his largest fund-raisers.
This is not a hit diary. This is reporting from the NY Times:
A close look at the path his legislation took tells a very different story [than the one he tells on the campaign trail]. While he initially fought to advance his bill, even holding up a presidential nomination to try to force a hearing on it, Mr. Obama eventually rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Senate Republicans, Exelon and nuclear regulators. The new bill removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators, whom it charged with addressing the issue of unreported leaks.
Link to article, excerpts, and analysis after the flip.
Here is the link: Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate
The story begins two years ago:
When residents in Illinois voiced outrage...upon learning that the Exelon Corporation had not disclosed radioactive leaks at one of its nuclear plants, the state’s freshman senator, Barack Obama, took up their cause.
Mr. Obama scolded Exelon and federal regulators for inaction and introduced a bill to require all plant owners to notify state and local authorities immediately of even small leaks. He has boasted of it on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Iowa in December that it was “the only nuclear legislation that I’ve passed.”
“I just did that last year,” he said, to murmurs of approval.
BUT...
A close look at the path his legislation took tells a very different story. While he initially fought to advance his bill, even holding up a presidential nomination to try to force a hearing on it, Mr. Obama eventually rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Senate Republicans, Exelon and nuclear regulators. The new bill removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators, whom it charged with addressing the issue of unreported leaks.
Those revisions propelled the bill through a crucial committee. But, contrary to Mr. Obama’s comments in Iowa, it ultimately died amid parliamentary wrangling in the full Senate.
In other words he lied, or to be more politic, he misrepresented his work on the bill and what actually happened to it: it never passed, it died.
There were two sides here with two very diffrerent motives:
On one side were neighbors of several nuclear plants upset that low-level radioactive leaks had gone unreported for years; on the other was Exelon, the country’s largest nuclear plant operator and one of Mr. Obama’s largest sources of campaign money.
This doesn't need much analysis. Obama sided with the energy comapny over the people of Illinois who were living in if fear of being poisned by nuclear waste. And FOR MONEY:
Since 2003, executives and employees of Exelon, which is based in Illinois, have contributed at least $227,000 to Mr. Obama’s campaigns for the United States Senate and for president. Two top Exelon officials, Frank M. Clark, executive vice president, and John W. Rogers Jr., a director, are among his largest fund-raisers.
Another Obama donor, John W. Rowe, chairman of Exelon, is also chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear power industry’s lobbying group, based in Washington. Exelon’s support for Mr. Obama far exceeds its support for any other presidential candidate.
If this were all it would be bad, but it gets worse. Apparently, David Axelrod, has worked as a consultant to Exelon!
In addition, Mr. Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, has worked as a consultant to Exelon. A spokeswoman for Exelon said Mr. Axelrod’s company had helped an Exelon subsidiary, Commonwealth Edison, with communications strategy periodically since 2002, but had no involvement in the leak controversy or other nuclear issues.
The campaign did not answer the Times questions about the full extent of their involvement with the re-writing of the bill, or the reasons why Obama lied or misrepresnted the bill to Iowa voters:
The campaign acknowledged that Exelon executives had met with Mr. Obama’s staff about the bill... Asked why Mr. Obama had cited it as an accomplishment while campaigning for president, the campaign noted that after the senator introduced his bill, nuclear plants started making such reports on a voluntary basis. The campaign did not directly address the question of why Mr. Obama had told Iowa voters that the legislation had passed.
To top it all off, the bill, even though it died and never even became law, wouldn't have done anything substantial, since it made disclosure VOLUNTARY and not mandatory; in other words, he left it up to the nuclear energy plants to regulate themselves, which is pretty much a Republican idea.
Nuclear safety advocates are divided on whether Mr. Obama’s efforts yielded any lasting benefits. David A. Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists agreed that “it took the introduction of the bill in the first place to get a reaction from the industry.”
“But of course because it is all voluntary,” Mr. Lochbaum said, “who’s to say where things will be a few years from now?”
If this doesn't alarm you the smallest bit then you aren't paying attention to the details.