Nuclear Advocacy Network Seeks New Members

[phantom power]

With nuclear energy at the center of the energy debates being heard in Washington, D.C., and state capitols, getting involved in grassroots activities can help you have a positive effect on the outcome of these discussions.

Less than a year ago, the Nuclear Energy Institute launched its new grassroots program, the Nuclear Advocacy Network. NAN’s membership draws from such groups as the American Nuclear Society, North American Young Generation in Nuclear, Women in Nuclear and many other associations, companies, organizations—and individuals like you.

Today, there are over 3,400 members across the country already signed-up and receiving information on advocacy opportunities and legislative activity on nuclear-related activities.

By joining NAN, you can help keep important energy issues front and center with your elected officials. NAN provides you with:

* tools with which to work in your community
* methods to get your voice heard by members of Congress and your state legislature
* e-mail action alerts with critical news and information about the industry.


If you haven’t joined this group of nuclear energy advocates, the time to do so is now.

Insight readers can now sign up at www.nuclearadvocacynetwork.org. Use the code word “uranium.”

Be sure to include your home address so NAN can connect you as a voter with your state and federal representatives.

If you have any difficulty registering, send an e-mail to [e-mail]

—Nuclear Energy Insight, March 2009

http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/publicationsandmedia/insight/insightmarch2009/nuclear-advocacy-network-seeks-new-members/

[GliderGuider]

1. You, my friend,

are a shit-disturber.

[phantom power]

2. Well...

first of all, yes I am.
:evilgrin:



But then again... if I had posted a topic about a Wind advocacy group seeking new members, would that be considered shit-stirring? The reason I even found that was that I was just thinking, there are tons of advocacy groups related to renewables, or biofuels, etc. Theoretically, there ought to be a nuclear advocacy group out there. So I tested my hypothesis on Teh Google, and this post was the result of that search!

[bananas]

7. I haven't seen any posts spamming for Wind Advocacy groups

But maybe I should go ahead and start?

[phantom power]

15. You aren't planning to join NAN, are you. I can sense it...

More seriously, if somebody wants to plug a renewables advocacy group in E/E, why not? It's an energy topic.

[kristopher]

17. You do know what an astroturf group is, don't you?

And I take it you don't, as a rule, approve of them?

[phantom power]

18. True, I do not approve of astroturfing.

To my way of thinking, the primary component of astroturfing is the deception. That is, some organization secretly organizing either a bunch of henchmen (the brooks brothers riot) or rubes (the teabagger parties) and intentionally trying to conceal their influence and funding.

Do you think that the NEI is concealing their involvement with this?

[kristopher]

19. Your impression is a bit off target

There is always a trail. The key element involving deception are the efforts of those co-opted by the ability of corporate money to organize a force of people to work on behalf of the corporation. When a letter to the editor appears in your local paper, do you compare the format to other local papers to find out if it is a form letter sent out by a corporate PR office via email to local advocates? Or do you just take it at face value that the letter is from an informed individual who supports a corporate friendly position? The group of people that send the letter is open and available for anyone to "join" by email, and they make no more secret of sending the form letter than a grassroots group would. But how many people actually track something like that? Their best defense is the time cost of gaining information about what they are doing.

It is called astroturf because it has the outward appearance of grassroots but that is actually a deliberately *manufactured* image. One is bottom up, the other is top down. Your invitation is a perfect example.

[phantom power]

22. I can see why it fits a top down model.

But I don't get any impression that the NEI is trying to be stealthy about their support. They're supporting an organization that is obviously aligned with their interests. If they wanted to pretend that they had no involvement, I would not be on board with that.

Then again, maybe it's just me who cares whether or not stealth is involved.

[kristopher]

23. I reread my post

And I really didn't achieve clarity on the issue of deceit. For example, the efforts of the entire climate change denier industry have been done completely in the open. What is important to them is not whether corporate influence in visible, but whether they can motivate non-corporate people to defend the goals of the corporations. There are two primary reasons they are open in their efforts. First, it simply isn't possible to be completely covert. That is dealt with by inserting layers between the main source of funding and the end organizing group. In this case we have at least three layers emerging: the actual industries involved in construction, the NEI, and this group you posted about. The people involved in the various layers invariably overlap and the information provided is usually traceable to its point of origin. Now, if the people recruited are fed information by the NEI to disseminate on behalf of the industries involved in construction how many people will realize the original source of the information?

The answer to that is found in the second primary reason openness is consistent with astroturf organizing. The cost of gaining the information about the connection is far too high for the vast majority of people to pay, even when the vertical links are able to be established. Most people don't go searching for sources and citations. There are some of us who do, and it represents a significant investment of time and effort to put the pieces together as such research is a specialty in and of itself.

When those people who sign on to the effort in the OP get information that originated with a PR company employed by a company trying to influence public policy in order to make a profit, in general, how critical are they going to be of the arguments presented? Are they going to source the information whenever they present it as a "truth"? Or will such spin largely be passed along and eventually take the form of common wisdom, no matter its accuracy in an analysis taking into context the full picture of global energy needs, resources and capabilities?

Did you read the 2 papers by (1)Jacques and (2)Jacques & Dunlap on the environmental skepticism movement? If not, I highly recommend them.

[phantom power]

27. I don't think I have read those papers.

Is this one of them?

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/09644010802055576

[kristopher]

28. That is the second.

The first is "The Rearguard of Modernity: Environmental Skepticism as a Struggle of Citizenship"

Best read in order.

[kristopher]

3. LOL. Small lexical error in the letter.

...the Nuclear Energy Institute* launched its new grassroots program...

That should read:

...the Nuclear Energy Institute launched its new astroturf** program...


* The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI)<2> is described by Dr Helen Caldicott - a pediatrician and long-standing nuclear critic - as "the propaganda wing and trade group for the American nuclear industry spends millions of dollars annually to engineer public opinion".<3>

NEI’s objective is to ensure the formation of policies that promote the "beneficial uses" of nuclear energy in the United States and around the world. It has over 280 corporate members in 15 countries, including companies that operate nuclear power plants, as well as design and engineering firms, fuel suppliers and service companies, and labor unions.<4>

NEI is governed by a 47-member board of directors and has more than 130 employees. NEI's board includes representatives from the nation's 27 nuclear utilities, plant designers, architect/engineering firms, and fuel cycle companies. Eighteen members of the board serve on the executive committee, which is responsible for NEI's business and policy affairs.<5> NEI also takes part in Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, a group funded by the gas, oil, electric and nuclear industries. <6>

In recent years, the NEI has used a variety of approaches to try and win the PR battle to secure a new generation of nuclear power plants.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Nuclear_Energy_Institute



** Campaigns & Elections magazine defines astroturf as a "grassroots program that involves the instant manufacturing of public support for a point of view in which either uninformed activists are recruited or means of deception are used to recruit them." Journalist William Greider has coined his own term to describe corporate grassroots organizing. He calls it "democracy for hire."

Senator Lloyd Bentsen, himself a long-time Washington and Wall Street insider, is credited with coining the term "astroturf lobbying" to describe the synthetic grassroots movements that now can be manufactured for a fee by companies like Beckel Cowan, Bivings Group, Bonner & Associates, Burson-Marsteller, Davies Communications, DCI Group, Direct Impact, Hill & Knowlton, Issue Dynamics Inc., National Grassroots & Communications, or Optima Direct.

Unlike genuine grassroots activism which tends to be money-poor but people-rich, astroturf campaigns are typically people-poor but cash-rich. Funded heavily by corporate largesse, they use sophisticated computer databases, telephone banks and hired organizers to rope less-informed activists into sending letters to their elected officials or engaging in other actions that create the appearance of grassroots support for their client's cause.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Astroturf

[madokie]

4. As it has been since day one

you really can't trust the nuclear power industry to be on the up and up with us. In a lot of ways I see so many parallels with the rushlican party. Say anything and or do anything to further their cause, facts be damn.

[NNadir]

5. How come you don't give a rat's ass when Gazprom buys the Chancellor of Germany outright

and runs anti-nuke dogma through the Bundestat while pretending to focus on the failed renewables industry?

I think I know. The reason is because you oppose the world's largest, by far, form of climate change gas free energy and give not a rat's ass about the fact that every nuclear plant that has been shut by anti-nuke ignorance and dogma has been replaced by dangerous fossil fuels.

How come you weren't here this winter, your holiness, announcing your concern for the citizens of Bulgaria when they were freezing - literally to death - because Schroeder's owners cut off gas to Bulgaria in order to push an imperialist venture against Ukraine.

How come there wasn't a peep out of you about how Schroeder forced Bulgaria to shut the perfectly good reactors at Kuludoy in order to join the EU?

Paid off?

I wouldn't be surprised since you work so hard in this space for the car CULTure and dangerous fossil fuels.

But in fact, it would be a shame to pay anyone for this kind of tripe, since - Amory Lovins excepted - so many people do it for free.

How come you have no objections to Amory Lovins being paid off by just about every dangerous fossil fuel company in the world?

Personally I think that 100% the anti-nukes are dangerous fossil fuel apologists and car CULTists and there is NOT ONE of them here on this website who will not lapse into apologetics for each.

I have been to the NEI's offices. They gave me a nice golf shirt - even though I don't play golf - and bought me lunch. Nice guys, intelligent, gracious, informed. They are a fuck load more honorable than Gerhard Schroeder, Lovins, or any of the dumb anti-nukes who write here.

[jpak]

6. LOL!!!!1111

:rofl:

[kristopher]

8. Do you have to wear a medic alert bracelet?

To warn of these frequent fits you experience?

[Dogmudgeon]

9. Yeah, we all know that epilepsy is so funny

What a knee-slapper of a disorder!

:eyes:

--d!
Ain't no cruel like rich-kid cruel.

[kristopher]

10. And we all know

how assholes flat out lie to find an insult where there is none. It is obvious what the post referred to and it has nothing to do with epilepsy. If anything it would be extreme coprolalia manifesting here as dedicated coprographia.

:eyes:
--K!
There ain't no dumbass like a dumbass straining for nits.

[Dogmudgeon]

20. Wow. That's even a whole lot of anal imagery for YOU.

You still made a thoughtless crack about people with seizure disorders in a vain attempt to get back at someone who disagrees with you.

Now you're trying to blame your ignoble behavior on me.

You even used the Greek prefix copro- to make your gutter talk sound intelligent.

All of this to avoid responsibility for a cruel schoolyard remark.

--d!

[kristopher]

21. I'd suggest you consider your own words in

trying to equate ceaseless, incoherent ranting with epilepsy. That connection exists only in your strained attempt to score points, my friend for such fits of raving have nothing to do with epilepsy. So if there exists "ignoble behavior" as you seem bent on defining it, it lies in your attempt to use the sympathy towards a significant illness to advance your petty preference.

[bananas]

12. Does NNadir have epilepsy?

I didn't know that.
I do know that he's obese, he's mentioned it several times.
Apparently it's not due to a medical condition, just a sedentary lifestyle and overeating.
He's very strange - he makes personal attacks on people for eating organic food,
when he's been living an unhealthy slothful lifestyle for many years.
Tsk tsk.

[Dogmudgeon]

14. Maybe. But my nephew certainly does.

Wears a MedicAlert bracelet, too.

--d!

[kristopher]

16. So did my favorite aunt.

In fact she died at 38 from the toll it took on her. So what? Epilepsy has nothing to do with the post except in your fevered, overactive, imagination.

[Dogmudgeon]

24. Then why did you choose that particular insult?

Speaking of "fevered", I've noticed that you tend to get a little heated yourself -- and on the smallest provocation. And then you get sloppy with the invective, an you have again recently.

Nobody has to take my word about this. They can read it for themselves.

--d!

[kristopher]

25. Lunatic and profane ranting isn't related to epilepsy

I tend to respond to attacks with attacks; so if you have a problem with that, don't attack.

[bananas]

11. The world's largest form of climate change gas free energy is hydroelectricity

Only an idiot could take NNadir seriously.

[Codeine]

26. Hydro is incredibly destructive. nt

[jpak]

13. "...give him a shirt and get him the fuck out of here...."

:rofl: