Nuclear Bribery in Ohio: Let's Put It in Perspective
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By The Fairewinds Crew
According to the FBI's criminal investigation, First Energy (aka Energy Harbor since it came out of bankruptcy) is a regulated public utility that illegally used $61 Million in corporate funds to bribe energy regulators and state legislators in Ohio.
"Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder's political operation accepted more than $60 million in bribe money from FirstEnergy Corp. to secure the company a $1.3 billion public bailout," [according to the July 2020 federal complaint].
"Householder, chief political aide Jeff Longstreth, and lobbyists Matt Borges, Neil Clark, and Juan Cespedes used the bribe money to expand the speaker's political power and enrich themselves by millions of dollars through a "web" of dark-money groups and bank accounts, including the 501(c)(4) Generation Now, according to the complaint.
Householder and the four others were charged with conspiracy to commit racketeering. Each could face up to 20 years in prison and a maximum $250,000 fine, court officials said Tuesday."
Why? First Energy bribed the legislators and energy regulators to help fund Davis-Besse and Perry atomic power reactors near Lake Erie in northern Ohio. First Energy hoped to change its two money losing nukes into moneymakers by pushing the Ohio State Legislature to add a yearly "tax increase" for electricity totaling one billion dollars per year!
Remember "Too Cheap to Meter"? We suggest that Ohio's real slogan should be "Too Expensive to Operate Nukes"! By the way, First Energy is one of the United States' largest investor-owned utilities. It consists of ten electric utility operating companies that serves six million customers within a 65,000-square-mile area of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York.
If those nukes had closed instead of receiving that Billion Dollar subsidy, what exactly would that $61 million have bought?
$61 Million would buy every elected senator and representative in Ohio a new Ferrari.
Photo Credit: The Ferrari Portofino replaced the California T and is priced at around $214,000
Photo Credit: Ann Arbor Public Schools
$61 Million would buy quality computers and equipment for 61,000 students in Ohio schools.
$61 Million would buy 15,000,000 school lunches.
Photo Credit: Phil Kline for The Washington Post
And $61 million would fund Fairewinds Energy Education for 400 years!
400 years?
To put that number into perspective, the Mayflower (yes, that Mayflower) landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts 400 years ago, last month.
So, if anyone has a spare $61M, nonprofit organizations like us sure would appreciate you sending it our way! Think of all the leaking nuclear power and weapons sites we could monitor!
Seriously now, we can't do this work for free and are grateful for any donation, large or small.
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