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Perhaps we could persuade the American dairy industry to increase production of the milk of human kindness. My supply is running short.
Did I exhaust it last fall, when I was supposed to feel sorry for a $9-million-a-year profligate who caught an incurable disease? Perhaps, because there just wasn't any sympathy left for the American auto executive who gets $4 million a year while his company loses money and closes plants.
So I couldn't come up with any deep and heart-felt concern for the 7,500 workers who might lose their jobs at Rocky Flats, now that the plant's only customer is no longer buying the once-popular W-88 hydrogen bomb.
The most preposterous reaction came from Sen. Tim Wirth,
who said the Rocky Flats workers deserve a GI Bill
for retraining because they are veterans of the Cold War
like any other veterans.
Let's get real here. The real veterans were in the military, where they underwent certain privations. For one thing, they often lived in ships, barracks and tents; they weren't billeted with their families in suburban homes. During their service, real veterans couldn't just quit their jobs, a right enjoyed by the Rocky Flats Employment Force.
Some real veterans faced hostile fire, and all ran that risk. What risks did the Flats Force face? The chance that plutonium might leak -- in other words, incompetence. And the risk of driving on Colo. 93 after hoisting one too many at the bar across the road from the plant gate -- stupidity.
The hazards and sacrifices of military service presumably entitle real veterans to benefits from the public treasury because most of us don't have to face hostile fire or obey orders without question.
But we all have to contend with incompetence and stupidity; what's special about the Flats Force? If working in an industry which contributes to the national defense makes you a veteran deserving of public largess, then every coal miner, roughneck, farmhand, teamster and gandy dancer also qualifies for a slot at the public trough.
We have a group of comfortable people who made no
sacrifices. They were paid well for something they freely
chose to do -- produce weapons of mass destruction. In the
aftermath of other wars, similar activities have been
adjudicated as crimes against humanity,
and the
offenders are steered toward a gallows, not a
job-retraining program.
Besides, there's no real reason to worry about their employability. The United States has announced it will hire about 2,000 former Soviet nuclear workers, lest these folks sell their plutonic knowledge to Iraq or Libya. This means there are jobs aplenty out there somewhere for the people who learned their trade at Rocky Flats.
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