Yucca Mountain Johnny: Buried Alive?
Here's another one for the federal mascot files. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., isn't a fan of Yucca Mountain Johnny, the Energy Department's kid-friendly mascot for its nuclear-waste repository project. According to an editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Berkley recently offered an amendment to an energy appropriations bill that would have eliminated funding for portions of the DOE Web site, effectively killing off Yucca Mountain Johnny. The amendment was soundly rejected by the House, but the paper thinks Berkley's on to something:
Far too many government "informational" campaigns are the result of public agencies with way too much money on their hands. You don't have to be an opponent of Yucca Mountain to argue that spending taxpayer funds to create a cartoon character to teach children about safety at the nuclear repository is a dubious use of funds. Let's hope Yucca Mountain Johnny is eventually sealed up in a mine shaft, where he belongs.
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Government Executive Staff Correspondent Alyssa Rosenberg takes a look at news affecting the management and operations of the massive federal bureaucracy.
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