PHOTO/NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Travus T. Hipp 1937-2012 In 1978 after the People’s Temple mass suicide in Guyana, WFAT in Gilroy, Calif., purchased 300 record albums by the People’s Temple choir. When word of this action got out, a reporter asked one of the station’s personalities about the action. “They’re an honest collector’s item,” said Travus T. Hipp. “Certainly, there won’t be any more albums by this group.” The quote ended up in Loose Talk, a Rolling Stone book of quotations. Last week, Hipp died in his sleep at age 75 at his Silver City home. Before he moved to Nevada he had already had a full California career, and he was far from forgotten in the Golden State, which was shown by the wide coverage when word spread of his death. “Callers began flooding Freedom-based radio station KPIG-FM … after disk jockeys told listeners that controversial newsman Travis T. Hipp passed away in his sleep overnight,” reported the Gilroy Patch site. “He was the man who gave ‘All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know—Until Now.’ ” All Access, a California music and radio industry site, reported, “Part of the ’60s hippie scene, Hipp was a contemporary of Wavy Gravy ... KPIG deejays were playing songs in his memory Friday, including Country Joe’s 1988: Hipp lectured in Gold Hill. ‘Fixin’ to Die Rag.’ ” He lived on a Sausalito houseboat, then in Silver City, both of those locations supposedly a reflection of his belief that California was going to sink. Hipp, whose real name was Chandler Laughlin III, hosted shows on so many radio stations—“town to town, up and down the dial”— that it may take time to compile a full list. “I started doing radio at KMPX, the first of the underground rock ’n’ roll stations,” he said. The legendary KMPX was a San Francisco station that became KHIP in 1960. It no longer exists. Others included KSAN in San Francisco, KZAP in Sacramento, KFAT (now KPIG) in Gilroy, KVMR in Nevada City, KZFR in Chico, KKOH and KWNZ in Reno. In Nevada, in addition to his on-air activities, he sometimes engaged with officialdom. He was a scofflaw of the state’s car insurance requirement and fought a court case over the issue to the Nevada Supreme Court and then tried to get the law changed in the Nevada Legislature. On Oct 30, 2008, Hipp and three other people were arrested on marijuana charges at his home in Silver City. The youngest person in the group was 42. Hipp maintained his aplomb during the bust, phoning KPIG to give a running report of the event as it unfolded (“Pot bust scoops up Travus Hipp,” RN&R, Nov. 13, 2008). Hipp often found ways like that of coming out OK when his outspokenness or other difficulties hurt his radio career. At one point, he said of one of his Nevada disputes, “They sold the radio station, and the guy that came up was ideologically opposed to anything to the left of Genghis Khan so I was dispensed with. Now I’m fortunate enough to be … syndicated at six stations.” At the All Access site, Dave Shanks—who used Hipp on a show he did at Reno’s KWNZ in 1984-85—wrote that Hipp “vacillated between consternation and amusement that the closest affiliate to his hideout in Silver City was a flame-throwin’ Top 40 station, but he put up with me and my rookie bullshit, and I learned from his example. He served the public, and he was always one of the most compelling news writers and presenters in all of media.” Another radio figure, RN&R columnist Bruce Van Dyke, also posted a comment: “TTH was Da Man! I had him on my show on the X in Reno in the late ’90s and early ’00s. And he was continually blowing my mind with observations and comments that were never cliche and showed the product of a hyper-intelligent mind. There was a lot of good thinkin’ goin’ on up there at the Travus stronghold in Silver City, right up until the very end! The man is simply irreplaceable.”
—Dennis Myers 6
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RN&R
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MAY 24, 2012
Yucca’s back? Reid’s workload just got a little heavier U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, who is already keeping a lot of balls in the air, has by just been handed another—confirmaDennis Myers tion of whoever President Obama appoints to replace the departing chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Gregory Jaczko. The nuclear power industry is rejoicing over the departure of Jaczko, a physicist who tried to build a “safety culture” in the agency and the industry. Reid, who handpicked Jaczko for the post, is currently handling or has in recent days dealt with legislation to extend the Export-Import Bank’s charter, fended off Republican demands that tax increases scheduled for next year be cancelled, tried to advance S. 3187—a measure dubbed “the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act”—and encountered Republican resistance when he tried to move sanctions against Iran through the Senate. In addition, he was getting a nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit approved and trying to prevent GOP tampering with Medicare. The Jaczko resignation thus came at a time when Reid already has plenty to do. But the chairmanship of the NRC is not a post Reid can afford to ignore because of efforts by the nuclear power industry to dump nuclear waste in his home state. Jaczko has been an important figure in the effort to end the Yucca Mountain project.
Jaczko, a former science advisor to the Nevada senator, was appointed to the NRC as a commissioner by George W. Bush and was sworn in on Jan. 21, 2005. President Obama, on Reid’s recommendation, appointed Jaczko to chair the commission on May 13, 2009. His term still has 13 months to run.
“Dr. Jaczko’s troubling behavior ... clearly resulted in a hostile work environment.” U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell Senate Republican floor leader As NRC chair, Jaczko emphasized a safety agenda, which irritated the nuclear power industry but looked good after the accident at the Fukushima Da-ichi reactors in Japan on March 11, 2011. But it also made it more difficult to license power plants. Jaczko announced his resignation two days after White House press secretary Jay Carney was asked, “Jay, is there any thought being given in the White House to asking Chairman Jaczko at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to step down?” Carney responded, “Not that I’m aware of, no.” The reaction to Jaczko’s resignation was not surprising.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair Gregory Jaczko’s safety fetish offended the nuclear power industry.
“The greenies have lost their guy at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” wrote Greg Pollowitz of National Review, a conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley Jr. Natural Resources Defense Council nuclear program director Christopher Paine said, “Greg Jaczko set a high standard as America’s chief nuclear power safety regulator. His departure—and President Obama’s selection of a successor—points to the continuing need to prevent the nuclear industry from exercising undue influence at the commission, a tough challenge indeed, given its recent history.” Reid praised Jaczko and so did his Republican colleague, Sen. Dean Heller. “While we need to responsibly develop all of our nation’s energy resources, including nuclear energy, the irresponsible history of Yucca Mountain undermines the integrity of the project,” Heller said. “Chairman Jaczko played an important role in opposing Yucca Mountain, and I hope his successor will continue this fight.” “His appointment as chairman was a bit of blackmail on the part of Senator Reid to force the death of the Yucca Mountain Project,” wrote Forbes magazine staffer James Conca. Blackmail is usually waged against an unwilling participant, but Obama was quite willing. In an Oct. 13 letter last year, NRC commissioners George Apostolakis, William Magwood IV, William Ostendorff and Kristine Svinicki wrote, “In a long series of very troubling actions taken by Chairman Jaczko, he has undermined the ability of the commission to function.” They said Jaczko “intimidated and bullied” the NRC’s senior staff. More recently, Jaczko was accused of verbally abusing some women at the agency, a charge he flatly denied. Republicans in the House called Jaczko and other figures in the dispute to testify at a hearing. They kept raising the issue after the hearing. An inspector general’s report in 2011 was critical of Jaczko for holding back information from other commissioners on the NRC decision to halt a safety review of the proposed dump for high-level nuclear wastes at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain in Nye County. At one point, Jaczko apologized to his colleagues. U.S. Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts issued a report that said Jaczko was the victim, not the perpetrator of infighting on the commission. Markey said the four “conspired, with each other and with
