Sunday, May 29, 2016

We are Poisoned and the People Who are Supposed to Protect us Do Nothing


As this N.Y. Times article reminds us, even when we get laws passed to keep corporate interests from letting their aversion to costs out weigh our right to not be poisoned, the agencies involved to enforce those laws do nothing.

In the case of the chemicals involved with the making of Teflon, PFOA and PFOS have been dumped for at least fifteen years, affecting ground water, and nothing was done to stop it. This despite the fact that not only did DuPont know the cancer risk these chemicals created, the EPA was petitioned yearly by a Pennsylvanian lawyer (Rob Bilott, a lawyer at the Cincinnati firm of Taft, Stettinius and Hollister)  to make the pollution known and the dumping stop.

And again, I ask the question: How many times must we go through this process of fighting, tooth and nail usually, just to get protection legislation in place at all, and yet, even when it does get passed, corporate interests always seem to wear the regulatory mechanics down to virtual impotency.

And why would we think those same corporate interests would do anything else in this context? Not only is changing a process to stop a poison from happening in the first place expensive, but admitting to it after the fact, is even more so, if for no other reason than because of accumulated liability. So even if they are caught, and judgments assigned, the declaration of bankruptcy not only destroys an employer, but it also creates the very real possibility that us taxpayers will still be on the hook to pay for at least some portion of the cleanup.

Again as well: why do we continue with a system that puts our neighbors into the unenviable position of having their livelihoods taken away from them, and their communities impoverished, as well as poisoned, just to punish an entity that does exactly what the economic system within which it operates, wants it to do; namely keep costs down and maximize profits. Under such contradictory circumstances, isn't it time we started questioning that system? Isn't it time we stop pretending we can fix it? Isn't it time we recognize that it had it's day, and now it is time to come up with a fundamentally new one.

If you do not see the logic in this than I guess its time that you just go suck up to the Donald and become just another Trump Chump.



The Story Behind the E.P.A’s Contaminated Water Revelation

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