"I'm From West Virginia and I've Got Something to Say About the Chemical Spill"

[WilliamPitt]

(snip)

...But something about this confluence, the way I had to bring potable water to my family from two hours north, the strange look of the landscape wreathed in rain and mist, the stench of a chemical that was housed directly upstream from the water company -- something about all of that made me absolutely buoyant in my rage. This was not the rational anger one encounters in response to a specific wrong, nor even the righteous anger that comes from an articulate reaction to years of systematic mistreatment. This was blind animal rage, and it filled my body to the limits of my skin.

And this is what I thought:

To hell with you.

To hell with every greedhead operator who flocked here throughout history because you wanted what we had, but wanted us to go underground and get it for you. To hell with you for offering above-average wages in a place filled with workers who'd never had a decent shot at employment or education, and then treating the people you found here like just another material resource -- suitable for exploiting and using up, and discarding when they'd outlived their usefulness. To hell with you for rigging the game so that those wages were paid in currency that was worthless everywhere but at the company store, so that all you did was let the workers hold it for a while, before they went into debt they couldn't get out of.

To hell with you all for continuing, as coal became chemical, to exploit the lax, poorly-enforced safety regulations here, so that you could do your business in the cheapest manner possible by shortcutting the health and quality of life not only of your workers, but of everybody who lives here. To hell with every operator who ever referred to West Virginians as "our neighbors."

To hell with every single screwjob elected official and politico under whose watch it all went on, who helped write those lax regulations and then turned away when even those weren't followed. To hell with you all, who were supposed to be stewards of the public interest, and who sold us out for money, for political power. To hell with every one of you who decided that making life convenient for business meant making life dangerous for us. To hell with you for making us the eggs you had to break in order to make breakfast.

The rest: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-waggoner/west-virginia-chemical-spill_b_4598140.html

[tblue]

1. "making life convenient for business meant making life dangerous for us"

Amen!!! Well stated.

[Theyletmeeatcake2]

2. And it's all downhill from here unless the 'job creators get pulled into line'...

And that can only happen if people get organised and say enough is enough....companies should lose all their assets to help pay for the damage to the people and their environment !!!! Yeah like that's going to happen!!!!!

[Stargazer99]

3. Finally, someone with balls to tell it like it is

[Spitfire of ATJ]

4. A Republican would crow, "But, the alternative is Communism!!!" and they snap back into line.

[Blue_Tires]

5. The 42nd anniversary of the Buffalo Creek Flood is next month, too

Last edited Wed Jan 15, 2014, 03:24 PM - Edit history (1)

Not a lot of lessons learned from that tragedy, either

[MsPithy]

6. All elected officials work for who pays them, and it ain't us.

It could not be more obvious that every asshat democrat or asshat republican who has made comments about this sorry incident works for the corporations, coal or chemical.


https://movetoamend.org

http://www.wolf-pac.com

[another_liberal]

7. As to the industrial polluters who fight any and all environmental regulations . . .

In a country with so many lampposts and so much rope, it would seem a solution could be found?

(Metaphorically speaking, of course.)

[dembotoz]

8. so the next step is what

anger without action just raises the blood pressure

[Brigid]

17. Ever hear of the Redneck Army?

It is time for their descendants to follow suit.

Google or wikipedia Blair Mountain for further details.

[questionseverything]

9. koch brothers connection

niyad (28,425 posts)
62. not sure of affiliation, but they are suppliers for georgia-pacific


Freedom Industries

Freedom Industries released crude 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (MCHM) into the Elk River. On December 31, 2013, Freedom Industries which had been founded in 1992 by Gary Southern, and Carl L. Kennedy II merged with three other companies, Etowah River Terminal, Poca Blending, and Crete Technologies. Southern remains as president of the newly formed company. The company distributes chemicals used in coal mining and is a distributor for Georgia-Pacific.

. . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Elk_River_chemical_spill
"We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever." �Susan B. Anthony, Declaration of Rights for Women, July 1876
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Response to niyad (Reply #62)Sun Jan 12, 2014, 10:33 AM
questionseverything (944 posts)
76. georgia-pacific is the koch brothers

surprise!

[meanit]

10. Incident by incident,

disaster by disaster, people who have cheered and helped enable the destruction of laws and regulations put in place to protect us from exactly these type of catastrophes are now finding out firsthand why they were enacted to begin with. And talk radio, media and the rest of the conservative BS machine will shift the blame and point fingers at everybody but those responsible, as they always do.

Perhaps green, pungent bath water will be what gets through to brainwashed this time?

[freshwest]

34. +1. Answer to question, though, only if they understand this from the link:

...To hell with all of my fellow West Virginians who bought so deeply into the idea of avoidable personal risk and constant sacrifice as an honorable condition under which to live, that they turned that condition into a culture of perverted, twisted pride and self-righteousness, to be celebrated and defended against outsiders.

To hell with that insular, xenophobic pathology. To hell with everyone whose only take-away from every story about every explosion, every leak, every mine collapse, is some vague and idiotic vanity in the continued endurance of West Virginians under adverse, sometimes killing circumstances.

To hell with everyone everywhere who ever mistook suffering for honor, and who ever taught that to their kids. There's nothing honorable about suffering. Nothing.

I've found this to be the stubborn wall of resistance to working for change to save the planet and each other. It burns brightly inside all the fundies and teabaggers who vote for corruption and cruelty.

[freshwest]

35. The solution is in the last paragraphs:

There are sensible, sane ways to do things. (A mile and a half upstream from a water intake facility, for fuck's sake. Upstream.) It's essential for state and federal governments to consult with scientists -- actual, real scientists, in spite of this area's long and fierce tradition of anti-intellectualism when it comes to public policy -- and provide a regulatory apparatus for maintaining safety standards and making sure things are up to code, and that there's a protocol in place for when systems fail. That's what a society does to protect the people who live in it. Or the people who live in it will -- should, anyway -- naturally come to the conclusion that their health and safety mean zero in the calculus of industry and politics.
Over the past couple of decades, the resource manufacturing industries have been leaving the state in a slow trickle -- of their own volition, though, and not, as might have been hoped, at the end of a pike -- and gradually, the state is going to have to move to a post-coal, post-chemical economy. That's a good development, to my mind. But the history of sellout politicians and cheapjack business interests in this region keeps me on watch for the next plague of locusts.
Having been made to endure fucked up Air, Earth, and Water, we ought to be mindful of that history, and make sure that history goes with us, always, into the voting booth, into the streets, into the home, into the wider world.
Otherwise, to steal a line from the old hymn -- and don't we love our Jesus, our stories of noble suffering around here -- we'll all of us, residents and politicians and operators alike, find ourselves standing in the Fire Next Time.

[WillyT]

11. HUGE K & R !!!

[gademocrat7]

12. K&R!

[LittleGirl]

13. I want to know when the warrants for the arrests will start????

Why hasn't anyone been arrested?

crickets

[valerief]

29. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[nikto]

44. What do you think was happening---Something really serious like...

pot possession?

Nah. Nothing serious like that.
No problem.
Move along now, nothing to see here...

[countryjake]

14. Wow! Haven't heard the term "hilljack" for almost as long...

as it's been since I heard "countryjake" used properly in a sentence!

Brilliant, excellent essay! This should be read, far and wide, across this nation; it should be printed up as a leaflet and scattered generously throughout the once-beautiful hills of every state where resource rustlers have deceived their residents for generations.

Bravo, Eric Waggoner!

[Solly Mack]

15. K/R

[RobertEarl]

16. We are all guilty

We sat back and washed our hands of the responsibility for protecting ourselves. We merely and weakly stood by as the government did not our bidding, but the bidding of business.

We now have polluted air and water from sea-to-shining-sea and even beyond the shores into the Gulf of Mexico.

Years ago we all demanded and received the clean water act which made our government take actions against pollution. Since then we have pretty much walked away from that progress.

[stg81]

18. these chemical companies and their enablers took a shit on the people of WV

[El_Johns]

19. KR

[Berlum]

20. k and r

nt

[pansypoo53219]

21. butbutbut you got JOBS. because that is the only thing that matters.

[theHandpuppet]

22. One of the best pieces I've read in a long, long time.

Thanks for posting!

[flpoljunkie]

23. Boehner response: 'We don't need any more regulations.'

The Republicans' goal is to cut funding for implementation of the regulations already on the books. They are greedy bastards--toadies for Big Energy.

[WilliamPitt]

24. Up

[Aldo Leopold]

25. One of the best pieces of writing I've seen in a long time.

God damn.

[raouldukelives]

26. K&R! Couldn't agree more!

It is precisely those attitudes killing us & the planet in the name of immediate profits. Reinforced and expanded by every dollar invested in Wall St and every hour logged in the service of them.
Only by not being the problem can someone fight to be part of the solution.

[kentuck]

27. Reminds me of when I was a young child in SouthEast Kentucky...

And we lived a long ways up in the "holler".

But down at the mouth of the hollow, there was a long mound of dirt, like a small hill, and there were "coke ovens" on each side. They were open-faced and the bricks were still in place.

They were left over from the turn of the last century, when the British were exploiting our part of the country for coal and resources.

So we have put up with this exploitation for a very long time. It never seems to change.

It's like you keep digging that hole in the side of the mountain and, after a while, it is so deep that you are never able to get out of it...

[upaloopa]

28. People vote for deregulation when they vote for a politician

then get pissed when they get screwed.
Can't they add 2 and 2?

[Drew Richards]

30. Thank you...well said...

[Petrushka]

31. K & R

[thumbsup]

[12ZTR]

32. Don't hold back,or may I continue?

To HELL with "anyone" that has ever benefited financially from any investment in chemical,oil,coal,nuclear entity,etc.that has harmed the environment.
Where's your pension.IRA,401K,stock market money invested?
Oh,It doesn't matter as long as there's a profit to be made.

I was thinking that this is one fine comment but it might be Reality slapping some in the face.

I'm sorry if I'm not socially,culturally,politically correct or offend anyone's tender sensibilities.

I looked in the mirror & of course,everyone else is the problem. Anyone else own a mirror?

[WilliamPitt]

33. How is your home heated?

Just asking.

[spanone]

36. kr

[ashling]

37. As I sit here, I am taking a break

from trying to write up a critical thinking assignment for my government classes on the role of government and business regulation. I just happened to click on this link. I am always looking for something current to use as a reading to make my kids think about government regulation and what an important role it plays. I am in north Texas and get a great many students through my community college government who think - at best - that perhaps a little regulation may be a good thing , but only until it can be done away with. I think I have found what I was looking for.

[nikto]

38. Areas of the country that reflexively insist on voting Conservative bring this on themselves

That's just the TRUTH.

Now, what are you gonna' do about it, rural and southern America?

Stop thinking of Conservatism like it's apple pie and motherhood, fer Chrissakes.

Rural and southern voters must give up the obviously addictive "political crack cocaine/freebase"
called Conservatism forever, and start voting totally for political Progressives and reformers.

Or if not------They deserve what they get.



Sorry, but that's just the ugly truth.


When people habitually vote against their own interests, this is ultimately what they will get.


I mean, duh.

[nikto]

39. I swear to God, the so-called "Conservative" half of this country...

Needs De-Programming before it can deal with reality again.

Wealthy Conservatives (the top 2-3%) are just being greedy and pushing for their own self-interest.

But most Conservative voters in America are not rich, and obviously
vote with their pancreas, or gonads, or something other than their frontal lobes.

Non-rich Conservatives struggle with reality and grasping concepts like cause-and-effect,
and devote themselves to stupid, cruel ideas, just like cultists.

IMO, non-wealthy Conservatives=Cult members




How does America de-program 100-million people?

[bonniebgood]

41. How does America de-program 100 million people? Take away ALL of

their resources/rights. Clean water, air, food, food stamps, UN-employment checks, welfare check, SS check, no healthcare, jobs, housing etc.
then when the local walmarts start to close because no one has money to buy china shit, when all they are left with is a gun and 10 babies to feed, the only job pays 2.99 hr, a loaf of bread cost 2.99, then they will be De-programmed. SIMPLE

[nikto]

43. Good answer.

[Hotler]

40. I wonder if the people of WV are pissed off enough.....

and fighting mad take to the streets by the thousands in mass protest. There should be a law that when ever any thing like this happens the top CEO's of the company have to sit in jail till it is all cleaned up and paid for.

[bonniebgood]

42. No, becasue Bohner has already told them it's the black man in the white house fault. and they

believe him. because they don't want socialism. They want the freedom to drink green water and fracking dust.