Wow! A whopping $11,000 fine for poisoning 300,000 people!

[freshwest]

29. OSHA cannot fine for 300K people, only workplace violations endangering workers.

OSHA is an arm of the Labor Department and its powers are narrow. That fine was not connected to the effects of the spill on the general population, but to conditions at the site that could have hurt workers there. The OP shows no harm to them.

That being said, workers are always the 'canary in the coal mine' on all environmental toxins that the public will learn about after it's too late. The OCAW was a strong voice for those first effected in the 1970s, and kept good records of what was being done in the rural areas where they employed locals and discarded them later. A prominent name would be Dow Chemical whose sick workers were too weak to fight back, they needed a union for that. This was prior to the 'Reagan Revolution' and it has been neutered along with most unions.

The real problem in the federal government is not simple corruption or venality, it is starvation. I worked in an era when the alphabet agencies had real power to punish these malefactors, and just the threat of calling them was effective. You called their hotline and they were there with bells on. Now there is hardly anyone to contact, they have been rendered toothless.

The OSHA, EEOC, EPA and others with full staff not only fined companies, they changed working conditions and the larger environment for the better.

That slowed with Reagan, who went on the path of aggressively defunding, denigrading and also infiltrated the agencies with corporate actors. Then came Norquist and the Gingrich Revolution, and we have lived under their undermining all the agencies and regulations ever since. So I get a bit tired of the knee jerk thinking, pushed so well by media, that the federal government is so corrupt.

No, it is dying for lack of voters who defend its power to enforce good regulations, while many of those same voices will decry being told to do anything that costs them tax money or anything. In other words, regulation is the what the right calls 'enslavement' but NOT having it FUNDED is putting us all under the thumb of corporations.

This is due to majority rule in this country taking it where we don't like. But the majority of voters who showed up are satisfied.

Imagine the scenario described in this article going down in the days of the Iran Contra or the Watergate hearings. This would have never been permitted under the rule of the Democratic Party, be they blue dog or of other persuasion. Many times, it's simply about the numbers:

Company Responsible For West Virginia Chemical Spill Skips Congressional Hearing

By Emily Atkin February 10, 2014

Exactly one month and a day after 10,000 gallons of chemicals spilled into West Virginia’s water, members of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure committee on Monday traveled to the state’s capital city, ostensibly to ask state leaders the still-unanswered questions surrounding the leak. There are many.

Perhaps the most important party that could provide answers would have been Freedom Industries, the company whose chemical storage tanks leaked a coal-cleaning chemical called crude MCHM into the water. Company president Gary Southern had been invited to testify, but in the end, did not show up.

“I find that extremely telling,” said Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV). “Freedom Industries’ decision not to testify today compounds its gross misconduct, and is an absolute affront to every person impacted by its spill.”

Freedom Industries’ decision not to show up to a hearing that otherwise housed every party that should be held accountable for the spill (Representatives from West Virginia American Water, West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection, and the U.S. Chemical Safety Board showed up, to name a few) is depressingly typical, and a painful reminder of the company’s non-presence throughout the month-long ordeal.

“They’ve been basically out of the picture since day one of this crisis, even though they were the cause of the crisis,” Executive Director of West Virginia Citizen Action Gary Zuckett, told ClimateProgress, recalling the events of the week following the spill. “The first thing that [Freedom] did was file for bankruptcy. The second thing they did was open a new corporation to loan the first corporation money.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/10/3273201/freedom-chemical/

The process of redress for the 300K could not be addressed by OSHA. Or even the EPA:

Indeed, after being being criticized for failing to immediately report the chemical leak, and faced with lawsuits from those who had been harmed, Freedom filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The bankruptcy shielded it from lawsuits, and since then the company has been increasingly opaque — only breaking its silence to revise spill numbers (last week it said 10,000, not 7,500 gallons, had spilled) and admit that more than one chemical had actually spilled.

It is insanity to keep going with the 'government bad' meme and 'I refuse to vote ' mantra when it yields the same results. Change over the HoR and the state houses, and see these corporations reined in by law and regulation. But be sure to put the blame where it really does belong, corporations who are now more powerful than government, due to voters hating it so much they are willing to leave the decisions to business.

Remember who controls the message. Boehner, who says their job is to repeal laws, not make them. So says there are more than enough laws. The state houses of the effected regions, who listened to their voters who don't want Big Coal regulated lest it cost them their jobs. Rand Paul, who wants the EPA, OSHA, EEOC, DOE and all the rest eliminated and says mountain top removal is good for the environment. How many in KY agree? How about WV? Ohio?

This is not directed at any poster at DU. Just why the OSHA is not the wrong doer in this situation, and who is doing wrong. And the desire that people will empower themselves by voting and stop agreeing with the right that the federal government is the big bad guy in this. It isn't. And it belongs to us.

JHMO, YMMV.