Corporate #Deregulation To Blame for Toxic Spill in West Virginia
▻http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11344
So the question is: how did this happen? How did a facility a mile and a half upstream from the drinking water plant that gets drinking water to 300,000 people have this leak happen? And the answer is: in my mind it’s the coal and chemical industry in this state has fostered a culture of deregulation. They’ve captured the major institutions in the state, including the major media, except for The Charleston Gazette, which is doing an incredible job reporting on this. The major university systems, both political parties, are beholden to big coal and to the chemical industry.
And the result was predictable. And we’ve seen this over and over again with these kinds of disasters—in April 2010, the Massey Upper Big Branch explosion, Massey Energy mine, that killed 29 workers. And the Labor Department report found, you know, hundreds of violations.
Obviously, the companies aren’t taking the violations seriously, ’cause if they were, they would clean up their act.
So we need in this state to upend the control, the corporate control of the institutions and bring back a sense of law and order for corporate West Virginia.
#eau