Workers denied protective equipment because coal ash is “safe enough to eat” A lawsuit filed last month on behalf of 77 people claims that the plaintiffs were exposed to dangerous chemicals in coal ash, which led to several illnesses and deaths. The dispute is focused on American Electric Power‘s Gavin Landfill site in North Cheshire, Ohio, which is used for collecting and sipping of 2.6 million cubic yards of coal combustion waste byproducts from the Gavin Power Plant every year. “Repeatedly, individuals were not provided with protective equipment, such as overalls, gloves or respirators when working in and around coal waste,” the lawsuit says. “These working men and women, already exposed to the contaminants at the job site, then, in turn, carried the coal waste home to their families on their clothes and shoes, thus even exposing family members to the deadly toxins.” In the complaint, the plaintiffs claim that they asked supervisor Doug Workman whether it was safe to work with coal ash. “By sticking his finger into the coal waste and then placing his fly-ash covered finger into his own mouth,” the lawsuit reads, “[Workman] then misrepresented to the working direct claim plaintiffs that coal waste was ‘safe enough to eat.’” Climate Progress’ Emily Atkin reports: …workers at the Gavin landfill were allegedly told that coal ash was only a mixture of “water and lime,” and that it contained “such low levels of arsenic, it made no difference.” The workers were allegedly told that “lime neutralizes the arsenic,” according to the [West Virginia] Record’s report. The lawsuit begs to differ. “Coal waste contains a multitude of contaminants that are dangerous to human health, and individuals can be exposed through contact on skin, inhalation and ingestion,” it reads. “These toxins have been shown to be directly related to incidences of cancer, respiratory disease, heart disease, chromosomal abnormalities and birth defects, among others.” In addition, the physician-led organization Physicians for Social Responsibility states that coal ash toxics “have the potential to injure all of the major organ systems, damage physical health and development, and even contribute to mortality.” According to the Sierra Club, 140 million tons of coal ash pollution are produced each year containing high levels of toxic heavy metals, yet are not federally controlled. As a result, the pollutants are stored in poorly regulated sites, including ponds and abandoned mines, leaving nearby towns vulnerable to toxic pollution. In fact, people living within a single mile of unlined coal ash ponds have a strongly elevated risk of cancer. JOANNA ROTHKOPF -------------------------- Let's hear it for Libertarianism!!
If you read anything other than Salon (which you don't, clearly), you'd understand that Libertarians call for protecting the rights of the individual. So in this case, assuming the facts are as reported (again, that's probably a stretch) then the company would be liable. Joanna Rothkopf - as rabid as moonbats come.
Conservatives Predictably Shame Wendy Davis For Sharing Abortion Story Since Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis (D) revealed in her new memoir that she oncemade the difficult decision to end a pregnancy she and her husband very much wanted, some conservatives have cast doubt on the truth of Davis' story and her motivations in telling it. The right-leaning National Review called Davis' story "convenient" and "unverifiable"in an article on Tuesday, saying the Davis campaign did not "respond to questions about whether Davis’ highly unusual abortions were matched by any medical evidence, doctor statements, or public verification from her ex-husband or two daughters." Davis wrote in her memoir that she had also terminated a different pregnancy because it was ectopic, which can be life-threatening for the mother. Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak accused the campaign of using Davis' story to promote abortion, a move he called "sickening" and "subhuman," and he noted that the media attention would "impact book sales and also pay dividends for the campaign.” He later apologized for using the word "subhuman" and deleted the original tweet. But Davis' decision to end the pregnancy apparently was a painful memory for her family before she announced her campaign for governor. When Davis' father died in September 2013, his obituary named "Tate Elise" -- Davis' deceased daughter -- as one of his relatives. Davis explains in her memoir that she made the difficult decision to have an abortion after a doctor told her the fetus had developed a severe brain abnormality that was causing her to suffer in the womb. She wrote that she and her husband named and baptized and mourned Tate Elise after the C-section procedure. "On her feet were crocheted booties, and next to her was a small crocheted pink bunny," Davis wrote. "Jeff and I spent the better part of the day holding her, crying for her and for us." Davis' campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Votes, said she is grateful to Davis for "shining a light on a subject that is too often hidden in the shadows of shame and stigma." Laura Bassett
Laura Ingraham’s ISIS conspiracy: Immigrant children are the real threat to America! It was with much sadness and disbelief that the right wing greeted the news the other day that the so-called wave of criminal children surging over America’s border to destroy everything that’s good and decent about us seems to have crested. The director of homeland security, Jeh Johnson, made the announcement on Monday, saying that “the worst is over, for now.” He explained that the numbers of kids arriving from Central America peaked in May and June and has substantially dropped since then and he credits the administration’s public relations campaign in their home country with explaining why these kids are better off in their own anarchic, gang-infested countries than here in the land of the free. It’s a foreign policy to be proud of. But that was small solace to the true guardians of the American Way of Life who know very well that the nation has already been infiltrated by an enemy so cunning it is even able to fool sharp observers like George Will and Brit Hume into arguing they should be treated with compassion. But they weren’t fooled. These so-called children are nothing but stealthy foreign invaders who are even now forming sleeper cells from within their … sleeping cells. Indeed, these champions of our proud cultural heritage saw through the president’s Machiavellian plan to distract the public with passenger planes being shot out of the sky, invasions, beheadings and general chaos around the globe. The Protector of Real America Laura Ingraham noticed as long ago as July that the only network adequately covering the “massive dispersal” of immigrants around the nation was Fox while all the other networks were “diverting attention” in the media to foreign policy stories like the downed plane in Ukraine and the war in Gaza. It just doesn’t seem fair especially when people like our stoic leader Lindsey Graham runs all over Washington hysterically claiming that ISIS warriors are coming to America to kill us all in the name of Allah and ignores the Real Threat. As Pat Buchanan explained to Ingraham on her show this week, this country needs to get its priorities straight: Look, we’d better realize here that the United States itself is in tremendous long-term danger, I think, and the bleeding border along our southern border, the mass movement of people from all over the world into this country, the decomposition of this country socially and culturally, politically, all of these things, it seems to me, are far greater long-term threats to the United States than even those dreadful characters over there in Syria or Iraq beheading people He and Ingraham and Phyllis Schlafly, if no one else, understand that the long-term strategy in place here is to bring all these “illegal children” into America and turn them into Democratic voters. What could ISIS do to the fabric of our civilization that’s any worse than that, I ask you? But even if you think that ISIS might be worth the government attending to, it’s still important to realize that it’s doing it all wrong. You see, the true threat isn’t in the Middle East where ISIS is openly proclaiming its goal is to restore the caliphate. It’s at the Mexican border where Judicial Watch uncovered the nefarious ISIS plot to invade us from the south. Here’s Fox’s Steve Doocy sounding the alarm: DOOCY: Speaking of terrorism, everybody is looking toward next week. It will be the anniversary of September 11. What’s interesting now is you know those 37,000 kids who streamed across our southern border over the last year or so? Where did they go? Federal government isn’t telling us that. All we do know for sure is that our southern border is wide open and now there’s a report from Judicial Watch that apparently ISIS is working in the border town across the river from El Paso, Ciudad Juarez. There is a lot of chatter. Radio chatter and other things, talk indicating that ISIS is going to carry out an attack on the border very, very soon. Could be car bombs. Could be vehicle borne bombs. Don’t know. There is just a lot of talk about how ISIS is across the river and could come over at any time. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/5/14] The government has denied that there is any evidence of such a plot. But then they would, wouldn’t they? And to prove just how likely it is that this is happening, one of the right wing’s cleverest documentarians is on the case. James O’Keefe, of ACORN-smashing and felony-trespassing fame, has been testing out our so-called homeland security and let’s just say it’s coming up very short. Last month he donned an Osama bin Laden mask and crossed a narrow strip of the Rio Grande. And SEAL Team 6 was nowhere to be found. That’s right, a guy with a camera crew wearing camo and a Halloween mask was able to cross from one side of the river to another and back without being vaporized by a military drone or interdicted by a battalion of robocops on ATVs. What is this world coming to? Even worse than that was what he uncovered in his latest exposé, this one on our border to the north. Here he has a black-clad, British-accented ISIS terrorist (yes, covered from head to toe) coming across Lake Erie from Ontario carrying a plastic bag labeled “ricin,” which he carries into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame unmolested. (It appears that people there just thought he was a sad little nerd playing dress-up.) But he hit the trifecta of right-wing fear-mongering with this: In the short gonzo documentary, O’Keefe meets up with a ‘terrorist’ who has hired a boat to bring him from Ontario to the middle of Lake Erie. The two exchange pleasantries as the pretend jihadi transfers to O’Keefe’s American-piloted craft. ‘On August 17 we stole Ebola from a lab in Liberia,’ he says in the script. ‘We took the bandages and the bedsheets and then we covered ourselves in it and hoped that we’d get infected. ‘The incubation period is about 21 days, and it’s been about – 21 days.’ That’s right: unauthorized border crossing, ISIS and Ebola. It just doesn’t get any scarier than that. And still people haven’t completely panicked. What’s it going to take to get this country to recognize that the worst thing that could possibly happen could possibly happen? Alternatively, the right wing could lay off the caffeine and take up some sort of deep breathing and visualization techniques. All this self-imposed stress really is dangerous to your health. Heather Digby Parton
"It was with much sadness and disbelief that the right wing greeted the news the other day that the so-called wave of criminal children surging over America’s border to destroy everything that’s good and decent about us seems to have crested." Dammit! Well, if it's an improvement then naturally Obama had nothing to do with it.
So DB apparently thinks it is a good thing for both borders to be basically unguarded and tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to pour in and be sent without proper vetting-- medical, criminal or even their ages-- all over the country secretly. After all, Jeh Johnson, our affirmative action DHS director says things are hunky dory. You can't make this stuff up, but apparently they think a good snark attack is an answer.