Red-State Voters Are Paralyzed by Economic Anxieties

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/red-state-voters-are-paralyzed-economic-anxieties




Last week’s massive spill of the toxic chemical MCHM into West Virginia’s Elk River illustrates another benefit to the business class of high unemployment, economic insecurity, and a safety-net shot through with holes. Not only are employees eager to accept whatever job they can get. They are also also unwilling to demand healthy and safe environments.

The spill was the region’s third major chemical accident in five years, coming after two investigations by the federal Chemical Safety Board in the Kanawha Valley, also known as “Chemical Valley,” and repeated recommendations from federal regulators and environmental advocates that the state embrace tougher rules to better safeguard chemicals.

No action was ever taken. State and local officials turned a deaf ear. The storage tank that leaked, owned by Freedom Industries, hadn’t been inspected for decades.

But nobody complained.

[RKP5637]

1. Yep, working in sweat shops and chemical wastelands. Then, the Robber Barons

can have it all in the US, as other countries move forward, leaving the US muddling along in decades of years ago enmeshed in poverty. And extreme greed for a few in an unbalanced destructive capitalistic system.

[ananda]

2. But do they connect their economic plight with they way they vote?

..

[surrealAmerican]

3. Hopefully, they will wise up before the next ...

... preventable industrial "accident" kills them.

[kelliekat44]

4. This system has worked for centuries and those in power know that. They don't have to change. nt