The Communist Origin of the Modern Conservative Movement VI

At last night City Council meeting a change to was made to the anti-discrimination ordinance that added gays and lesbian to the protected groups. Twenty years ago council had tried to pass the same ordinance and it was soundly rejected 9-2. Two of the council members were gay. Want to guess how the straight members voted? Last night was a completely different matter it passed 11-0 and this is the center of the Bible Belt. There are more churches in Huntington than bars. Huntington is place where the Christians idea of good time on Saturday night is look for gays to beat up.. In one such instance the gay was beat so severely that he is a virtual vegetable. But what can I say that type just can't wait to get to church and hear the preacher next hate rant against gays. Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson will embolden those who think beating up gays is a sport that should be in the Olympics.

Cracker Barrel pulled certain Duck Dynasty merchandize off the shelves. But later protests caused them to restore the merchandize. This is where bigotry really begins to show. This how in the south the mod dictated that blacks couldn't eat at white establishments. The anti gay mobs would soon refuse to eat at establishments that served gays. I had no idea the gay discrimination law was on the council agenda but I did know that they intended to change from handicapped to disabled. It is still hard to believe that Huntington has changed that much if a bakery in Huntington refused to bake a wedding for gays that they might be in violation of this law.

If the ghost of Christmas future had visited us on Christmas 1980 and shown us what our future was going to be would we have heeded his warning? Now we suffer under what is known as the curse of knowledge as things took place it was muck like the frog placed into warm water and boiled slowly. Changes that take place all at once are noticed but slow change is not noticed until we look back on them.

Let imagine it is Christmas 1980 and Scrooge is awakened by the ghost of Christmas future. The first house the ghost takes Scrooge to is a $200 million dollar mansion. As scrooge looks through the windows he noticed the inhabitants in different rooms with strange objects in their hands. Scrooge asked the ghost who could own such a mansion? The ghost explained the owner was a corporate raider who had bought Scrooge's factory and shut it down and shipped the jobs overseas. Scrooge ask what had became of Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim? Bob now works three minimum wage jobs and Tiny Tim has exceeded his million dollar limit on his medical insurance.

As Scrooge and the ghost looked across America, Scrooge could not help but notice the contrast between the super rich and those who now must work three jobs to make a meager living. Scrooge asked is there no 40 hour work week anymore? The ghost answered not if you work for three different employers. As Scrooge looked in the window of one home he noticed the mother was not there. He asked the ghost if she was dead? The ghost replied no, she must work to supplement there a meager living. Scrooge said in my day women stayed home and cared for their children. Not anymore said the ghost.

Scrooge asked the spirit if these are the shades of things to come? The ghost replied that indeed they were. Scrooge asked can the future be altered? The spirit said yes it is only the past that is set in stone. The future is malleable we can only alter the future.

Seventy percent of those making under $50,000 a year are losing ground financially while two thirds of those making over $75,000 say they are holding their financial ground. It is the average American who no longer has access to the American dream. It was not always this way in fact during the Great Compression, between the mid forties and the mid seventies the financial distance between the rich and middle class was actually shrinking. In the fifties employers paid 51% of an employees cost today the employer pays only 11%.

It is called the great shift where employers shifted the cost of not only retirement but medical insurance to employees. Where I work I have paid sick leave. If I had the flu my employer didn't want me to share it with the rest of the employees but at Wal-Mart where my wife worked she had to buy a private policy to cover her in case she was able to work not only did Wal-Mart save the cost of temporary disability but yet another company made a profit on minimum wage employees.

Wages looses were bad but the loss and the shifting of the cost of benefits has been far more costly to the middle class. During union meetings to decide what our negotiation demands you would always hear employees who would rather have money than benefits. They would say they couldn't eat benefits. But a dollar in benefits was worth a dollar but a dollar in wage increases was only worth 66 cents after taxes. The employers could provide a $20,000 paid health insurance policy without being taxed. But if the employee had to buy the health insurance policy he would have to earn $30,000 to net the $20,000 for the same insurance policy. In addition the employer would have to match the employees income tax. There is a tax free option that absolutely ruins an employee social security. This option shows the employee made $20,000 less a year than he did and substantially cuts the employee's social security benefits for a lifetime. That is a lose, lose situation.

We hear a lot about the National Debt but consumer debt. Private debt has risen far more rapidly than the National Debt Consumer debt was $700 billion in 1959 by 2011 it was $12.4 trillion. It seems our National Debt is only a reflection of private debt. Debt has become the acceptable way to manage our finances. As the American middle class's living standard began to decline many were unable to accept the decline and supplemented their standard of living with credit. No longer was a college education affordable their solution was to borrow from $100,000 to $300,000. I can remember when co worker retired and went in and paid cash for a new truck. People took pride in being able to pay cash for large purchases. When is the last time you heard of someone paying cash for a car? The American middle class now lives on borrowed money and borrowed time.

Ask yourself who benefits from this arrangement? The ungodly greedy of course. Many credit cards are 30% or more and these are the profit center for the credit card companies. Loan sharks don't get that kind of interest. By charging those at the bottom of the credit latter 30% it allows the credit card companies to give the rich who pay off their cards monthly free credit. The giant sucking sound you hear is just the rich vacuuming up the middle class wealth. There are more than one way to skin a middle class cat and it seems the ungodly greedy have discovered all of them.

One of the most popular sayings now is that "S" happens and with the weather that may be the case but with more complex social interactions that is not the case. In the last 30 years the decline of middle class living standard didn't just happen it was very carefully orchestrated. If a game of chance can be manipulated or fixed the profit margin explodes. If you can change the rules of the game you can change the out come of the game. Businessmen have had an occupying army of business lobbyists of over a quarter million in Washington DC since 1978 with the intended purpose of changing the rules to benefit the ungodly greedy. As long as the middle class sees what is happening to them as something that just happened we are in trouble. Only when we realize that decline of the middle class was very carefully orchestrated by the ungodly greedy and their business lobbyists can we begin to stop the bleeding and start to correct the situation.

When the credit card companies realized they hadn't squeezed the last penny out of those paying 30% interest they used their lobbyists to change the rules on bankruptcy. The idea was to make bankruptcy much more expensive and much harder to file for after all someone has got to pay for all that free credit for the rich. The idea the business lobbyists sold was it was the rich who were filing bankruptcy and beating the credit card companies not the poor who were being charged loan shark interest rates. When is the last time a rich person filed for bankruptcy? If you were rich by definition you couldn't file for bankruptcy because your assets would far exceed your debt.

To change things we must first realize that "S' just didn't happen it was planned and orchestrated by those who stood to gain. We must realize the damage to our laws can be reversed and the template already exists in the laws as they were written prior to 1978 before the occupying army got to Washington DC. The middle class has to stand up to the bullies.
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"By 2004, the richest 1% of Americans were earning about $1.35 trillion year---greater than the total national incomes of France, Italy and Canada"

Robert Frank

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! That is what Fox News was reporting this morning. It seems the Affordable Healthcare Act goes into effect Thursday January 1, 2014. If you need to see a doctor you need to get in Monday or Tuesday because after Jan 1 the doctor offices will be mobbed with people who did not have insurance before Jan 1 and the only medical care they had access to was the emergency rooms.

This is reminiscent of the Y 2K scare where we were told by many that the world would ease to exist or at least that it would stop functioning on January 1, 2000. Trains would crash and anything with computer control would stop functioning. It seems that the computer designers had only programed two digits for the year and did not have the fore thought that when the year 2000 came the computers programs would show it was the year 1900. A mad dash was made to try and correct the computer programs in use. A local hospital had put on a 10 mile race for 20 years but cancelled because all employees had to be used to work on the Y 2K problem. The hospital employees must still be working on the problem because the race was never picked back up.

When January 1, 2000 came nothing happened no train crashes no rain of nuclear missiles nothing life went on as it normally did. On January 1, 2014 the only thing that will be noticed is that over a million men women and children will have healthcare and access to doctors that they didn't before. This does not cover the 30 million Americans who don't have health insurance but it is the first step and the longest journey start with the first step.

The question is did the rich just get richer to a point that a few now have more wealth than several countries or did they fix the game? Our income tax law is referred to as the most political law in the world. Changes to the income law literally transferred trillions of wealth to the super rich over the last three decades. "S" didn't happen an occupying army of over 250,000 business lobbyists manipulated the income tax law and many others to favor the super rich.

In the 70s a CEO made 40 times the average wage of their employee now the average CEO makes 400 times the wage of their average employee. As the commie/conservatives were successful in shifting the prevailing paradigm from the Virtuous Circle to you are entitled to everything you can take and most of what you can steal. Henry Ford gave us the Virtuous Circle where he recognized that if he was going to sell Model T's to the average man then the average would have to earn enough to buy a model T. Henry Ford paid his employees more based on that principal. The primary idea was that it formed a circle where employees were paid more they bought more and businesses expanded. This attitude led to a business expansion unequaled any where in the world. The commie/conservatives philosophy killed that philosophy and replaced with the everyman for himself philosophy we were no longer a country we were just an assemblage of individuals out to cheat each other.

If change is to take place in America the change has to start in the world of ideas and a recent shift in attitudes is evident in America as the majority of Americans now believe inequality is now a major problem. Once the majority of Americans realize we have a problem then it only natural to look and see what caused this gross inequality in America. This was not a cat burglary they left tracks. We not only know when and where but how trillions were stolen from the middle class. Until commie/conservatism became the prevailing political philosophy America had more equality than most industrial nations after commie/conservatism became the prevailing political philosophy America had the most unequal wealth distribution among industrialized nations.

The recent small tax increase on the wealthy was a small step in the right direction but the billionaire tax break remains untouched. The middle class pays twice the rate the billionaires like Romney pay. You would think commie/conservatives like Romney would be satisfied with paying half the tax rate of the middle class but Romney intended to cut the taxes on the rich much further.

If we know when where and how, and we do, it is only a matter of reversing course to rid America of gross inequality. The problem is the occupying army of over 250,000 business lobbyists in Washington DC this is the best financed Army in the history of the world and they will not go gently into the night. They will not just decamp and leave. The rich have an army of lobbyists to represent their interests and the middle class has none. All of the lobbyists have millions in their hands to finance the election of their friends and keep those who would vote against their interests from being elected.

In recent surveys it has been noted that even those who have supported the commie/conservative movement in the past realize that extreme inequality is bad for America and something has to be done about it. America will simply have to unite against a common enemy. We have done it in the past against foreign armies and now we must unite to fight a domestic army that is occupying our country. It is going to take a well organized grass roots effort movement to take America back from the business lobbyists.

It is January 1, 2014 and the war rages on. The sounds of gunfire and bombs can be heard in the distance if listen closely. America is currently engaged in its longest war, a civil war that has lasted more than 30 years. This war like most wars is about treasure. The middle class did not start this war and in fact they ignored it as the first raids took place. Their first reaction was to ignore the raids and hope they would stop. They didn't. There have been many great battles some where over a trillion dollars was taken in one single engagement. For years many denied that anything was taking place but now most can look around and see the war torn streets, they can no longer deny that real damage to the middle class standard of living. In many cases it is simply easier to blame themselves than outside forces. Each man wants to believe he is the captain of his own ship the master of his fate. We would like to believe that we control our environment that this is a just world and that others are just like ourselves and would not take advantage if given the chances.

Nothing leaves someone so vulnerable as the belief that everyone moral outlook is similar to theirs. This is the key to manipulation and while some wars are fought with tanks and battleships but this war most effective weapon is manipulation. What ever conmen know is that it is far easier to manipulate someone than to force them to do something. From Tom Sawyer on if you can manipulate someone to believe it is their idea you can achieve your objective. If you are going to manipulate someone you need a one sided argument. A basic principal that most conmen employee is that of What You See Is All There Is. They want to capture your attention and confine it to certain aspects. What they don't want is someone providing counter arguments or pointing out draw backs in their scheme. A second effective weapon in the enemy's arsenal was propaganda. Talk radio became popular by different callers presenting their ideas with a moderator but it evolved into propaganda where the moderator spent 3 hours giving lectures with a few carefully screened supporting calls. It was meant to manipulate and carefully control the field of attention of the audience WYSISATI.

The advantage to manipulation is not only that you don't need to use force on your victim but that your victim becomes your ally in victimizing himself and others. So effective was the manipulation that many of the middleclass joined the enemy and made matters worse. The more complex the situation the easier it is to manipulate people. Economics is a complex situation and it was easy for the ungodly greedy to say if you give us more of your treasure we will give you more in return. The middleclass gave them more in the 1980s and we waited for our return and there was none. They said like most conmen you just didn't give us enough so in 2001 we gave them over a trillion and we waited and their was no return. The ungodly greedy said that $2 trillion wasn't enough and in 2003 we gave them another more in tax cuts and still nothing. When the middleclass finally figured out they had been scammed and decided to take back the trillions in tax cuts, the ungodly greedy said no, if you take our tax cuts the economy will collapse. It is funny because our economy worked much better before the trillions in tax cuts for the ungodly greedy. The ungodly greedy will always pee on your leg and tell you it is raining and expect you to believe it.

The philosophy of the right that has prevailed for the last 30 years is that you are entitled to what you earn and everything you can steal. This can clearly be seen in the salaries of the CEOs that went from 40 times their average worker to 400 times the average salary of an employee. But the salary of a CEO is just the tip of the ice burg. CEO's are also paid in stock options if a stock is selling for $50 today and two years from now it is selling for a $100 a share the CEO can sell those options to buy making a profit of $50 a share. Some CEOs have been awarded millions in stock options. If a CEO is awarded a million stock options and the stock goes up $10 a share he makes $10 million and never owns the stock. He never takes a risk. If the stock goes down he simply doesn't exercise his options. Stocks went up 26% this a $700 share of Apple Computer would have went up $182 this year alone. Then of course there are the tax benefits and the millions can only be taxed at 15%

But even this is not enough. The CEOs will change the date of the stock options to a date when the stock was down. The CEO of Apple was caught back dating stock option many different times and even fabricating board of director meetings. This back dating is common over 2,203 instances have been documented. These CEOs make millions and steal even more. A proposal was made for a law that the share holders set the CEO salary there was immediate outcry from Wall Street Lobbyists that companies were not a democracy and the real owners of the company should not set the CEOs salary his buddies on the board of directors should.

Wal-Mart is known for its low wages for its employees but what of the CEO of Wal-Mart surely his wages would reflect this economy of wages. But low and behold while the average CEO in America makes about 400 times the average employee of that company but not Wal-Mart. The CEO makes 900 time that of its average employee. Isn't it funny that the corporation that made the Walton family the richest in the world by paying sub standard wages to its employees pays its CEO 900 times more than its average employee. Wal-Mart pays its CEO more to keep the unions out because the unions would improve the wages and benefits. What would a world look like where the CEO of Wal-Mart only made 40 times that of the average pay of its average employee as they did in the 70s? Would 40 times not be enough? Face it 900 times is just obscene.

"According to Bradley Belt, then executive director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) 18,00o US corporations have been welshing on their promises to their employees, skimping on legally required contributions to their employees plans."

from the book "Who Stole the American Dream" by Hedrick Smith
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The private pension plans are over $450 Billion short because corporations are simply not funding their pension plans as required by law. The trouble with the law is it has loopholes that were no doubt added by the army of business lobbyist occupying Washington DC. Where did that $450 billion go that was suppose to fund this generation pensions? Into the pockets of the ungodly greedy of course a company that doesn't fund its pension system like it should can chart that as bigger profit and the CEO is richly rewarded for finding the loopholes to cheat the employees out of their pension. The stock goes up and the ungodly greedy own 90% of stocks and they cash the stock in for high profits on the theft. This is not the virtuous circle this is a circle of theft where those that steal the employees pensions are not punished but richly rewarded for theft. Under the commie/conservative political philosophy you are entitled to all you can earn plus all you can steal from others. At no time in history have so few stolen so much from so many.

When United Airlines bankrupted and the employees pension plan was bankrupted what happened to the CEO, Glen Tilton, pension? Tilton, an employee of only 2 years kept his $4.5 million pension from a previous employer that United Airlines agreed to pay. During the bankruptcy United Airlines' employees gave up $5 billion in wages, benefits and pensions. Tilton management team was richly rewarded with retention bonuses and $4oo million in stock in the new company. In the 1994 the employee had previously been given 55% of the stock in exchange for $4.9 billion in wage and benefit cuts. That stock was worthless after the bankruptcy so the employees got nothing out of the first $4.9 billion in wage and benefit cuts. So employees planning to fund their retirement with United stock found it went from a $100 a share to a dollar a share.

But in every situation there are winners and the United Bankruptcy is no exception beside Tilton and his management team there is what is called the DIP club these are the Debtors in Possession they are the banks that rush in at the last minute to loan money. They not only have superiority in terms of repayment but get to direct the bankruptcy, for all practical purposes they decide who gets paid and how much. These banks got their money back plus $10 of millions in interest, plus millions more in loans and administrative fees. The law firm pocketed $100 million, the CEO got a $4.5 pension plus retention bonuses, his team got $400 million in stock.

In other countries the employees have the superior claim in a bankruptcy and it used to be that way in America. Anybody that believes these people are in anyway earning this outrageous amounts of money through anything other then out right theft has to be blind, deaf and dumb in more ways then one. The commie/conservatives have pulled of the longest continuous theft in history and that theft begins with the public believing that they are "entitled" to what they can steal.

It seems bigotry and ignorance go hand in hand, Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame is at it again. Now he is advocating marrying children. In video taped in 2009 at the Georgia Sportsmen of Ministry Robertson said.

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“Look, you wait ’til they get to be 20 years old, the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket. You got to marry these girls when they are about 15 or 16. They’ll pick your ducks. You need to check with mom and dad about that, of course.”

Phil Robertson
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So remember all you Duck hunters if you want your ducks plucked you got to marry them young. Of course remember any test runs are considered child molestation and can put you behind bars. So don't let her pluck your duck before your married. Isn't it funny how one of society biggest taboos becomes legal with a simple piece of paper. One man goes to prison and another gets his duck plucked. The child molesters at Georgia Sportsmen Ministry should be relieved to learn that there is a loophole.

The people we choose to make role models shape the attitudes of society. do we really want to become a society of child molesters?

Mix religion with ignorance and you have ignorance on steroids.

It is 5 below zero here today but inside it is 73 degrees but if the ghost of Christmas future could take you 40 years into the future when your children are elderly. How will they stay warm with no pension and social security payments that have been severely cut by the republicans so bigger and bibber tax cuts could be given to the super rich like Romney. The lifetime pension have all but eliminated now and replaced by small saving accounts called "defined contribution pensions" there is no difference between that and a saving account you can withdraw only what you put in plus interest. In a defined benefit pension the employer paid 89% of the cost and the employee paid 11% now the employee pays 51% of his retirement and the employer pays 49% of the cost.

The after a lifetime of work a typical defined benefit pension in America has a balance of $50,000 at retirement enough to fund 3 years of retirement. Social security was designed to replace 40% of your income so the elderly will subsist on 40% of their income in 40 years. How will they afford to heat their homes? If the republicans succeed in cutting social security again to fund more and bigger tax cuts for the rich it will be even worse. Your children are working for a bleak future where their reward for lifetimes work may well be freezing to death in their bed while a few rich have more income than entire countries but remember it was this generation who put the republicans in power that stole your children future. While you were worry about how you could take someone freedom to get an abortion you were in effect killing your own children. Sort of reminds of the dog with a bone who sees his reflection.

One of the retirement expert who sold the 401k concept to companies carefully studied those 401k as retirement and "stated there was simply no way to get retirement with a 401k for the average workingman." He found that 401ks work for executives that make over a hundred thousand a year but for those who make $50,000 or less retirement is not possible they must work for the rest of their life. The 401ks were designed for the rich to shelter their income from taxes and they were never intended to be a retirement for the ordinary workman. Fifty percent of Americans now have no company funded pension or 401k saving account. Those workingmen who have 401ks can look forward to a lifetime of work after retirement. When I was a child you never saw an elderly person working in a fast food restaurant now a good portion of the workforce in these establishments are elderly.

The 401ks were written and submitted to congress by Xerox, some banks an another corporation to provide a special tax break for their executives to protect profit sharing. There was no intent to design or provide a retirement income for ordinary workingmen only to cut the taxes for the rich. "You simply can't get here from there."

Just as the airplanes we have today started as an idea in the Wright Brothers' head the current political paradigm was just an idea in a little Russian chain smoking emigrant. She envisioned an America were selfishness ruled, she believed a political system based on selfishness would improve America and make in a paradise. While the Wright brothers gave us airplanes, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (Ayn Rand) gave America the gift of selfishness. Her books the "Virtues of Selfishness" and "Atlas Shrugged " changed how we saw ourselves and others and how we economically interacted as much or more than the Wright Brothers changed air travel.

When you see the CEO taking 7 million in stock options and hundreds millions in salary you are seeing the "Virtues of Selfishness" principals in action. The wealth the CEO is taking was created by the labor of the employees of the company, the CEO is just another employee of the company. But under the guidelines of the "Virtues of Selfishness" one is entitled to all the wealth one can take. Ayn Rand ideas underlie the political philosophy of the Modern Conservative Movement like a foundation underlies a house and unfortunately the Russian's ideas have become accepted by many others.

When we look at what happened to America's progressive tax system that is now one of the most regressive in the world we can see the invisible hand of Ayn Rand. When we look at what happened to the pension system in America we can see the invisible hand of Rand at work telling the greedy to take all of the increased wealth. When we look at what went wrong with the American Healthcare system we can see the invisible hand of Ayn Rand at work when the insurance company CEO tells his employees, "You are not refusing care you are just refusing payment." According to Rand that CEO is entitled to millions more in pay envelop because he saved the company money by refusing payment. In every economic interaction in America you can see the face of Ayn Rand and the damage she has done. Rand simplified the world into two types of people the superior people like herself, CEOs, and others who were entitled to everything and the drones like you and me, the working people that made America with their hands and the sweat of their brow according to Rand they were entitled only to a beggar's share and they should be grateful to get that. Rand's ideas are some of the primary ideas that shape America today.

I wonder if Ayn Rand were alive today could she admit she was wrong?

The recent chemical spill in WV shows how vulnerable we are to a terrorist attack. This time it was just a leaky old tank that caused the problem but a few small explosions could have put the contents of several chemical tanks into the river. The chemical storage facility was built along the river and a big leak could simply not be contained. These old tank farms are all over the country and they are built on waterways where gasoline could be delivered by barrage. Before the Seven Sisters divided the country up into territories each gasoline brand mixed and delivered their product to a tank farm by barge and there were many brands of gasoline 40 years ago. Texaco had a tank farm only a couple of blocks from my home when I was a child. Texaco was the best selling type of gasoline in America in the late 60s and early 70s but lost money on transportation costs which made nationwide marketing unprofitable. So the major refineries were granted exclusive rights to supply gasoline to all the gasoline retailers around the refinery for hundreds of miles. Marathon supplies the retailers in this area whether you by Exxon or Super America it all comes from the Marathon refinery which eliminates any competition and no gasoline product need be transported over those few hundred miles, no more barges full of gasoline need be bought to a tank farm. This had another nice benefit for the Seven Sisters this allows absolute price fixing the free market be damned.

The tank farm in question had been built by Gulf Oil back in the thirties. Since it was no longer needed by Gulf Oil and it was custom made for chemical storage it was an excellent opportunity for small chemical suppliers. The pictures of the tank farm over looking the river is frightening with a dozen or more 10,000 gallon storage tank it was a disaster looking for a day to happen. The tanks are steel and what we all know about steel is that sooner or later it rusts out. These tanks were more than three quarters of a century old. It was only a matter of time and only a mile up river from a major water inlet for processing water.

I was surprised how big an area the water from Charleston was pumped to. It was pumped over 100s of miles. It went over several different water sheds who could have had their own water treatment plants. The contaminated water came within 20 miles of here and the contaminated river flows in to the Kanawha which flows into the Ohio river which flows into the Mississippi. Those rivers provide the water for millions of Americans all will see their water contaminated to some extent.

Up to seven thousand five hundred gallons 4-methylcyclohexane might have leaked into the Elkview River and been pumped into the West Virginia water supply. Three hundred thousand WWV customers have been without water since Thursday and it will be "days" before the water will be deemed safe. The vultures are circling, the lawyers wasted no time in filing class action suits Friday against Freedom Industries and West Virginia American Water who pumped the chemical into the water supply. The chemical was not discovered at the water treatment plant it was discovered by customers who reported the licorice like smell in the water.

Freedom Industries may be an ironic name as when the Department of Natural Resources was asked when was the last time Freedom Industries was inspected they replied that they had never been inspected because they did not manufacture chemicals just stored them. Remember the big Republican push for government deregulation 300,000 West Virginians are getting a taste of what Republican deregulation is all about. According to Republican wishful thinking these companies would police themselves. Let see a big profit or a few million people die? No question in a free market system the rugged individualist is expected to pursue his own sell interest and millions in profits taken out of a corporation can not be touched only the assets of the corporation are at risk. All of Freedom Industries assets cannot pay for a tiny fraction of the damage they caused. Overlooking the Elkview River are millions of gallons of dangerous chemicals and no one is checking to see if the chemicals are eating their way out of the storage tanks.

Freedom Industries is just one of hundreds of similar tank farms that are used for chemical storage and are placed near rivers to load and unload their chemicals. The 4-methylcyclohexane is now making its way down the Kanawha River into the Ohio River on its way to the Mississippi River so if you get your drinking water from one of those rivers you may want to thank the republicans for blocking government regulations on dangerous chemicals. Safety should never get in the way of a good profit. In Texas now it is legal to fire an employee with a safety concern if he contact an attorney. If an employee hands are chopped off by a defective machine Workers Compensation pays and there are plenty more people who will take the job. In a free market system according to Republicans a profit is not the most important thing it is the only thing.

The 4-methylcyclohexane is now working its way down the Kanawha River and down into the Ohio River but officials are strangely quiet about what down stream water plants are doing to avoid up taking the chemical into their system like the Charleston system did. Usually with a chemical spill they know when it will reach their pickup point and shut down the water plant. But this time I have seen nothing on the local news other than the Ashland, KY water system was beginning to fill reservoirs. Usually we know where the chemical spill is in the river and how soon it will be past your town but not this time. I guess if you don't know it is there you don't have to deal with it. Hear no evil, See no evil. Smell no evil.

An article in the New York Times stated the last time the Freedom Industries site had been inspected by Federal or State agencies was 1991. The article made much of the lax WV enforcement against coal and chemical industry and showed that WV EPA employees were often given good jobs in the chemical and coal industries after they stopped enforcement of regulations against chemical and coal companies. It seems there is a revolving door between the EPA and Chemical and coal industries.

West Virginia was carved out of the state of Virginia during the Civil War so the big coal interests in New York could exploit it, so it is no real surprise that this tradition continues but since 1978 this tradition was taken to the Federal Government as an occupying army of business lobbyists took control of our political process. Now Federal EPA employees who go "easy" on company's chemical spills are likely to be highly rewarded with high paying jobs in the chemical industry and coal industry. With the aid of their business lobbyist they are rewriting the laws that regulate the chemical and coal industries. Since this chemical is used to wash and clean coal one has to wonder how it is disposed of, more than likely it is just dumped into an abandoned mine.

The battle cry of conservatives for over thirty years has been the elimination of regulations, smaller government means even higher profits for those few individuals who have more money than many countries. In West Virginia now 300,000 people are wondering how come there were no government regulations to protect them and their families. One of the leaking 40,000 tanks of dangerous chemicals has been pumped out but what of the other tanks which are only a mile up river from the water intake for the biggest water system in the state? They may contain far more dangerous chemicals but nothing can be done because there are no regulations. When chemicals are stored only a mile up stream from a major water intake there is no time to find and react to a chemical spill. This chemical had a smell that was equivalent to the chemical put in natural gas so it can be detected, what if the chemical had been odorless? The damage would be far worse. But let the conservatives have there way the chemical companies will police themselves. The fact that this spill did not kill thousands can only be attributed to the fact that this chemical had a foul smell. This can happen anywhere in the country and after a chemical has been ingested their may be nothing that can be done but as long as a profit can be made there is really no other consideration.

The head of the Cabell Huntington Health Department said, "The solution to pollution is dilution." In other words they continued to pump the polluted water into the system and hope the pollution threshold was not reached. Meanwhile Cincinnati is shut down its water intake for three days. Evidently Cincinnati, water department does not believe any amount of a hazardous chemical is good for you.

Erin Brockovich arrived in Charleston yesterday to hold a seminar on polluted water, evidently her law firm could not resist the temptation to get involved in the huge lawsuits. She was visiting patients in the hospital who had used the polluted water and were hospitalized. They were in such bad shape she could not get close to them. Cha-Ching the lawyers have been coming to Charleston from all over the country there will be big bucks for law firms as the state and its insurance companies will be held liable for this mess. Freedom Industries will be bankrupted almost immediately but the state insurance companies are the deep pockets as well as West Virginia American Water which was owned by a German company at one time.

Hollywood has come to Charleston, let the theater begin.