More Unsafe By the Day

Since 9/11 (and even before that), Americans have feared "terrorist" attacks. Our political leaders and the mainstream media feed this fear by telling us that our nation is vulnerable to all sorts of efforts from outside sources. While there is no question that attacks by people who want to do the US in are conceivable, an article posted today, "Chemical Danger: Industry's Greed Is Putting Millions of Americans at Risk", clearly shows that we have far more to fear from domestic corporations than we do from dangerous bogeymen!

...the American public probably has much less to fear from terrorists out murderously prowling the nation's wide-open industrial sites than it does from the sites themselves, whose corporate owners are being dragged kicking and whining into safer chemical conversions and technologies that are a new-millennium no-brainer to everyone but them. And even if terrorists do pose an astronomically probable threat, it's only at the behest of industry and government, which have colluded to basically do nothing to upgrade their sites since 9/11 to safeguard over 80 million Americans from catastrophic accident or attack on petroleum refineries, bleach plants, chemical conversion facilities and more.

If you think about it, this should not come as a surprise to any serious student of history. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, this same problem has been with us. Big industry does not like change because change costs money and that hurts the short-term bottom line. It doesn't even matter if the change will bring long-term growth and greater profits; all capitalists seem to care about is how much money they can pocket now!

We are led to believe that government exists to safeguard the health and well-being of its citizens. So, when there are recalcitrant industries that openly refuse to switch to cleaner and safer technologies, in theory, it is government that steps in to force their hand. Of course, theory and reality aren't the same thing!

According to the recent USPIRG report, "Chemical Insecurity," prepared by Gilbert and USPIRG public health advocate Elizabeth Hitchcock, the 14 companies in danger of widespread human collateral damage due to industrial accident or terrorist attack -- Clorox, Kuehne Chemical, JCI Jones, KIK Custom Products, DuPont, PVS Chemicals, Olin, DX Holding, Solvay, Valero, Occidental Petroleum, Honeywell, Dow Chemical, and Sunoco -- and their affiliated trade associations have funneled more than $70 million to the politicians charged with overseeing them.

Yes, the reality is that industry buys off the government and so regulations either are greatly watered down or nonexistent. Citizens are left as sitting ducks when an accident inevitably occurs.

When this happens -- think BP oil spill or numerous other such accidents over the past few years -- there is much hand-wringing both by the industry itself and government overseers. Too often, citizens are told that there was no way such an incident could have been foreseen! Anyone paying half attention KNOWS this is an outright lie. There were a multitude of safeguards that could AND should have been installed, but weren't.

Americans are being led to believe that terrorist attacks could bring down this once great nation. In a manner of speaking, this belief is true. What we aren't told is that the terrorists who will usher in our destruction sit in boardrooms of US-based companies and in the halls of Congress!