In the spirit of sharing, here is one of my pieces from the archives.
Last year I imagined “What if Sarah Palin were Black?“ This post took on a life of its own. Like a friendly zombie, What if Sarah Palin were Black? has been born, died, and resurrected several times.
I wrote a follow up to that piece and never shared it. Why? Because while Sarah Palin is the gift that keeps on giving she 1) receives too much attention and 2) what was a fresh and novel idea can lose its special quality when one goes back to the well once too often.
But what the hell?
Like a Director’s cut of a DVD that restores footage that was perhaps best left on the editing room floor, here is the sequel to What if Sarah Palin were Black? Was this a good idea whose moment has past or is there still mileage to be gained from a counter-factual that attempts to expose the normativity of whiteness and white privilege through the lens of the Wasilla Wonder?
Sarah Palin is the queen of white conservative victimology. In the aftermath of The Arizona Massacre she has combined her unrepentant narcissism, egomania, and craven lust for media attention–and the money that it brings–into a parade of self-pity.
Not content to lay low, earlier this week Palin doubled down by appearing on Fox News where she further pleaded her case for martyrdom: a detour into bad political theater that would be funny if the bloodshed in Arizona were not so tragic.
Once more, and as has been true throughout her career, Sarah Palin’s mediocrity is rewarded without consequence. This is just one more example of white privilege in action: Palin’s actions do not blight her whole race; just like Jared Loughner’s actions don’t throw into question whether white men can be trusted with guns (compared to, say, attacks by Muslims, etc.). By extension, Palin’s despicable behavior is in no way taken as a comment on white women as as a whole. In the United States, women of color are afforded no such luxury. They are marginalized both because of their gender and their race.
Ultimately, to be a member of a racial minority in a society where Whiteness is the norm is to be collectively linked to strangers. For example, when white men go crazy, commit acts of political violence, try to kill police because Glenn Beck told them to, behave irresponsibly, or act with poor judgment, it is neither a comment on Whiteness nor on white men as a group. No, it is the deed of one person–an individual who has the privilege of embracing the “I” as opposed to the “we” of collective blame and responsibility.
As W.E.B. Du Bois famously asked, “how does it feel to be a problem?” Because of the shield that is Whiteness, white folk–and Sarah Palin in particular–have rarely (if ever) had to ask that question. For a moment, we shall remedy that oversight. With Sarah Palin’s victimology parade in mind here is a thought experiment.
Just as Tim Wise did in his essay “What if the Tea Parties were Black?” let’s play a game of fill in the blanks.
I will start:
If Sarah Palin were black, Fox News would have demanded that the F.B.I. prosecute her for sedition and inciting political violence.
If Sarah Palin were black, the Right-wing would be calling for Black political leadership, as well as the Democratic Party, to both condemn her and renounce any future relationship with the former Governor from Alaska.
If Sarah Palin were black, she would be publicly denounced for being a vacuous, narcissistic, self-centered, “diva” that is not fit for public service and who cares more about her own fame and fortune than she does the common good or the victims of The Arizona Massacre.
If Sarah Palin were black, her behavior would be used as a launching point for discussing how Black leadership is in crisis. In fact, a major news network would air a whole series on how black women are failing their communities and how Palin is emblematic of a larger trend.
If Sarah Palin were black, the Right would be lambasting her for not embodying the Conservative principles of “personal responsibility.”
If Sarah Palin were black, Glenn Beck would have already linked her to his imagined cabal and tradition of violence among “Progressive-Liberal-Socialists.” On his blackboard there would direct links from Palin to Adolf Hitler, Chairman Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Saul Alinsky, the Black Panther Party, Angela Davis, the Tides Foundation, The Symbionese Liberation Army, and The Weather Underground.
If Sarah Palin were black, Rush Limbaugh would have said that her behavior is one more example of how liberalism is a “mental illness,” that liberals are a “cancer,” and that progressives should be “destroyed.”
If Sarah Palin were black, she would be persona non grata after The Arizona Massacre and run out of the public square on a rail.
It’s amazing what inequality can drive people to, eventually. Just look at Egypt.
“These big guys are stealing all the money,” one 24-year-old textile worker standing at his second job as a fruit peddler told a reporter this weekend. “People are desperate.”
“I wish we could be like the United States with a democracy, but we cannot,” said another.
And so they protest, regardless of police batons, curfews and shootings. With over a 150 estimated dead, a march of millions is scheduled for Tuesday.
In spite of what some on Fox News (and the Israel lobby’s camp) sought to argue this weekend — namely that the protests were all the work of Islamist radicals — every report from the ground contradicts that. As in Tunisia, the protesters are driven by fury at poverty, lack of options, and the looting of their state by the super powerful.
It’s an equation we understand — elsewhere: a massive gap between rich and poor is inconsistent with democracy. But before you get carried away with third world conditions there, try here. On Friday a guest blogger at Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism blog noted a remarkable fact: the U.S. actually has much greater inequality than Egypt—or Tunisia, or Yemen.
The Gini Coefficient is a number economists use to measure inequality, and the U.S. is ranked as the 42nd most unequal nation — Egypt is 90th.
It’s not just numbers — we can see it every day. As Edwidge Danticat told us last week, “There are places in the US that are like Haiti, that are like Zimbabwe.”
While 22 million were searching for jobs in the US this week, Goldman Sachs tripled Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein’s base salary and awarded him $12.6 million of stock, a 42 percent increase from ‘09. The billionaire Koch brothers threw a lavish secret party for their looter cronies, to talk about their election plans.
The average American may not be suffering the way the average Egyptian has been but as Danticat noted, there’s a tendency to exaggerate the suffering of what we think of as the “third world” while assuming that the U.S. has it better.
As for that anti-democratic gap between rich and poor — not better, worse. And here too, our democracy is suffering. What are we going to do about it?
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv and editor of At The Tea Party, out now from OR Books. GRITtv broadcasts weekdays on DISH Network and DIRECTv, on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter and be our friend on Not the wars. Not greenhouse gasses. Not even the deficit. The issue most important to Americans is jobs. Despite that, jobs failed to make an appearance in the State of the Union address. The talk was all about business. Business was doing better. Business needed taxpayers to help pay for research and innovation. Business will get government help to eliminate pesky regulations. Business must have lower taxes. The most telling statement was this: “We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business.” Especially because it wasn’t matched by a companion: “We have to make America the best place on Earth to work.” The speech expressed a policy in which business is the focus of government, taking precedence over workers. The American colonists created a government for their own benefit; they did not constitute an agent to serve business. A policy giving corporations primacy is risky for American workers. The state of the union noted that happy days are here again for corporations and banks: “Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.” Never mentioned, however, were the 14.5 million unemployed Americans, the sustained record rate of foreclosure, and the increasing poverty and food bank reliance among citizens of the richest nation in the world. The state of the union outlined a plan under which the government will coddle corporations, essentially proving companies government welfare using American workers’ tax dollars. If businesses create jobs for workers as a result, fine. If they don’t, there’s no plan to exact a penalty. For example, under the policy described in the speech, American workers will fork over tax dollars to pay for research and development for businesses that are sitting on a record $1.8 trillion in cash reserves — hoarding it rather than creating jobs. The president said: “Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven’t seen since the height of the Space Race. And in a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology — an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.” Maybe it will create new jobs. Hopefully. But no guarantees were offered. Mentioned as a business success story in the speech was a Michigan company, Luma Resources, which began manufacturing solar shingles with the help of a $500,000 government grant. It created 20 jobs, $25,000 a job. American taxpayers might think that’s a little pricey, but what’s worse is the potential for Luma Resources to go the way of Evergreen Solar, squandering the corporate welfare. Evergreen, the third largest maker of solar panels in the U.S. and recipient of at least $43 million in corporate welfare, announced earlier this month it would close its main American factory in Massachusetts and move manufacturing to China. Eight hundred Americans will lose their Evergreen jobs by April. Evergreen officials said China will give the company even higher amounts of corporate welfare, which, of course, makes sense since China is not a capitalist country. Its economy is government controlled. And that government routinely violates international trade regulations – by providing banned subsidies to industries and by deliberately devaluing its currency. No matter how better educated American workers get. No matter how much more innovative. No matter how much more productive. No matter how many tax dollars the government spends on research and development, if the corporations that benefit move manufacturing overseas, the American workers who paid for it will suffer. In fact, it’s more than suffering; it’s betrayal by their government that provided tax benefits to companies for off-shoring jobs. It is betrayal by their government that fails to stop violations of trade laws by countries like China that lure away firms like Evergreen. At the end of the State of the Union speech, the president said: “From the earliest days of our founding, America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream.” An ordinary American dreams of a family-supporting job, owning a home, saving enough to pay for a child’s college education, helping to build a safe community. Corporations aren’t Americans, no matter how often the U.S. Supreme Court grants them rights that the U.S. Constitution guarantees to human beings. Businesses aren’t citizens. Their allegiance isn’t to America. It’s to profits. They dream only of dollars. They concede no responsibility to family, community or country. They were not included when the president said: “Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater — something more consequential than party or political preference. We are part of the American family.” The top priority of the American government must be making America the best place on Earth for Americans. If that’s good for corporations, great. The government must never place American citizens second.
Written by Carol Joffe for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.
This article is cross-posted with permission from Beacon Broadside.
Reading the Grand Jury report on Women’s Medical Society in Philadelphia, the now-closed abortion clinic ran by Dr. Kermit Gosnell, is stomach turning. This was truly a chamber of horrors: a filthy facility, with blood stained blankets and furniture, unsterilized instruments, and cat feces left unattended. Most seriously, there was a jaw dropping disregard of both the law and prevailing standards of medical care. Untrained personnel undertook complex medical procedures, such as the administration of anesthesia, and the doctor in question repeatedly performed illegal (post-viability) abortions, by a unique and ghastly method of delivering live babies and then severing their spinal cord. Two women have died at this facility and numerous others have been injured. What remains baffling is how long this clinic was allowed to operate, in spite of numerous complaints made over the years to city and state agencies, and numerous malpractice suits against Dr. Gosnell. Indeed, it was only because authorities raided the clinic due to suspicion of lax practices involving prescription drugs that the conditions facing abortion patients came to law enforcement’s attention.
As information about this clinic spread, many have understandably compared Women’s Medical Society to the notorious “back alley” facilities of the pre-Roe era, when unscrupulous and often unskilled persons (some trained physicians, some not) provided abortions to desperate women, in substandard conditions. This is an apt comparison. But Gosnell’s clinic should not only be understood as a strange throwback to the past. Women’s Medical Society represents to me an extreme version of what I have termed “rogue clinics,” facilities that today prey on women, disproportionately women of color and often immigrants, in low income communities. Read more
If you have to shut down Internet access and texting for your whole country, that’s a pretty good sign that your regime is not legitimate. It’s also a good sign that your regime is in big trouble.
(Cross-posted from the “Arguing the World” blog at Dissent magazine.)
Such is the situation right now in Egypt. And the Mubarak government is not the only one in the region that is panicking. Following a democratic uprising in Tunisia that unseated the notoriously corrupt and repressive regime there, mass protests have spread to Yemen and Jordan—and who knows where they will end?
The situation is very dynamic, with live coverage available here. You can hear commentary from Middle East experts Juan Cole and Stephen Zunes. I also found this first-hand account of protests in Cairo by Yasmine El Rashidi at the New York Review of Books blog to be very interesting.
At this point, I would add just a few comments.
First, the situation in Egypt is helpful in making clear how U.S. foreign aid functions. In international development circles, there’s a debate about whether foreign aid actually works. On the political scene, a variety of doubters, especially those on the right, rail against corruption, mismanagement, and dependency—arguing that aid sent abroad is a giant liberal boondoggle.
But a huge percentage of U.S. foreign aid is not meant to ease poverty or foster humane development, nor is it backed by any progressive intention. Rather, it is given out basically in the form of bribes to various regimes so that they will align themselves with U.S. geopolitical interests. As Juan Cole further notes in his Democracy Now interview, a large amount of aid money meant for foreign countries actually serves to subsidize U.S. corporations, which are contracted to produce goods or services (or armaments or farm surplus) that are then sent abroad. The actual utility of these things for aid recipients is questionable, and any benefits to the poor in recipient countries are at best indirect.
Aid to the Egyptian government is a nice case in point. Even though it is notoriously undemocratic, the Mubarak regime has for decades received a massive amount of U.S. aid, both military and non-military. We’re talking billions of dollars per year, regularly placing Egypt just behind Israel on lists of top recipients. But the United States has no incentive to demand any sort of accountability for the aid. On the contrary, our leaders have incentives to use aid flows as pork for our corporations and to allow the Egyptian government to siphon off the remaining largess however it wishes. An attitude of permissiveness makes the aid all the more effective as a means of ingratiation.
Since the protests have erupted in Egypt, the Obama administration has put on a sorry display of standing by its man (just as the Bush administration no doubt would have). Vice President Biden has gone to bat for the regime, resulting in headlines reading, “Joe Biden says Egypt’s Mubarak no dictator, he shouldn’t step down…“
But if you look at what Biden actually says, it’s sort of comical—and fairly honest. He never asserts that Mubarak isn’t a dictator; he just admits that, since he wants the current Egyptian regime to remain an ally, he’s not in any position to come out and say it. Biden stated:
Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things. And he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with—with Israel. … I would not refer to him as a dictator.
Well, of course he wouldn’t call Mubarak a dictator! As he just explained, the regime is a vital ally of the United States in the region, and he has no interest in alienating it.
President Obama has tried to have it both ways by at once supporting the regime and telling it to use the protests as occasion to implement reforms. “[T]he government has to be careful about not resorting to violence, and the people on the streets have to be careful about not resorting to violence,” he said. “And I think that it is very important that people have mechanisms in order to express legitimate grievances.” But even as the Egyptian state began to crack down, the White House wouldn’t speak of curtailing military aid. It has been practicing realpolitik, plain and simple.
(Although, as the situation rapidly develops, there are signs that the Obama administration might be changing its position—something that is surely a grim sign for Mubarak.)
The other point I would make is that when demonstrations like these erupt, they’re inevitably labeled “spontaneous uprisings.” However, that characterization is usually more a product of previous media neglect and ignorance than it is an accurate description of protest activity. If you’re not paying any attention to a country’s politics and only swoop in when things have reached a crisis point, events will invariably look out-of-the-blue. Yet that’s hardly the whole story.
Yes, there are extraordinary moments when public demonstrations take on a mass character and people who would otherwise not have dreamed of taking part in an uprising rush onto the streets. But these protests are typically built upon years of organizing and preparation on the part of social movements.
I haven’t seen great backgrounders out yet detailing movement activity in Egypt and Tunisia, but there have been some signs of foresight and preparation. In Cairo, for example, polished manuals have been passed from hand-to-hand among protesters, serving as guidebooks for action:
Anonymous leaflets circulating in Cairo also provide practical and tactical advice for mass demonstrations, confronting riot police, and besieging and taking control of government offices.Signed “long live Egypt”, the slickly produced 26-page document calls on demonstrators to begin with peaceful protests, carrying roses but no banners, and march on official buildings while persuading policemen and soldiers to join their ranks.
Well-produced twenty-six-page booklets—reflecting a lot of careful thought—do not exactly fit within the image of “spontaneous uprising.” As we continue to watch this story, I’ll be eager to see pro-democracy organizers who have been at it over the long haul get their due.
By Yasha Levine, Editor of eXiled Online
This article was first published by eXiled Online
See that plush red and blue carpet cascading down the steps of the United States Capitol building, framing President Barack Obama as he makes his historic inaugural address? It’s made from material manufactured by a Koch Industries subsidiary called Invista.
Yes, that’s right. You heard it here first: Charles and David Koch made the carpet used in Barak Obama’s swearing-in ceremony. Liberals might have worshiped the ground Obama walked on, but the Kochs owned and manufactured the carpeting covering that hallowed ground. What makes it all so creepy is that just a month after that carpet was rolled up and Obama took his place in the White House, the Koch brothers launched the Tea Party revolt against their carpeting client. READ FULL POST
Last week, anti-gay activist Scott Lively whined in a local Boston newspaper that he is being unfairly criticized for his stances against the lgbt community, including playing a huge role in the creation of the infamous “kill the gays” bill in Uganda.
After an incident in Uganda this week, he may want to keep his mouth shut:
An outspoken Ugandan gay activist whose picture recently appeared in an anti-gay newspaper under the headline “Hang Them” was beaten to death in his home, Ugandan police said on Thursday.
David Kato, the activist, was one of the most visible defenders of gay rights in a country so homophobic that government leaders have proposed to execute gay people. Mr. Kato and other gay people in Uganda had recently warned that their lives were endangered, and four months ago a local paper called Rolling Stone published a list of gay people, and Mr. Kato’s face was on the front page.
At press time, the police do not view Kato’s murder as a hate crime, but a robbery. However some lgbt activists in Uganda disagree:
Gay activists . . . said Mr. Kato was singled out for his outspoken defense of gay rights. “David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. Evangelicals in 2009,” said Val Kalende, the chairperson of one of Uganda’s gay rights groups, in a statement. “The Ugandan government and the so-called U.S. evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood!”
Mrs. Kalende was referring to visits in March 2009 by a group of American evangelicals who held anti-gay rallies and church leaders who authored the anti-gay bill, which is still pending, attended those meetings and said that they had worked with the Americans on their bill.
One of the those activists was Scott Lively He even bragged that the 2009 visits created a “nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.”
Kato’s death comes almost a month after the arrest of Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa on conspiracy charges. Ssempa, a chief pusher of the country’s “Kill the Gays” bill and also for his penchant for showing “scat porn” in church is among eight people who was either detained or sought after an “alleged conspiracy to injure the reputation of Pastor Robert Kayanja of Rubaga Miracle Centre Cathedral, Kampala.”
Ssempa and eight others had been charged with spreading rumors that Kayanja was gay, which is supposedly a common way to settle political scores in Uganda, but has deadlier implications since the controversy about the anti-gay bill.
The webpage Box Turtle Bulletin said the following:
David Kato was a spokesperson for Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and one of the plaintiffs (or applicants) in the successful lawsuit seeking a permanent injunction against the Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone (no relation to the U.S. publication of the same name). Kato was one of three applicants who had been named by the tabloid under a headline tagged “Hang Them!” His photo appeared on the tabloid’s front cover.
LGBT Ugandans have lived under a menacing atmosphere for more than a decade. The anti-gay hysteria has increased significantly since the introduction of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill into parliament in 2009. That bill, which remains under review Parliamentary committee, would impose the death penalty on LGBT Ugandans under certain circumstances and criminalize all advocacy by or on behalf of LGBT people. It would also criminalize even knowing someone who is gay if that person fails to report their LGBT loved one to police within 24 hours. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for February 18, and the bill is expected to be considered after Parliament returns for a lame-duck session before the new Parliament begins in May.
Now in all honesty, we do not know the truth behind Kato’s murder at the present, so it may be unfair to blame Lively. Certainly he never told people to kill anyone. And according to him, he never agreed with the death penalty facet of the Ugandan anti-gay bill.
But he did fan the flames of hatred towards lgbts in Uganda and that’s the funny thing about fanning flames.
They always get out of hand and sooner or later, someone gets burned.
Written by Patty Skuster and Susan Schewel for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.
It became tragically clear this week that hurdles to safe, legal abortion can prove life threatening. In West Philadelphia, Karnamaya Mongar lost her life in the horrific facility where Dr. Kermit Gosnell killed and maimed immigrant women and women of color seeking to end unwanted pregnancies. She is one of tens of thousands of poor women who die every year at the hands of butchers and quacks. We sometimes comfort ourselves with the thought that those deaths don’t happen here. But clearly they can.
Around the world — even here in Pennsylvania — women face obstacles to legitimate medical care, including preventive services like contraception, prenatal care and safe abortion care. However, such obstacles — legal and financial barriers, social stigma or language barriers — do not affect all women equally.
It is poor women, young women, women of color and immigrant women who bear the burden of these restrictions, particularly federal bans on funding for abortion care. These bans – such as the Hyde Amendment that affects Medicaid and the international Helms Amendment that affects our foreign aid – exacerbate the circumstances that lead women to facilities like the West Philadelphia clinic in the first place. Read more
New York is once again buried in snow, but this time more Brooklyn streets are plowed and trains are running, if delayed, to the outer boroughs. While everything slows down for the weather, it’s worth noting that the city’s managed to be prepared for the last couple of snowstorms.
It’s also worth noting, while we dig ourselves out, that the story that went rocketing around the media after the first major snowstorm of the year, of a union staging a work slowdown that kept the city paralyzed, has been debunked pretty thoroughly by now.
The New York Times reports that one man, Councilman Daniel J. Halloran, Republican of Queens, had started the story, saying that five workers, two from the Transportation department and three from Sanitation, had visited him to tell him about the “slowdown.” The transportation workers, though, have denied his claims, and he cannot or will not name the sanitation workers.
A federal investigation was convened after the snowstorm not to look into whether budget cuts were dangerously over-broad and left people without any form of transportation for emergencies, but into the union’s purported actions.
But even Halloran has changed his story somewhat as the investigation proceeds. The freshman councilman, who has Tea Party support, now says that workers “were subtly informed there was no need to rush” while clearing snow, rather than explicitly told to slow it down.
It’s probably too late, though, since the New York Post and Fox News have already used the union workers as another excuse to blame all organized government workers for everything that’s wrong with the country. The damage has been done, and it’s probably too much to hope that the Post will enjoy splashing the truth around as much as all the misinformation.
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv and editor of At The Tea Party, out now from OR Books. GRITtv broadcasts weekdays on DISH Network and DIRECTv, on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter and be our friend on Facebook.
Clean water advocates and concerned citizens across the nation will be monitoring a blockbuster Kentucky court case today, which will ultimately determine whether citizens can intervene in a state’s gross mishandling of indisputable acts of contempt and egregious Clean Water Act violations by two coal companies.
According to many observers, the sheer number of fraudulent acts and mind-boggling oversights could turn this case into Big Coal’s Watergate–or Clean Watergate.
Thanks to the extraordinary investigative work of clean water advocates, Kentucky subsidiaries of International Coal Group and Frasure Creek Mining were singled out in an intent to sue notice last October of “over 20,000 incidences of these three companies either exceeding permit pollution limits, failing to submit reports, or falsifying the required monitoring data. These violations could result in fines that may exceed 740 million dollars.”
Read that again: Over 20,000 incidences.
And yet, on one side of the courtroom today, humiliated Kentucky state officials who made an 11th hour move in December to slap a small fine–less than 1% of the possible fine–and limited “corrective actions” on the two companies’ admittedly blatant violations, now claim that citizens groups are “unwarranted burdens.”
Unwarranted burdens?
Today’s hearing in the Franklin Circuit Court in Kentucky comes at the end of a public comment period required by the judge, regarding an intent to sue notice filed by affected Kentucky residents and citizens groups including Appalachian Voices, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC), the Kentucky Riverkeeper, Waterkeeper Alliance and The Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center last October.
Back in October, Appalachian Voices’ legendary waterkeeper and watchdog Donna Lisenby, hailed by many in the nation as a cross between Rachel Carson, Mother Teresa and Rudy Guliani. spelled out the troubling nature of this case:
“The sheer number of violations we found while looking over these companies’ monitoring reports is astounding. It shows a systematic and pervasive pattern of misinformation. These companies are making a mockery of their legal responsibility under the Clean Water Act and, more troubling, their moral obligation to the people of the state of Kentucky.”
As part of their public comment, the Kentucky Riverkeeper and Appalachian Voices advocates filed an additional 35-page review last week of “additional data, facts and analysis that demonstrate why the Cabinet has not diligently prosecuted the case and why environmental groups should be allowed to intervene.” Noting blatant cut and pass infractions, among numerous errors, their analysis found:
Stronger remedial measures and a corrective action plan with third party neutral oversight is needed to make the coal companies come into compliance…
First, the weakness of the consent judgments becomes apparent when you note that the environmental groups found over 20,000 violations of the Clean Water Act with 740 million in fines while the Cabinet found only 2,765 violations with fines of $660,000. Thus, the Cabinet found only 13.85 % the number of violations and levied less than 1% of the maximum fines possible.
Second, the weakness of the consent judgments becomes even more apparent when you examine what was possible using the Cabinet’s own data. .
In just one example of the many discharge monitoring reports submitted by ICG., they added:
“The DMR contains 42 identically repeated test results from the first quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2009. In the second quarter DMR, the 4 in the first quarter submittal date of 4/15/09 was scratched out and above it someone working for ICG penciled in the number 7. If this were a forgery case brought by the criminal justice system against someone accused of forging checks, the state would use this as evidence in the criminal prosecution that someone intentionally forged the check. For example, if John Doe originally wrote a check to Jane Simpson for 400 dollars and then Jane Simpson scratched out the number 4 and replaced it with the number 7 to make the check 700 dollars; this would be compelling evidence that Ms. Simpson made the change intentionally.”
As many coalfields residents know, the $660,000 fine is a worthwhile slap on the wrist for coal companies like International Coal Group that continue to post huge million dollar quarterly profits.
More so, affected citizens argue that’s it hard to imagine what Kentucky–or any coalfields community–would look like without neutral third party monitoring. Nearly a year ago, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and the Sierra Club filed a complaint that the Frasure Creek Mining company had begun three mountaintop removal mining operations without proper permits. Less than two years ago, a massive boulder from a Frasure Creek Mining operation smashed the bedroom walls of a Floyd County resident’s home.
The Kentuckians for the Commonwealth have posted an excellent background on the case here.
Looking back on the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham noted: “If we had failed to pursue the facts as far as they led, we would have denied the public any knowledge of an unprecedented scheme of political surveillance and sabotage.”
Considering the unprecedented scheme of Clean Water Act violations in these Kentucky cases, let’s hope the Franklin Circuit Court–and the nation’s media–will pursue the facts and make sure the public is not denied any knowledge or intervention in these outrageous acts.
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