Right after Katrina, evacuated to Baton Rouge, I posted on BooMan's site, and felt embraced by that community. He's a good man, and there are many such good people on this site. I wouldn't waste my time here if it wasn't so. It doesn't serve the interests of the working class however, to excuse and coddle politicians, including our own President, when the policies prevalent in Washington D.C. benefit the wealthiest at the expense of the vast majority.
I'm a survivor of yet another disaster, the BP oil disaster. People have become deathly ill from exposure to the chemicals associated from this disaster. You'd never know it from listening to the Federal government or state and local government however. Here are just a few stories:
Robichaux began his remarks with a background description of how the US government created a huge subsidy for the oil and gas industry in terms of excluding oil field waste from the definition of hazardous waste. That legal loophole allows dangerous wastes to be disposed inexpensively in unlined pits in coastal Louisiana. This is at least one environmental policy that the state doesn’t complain about to the Obama administration!
The main thrust of Mike’s talk, however, was to describe treating 40-some patients in recent weeks and months, all of whom suffered from a wide range of symptoms that he believes resulted from exposure to constituents of the oil released from the Macondo well blowout. The following is an account that the speaker distributed to his audience, which I edited heavily for length and limited to two patients who were (poorly) treated at Ochsner facilities:
Most of my patients live in south Louisiana and I know many fishermen and oilfield workers who were involved in the oil cleanup. Nevertheless, until a few months ago I had heard no medical complaints about oil exposure. Then I was requested to draw blood from ‘Al,’ a commercial diver from Mississippi who had become violently ill after diving in the Macondo plume.
Go and read the rest for yourself. It's heartbreaking and enraging. There is a massive coverup on the Gulf coast, on the effects of the oil and the use of the Corexit, and it is part of the class warfare being waged on all Americans who aren't in the top tier of wealth. We are expendable; we can be used to sop up the oil industries' messes, and then discarded, even when we become ill from such work.
Our homes can be taken illegally, our entitlements put on the table for cuts, our public education destroyed and privatized, our land fractured for gas and our water aquifers destroyed....all done for profit as it people don't matter. We must take a stand, and we can't wait for our politicians to do so. In fact, they are much more likely to respond to our concerns and demands, if we stop making excuses for them.
This was written in a hurry during my lunch hour, so please excuse the rush. Yes, I'm one of the lucky ones to have a job right now.