But enforcement has lagged
A not very festive item I was unaware of: a friend mentioned the deregulation of neurotoxins “resulting in an entire generation of cognitively impaired humans” and I asked what he meant and he replied with Children of Color Hit Hardest as Environmental Enforcement Tumbles Under Trump. Ah yes. I knew that – I knew that poison and pollution in general is much more likely to be perpetrated on poor people than on rich people and more on people of color than white people – but I didn’t know about this particular example. It’s not cheerful.
Public health researchers have found elevated levels of manganese, a heavy metal that can cause neurological disorders and other health problems, in the toenails of children living in Chicago’s Southeast Side neighborhood. Environmentalists are nearly certain they know why.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been working with two industrial facilities that handle large amounts of manganese on the Southeast Side to reduce dangerous dust drifting into nearby residential areas, but enforcement has lagged since the Trump administration took over the agency, according to Debbie Chizewer, an attorney with the Environmental Advocacy Center at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law.
“As far as we know, [the] EPA has taken no further action to contain these emissions,” Chizewer told Truthout in an interview.
I’d like to know more. I’d like to know if Trump’s people told the EPA to stop, for instance.
This is not just a problem in Chicago. Across the country, the number of enforcement actions issued by the EPA has markedly declined since Trump took office and placed Scott Pruitt at the head of the agency, according to a recent investigation by the New York Times.
Trump and Pruitt have launched a sweeping rollback of Obama-era environmental protections and argue that regulators should work [more closely] with polluting industry to find environmental solutions that won’t hamper business.
Trump and Trump’s children don’t live in places where neurotoxins blow into the windows.
After months of pushback and wrangling with [Chicago] community groups and regulators, the operator of one terminal, S.H. Bell Co., agreed to place air pollution monitors at its facility. Within months, the monitors affirmed what residents and advocates had feared since at least 2014: Dust containing manganese was drifting from the facility at levels that exceed federal health standards.
A recent study conducted near a hazardous waste incinerator and another S.H. Bell industrial terminal in East Liverpool, Ohio, found a significant link between elevated manganese levels in the area and lower IQ scores in children.
EPA employees protest Trump’s appointments, and are subject to surveillance as a result.
Employees may be keeping a low profile, but the union representing EPA workers in the Chicago office has criticized the agency for failing to protect Southeast Chicago from pollution since Trump took office. The American Federation of Government Employees Local 704 posted this tweet on Wednesday:
It has been over four months since Trump’s #EPA cited SH Bell for violating health standards, and #EPA has not addressed Manganese Levels on SE side of #Chicago. https://t.co/P3XLvUOoGu
— AFGE Local 704 (@704afge) December 21, 2017
The union is also slamming Cathy Stepp, the Trump administration’s new pick to run the Region 5 office in Chicago. Stepp, a Republican businesswoman-turned-politician, formerly served as head of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR), where she came under fire for decreasing enforcement, shrinking the agency’s scientific research bureau and scrubbing information from the state website linking human activity to climate change, according to reports.
John O’Grady, president of the EPA’s national employee union, said Stepp appears to be “another non-scientist who doesn’t acknowledge that climate change is real.”
“Putting Ms. Stepp in charge of the largest Regional Office in the US EPA is akin to asking the fox to guard the hen house,” O’Grady said in a statement. “If her record at WDNR is any indication, Ms. Stepp will successfully cut funding for enforcement, along with fines for violations. In fact, US EPA Region 5’s enforcement efforts can be expected to plummet.”
Not very festive at all.
It can’t be repeated enough: The Republicans are not a party of law or order. They cannot be counted on for law enforcement. They will shelter and protect lawbreakers, so long as the lawbreakers have a badge or a business. And in return, they get votes, they get cash, and they may get some heads busted.
They must never, ever be allowed to claim a high ground when it comes to maintaining civil society and the protection of the law.
“Law and order” is another of those code phrases, like “state’s rights” and “working class” – like the others, it codes for a lot of racist assumptions. It’s all about controlling the non-white population, and the non-rich population.
Also not festive, but related and an good an explanation as any on how we got where we are today: http://billmoyers.com/story/book-democracy-in-chains-far-right/
Re #2 – Yes, I know. The point is that it calls for decoding at any time: “law and order” isn’t just a dog whistle, it’s also a suggestion that the rule of law is somehow a Republican thing and the opposition favors lawlessness. People do, reasonably, appreciate the protection of the law – at least those who haven’t been so badly screwed so often that protection of the law is no longer on their horizon of hopes.
Privilege happens because people can stay ignorant as far as their own life experience goes. If the police don’t show you any face but the protective one, you’ll be able to confuse the rule of law with “law and order” and Republican politicians here and their ilk elsewhere will work with that confusion to drive a wedge between you and the people getting their heads cracked.
Granted, the maintenance of the ignorance can require some work on the part of the ignorant themselves. There’s no line between innocent ignorance and conniving bigotry – it’s a spectrum, or maybe a staircase. The hope of political education is dispelling the ignorance and exposing the bigotry. If they still choose bigotry in the light of full exposure, well, they’re an object example for others.