Fear Is Why Workers in Red States Vote Against Their Economic Self-Interest

[Tom Joad]

A job scared workforce is an employers wet dream.

This is why we need a massive WPA like Federal Jobs Program. To give people somewhere else to go so that when their employers tell them to eat shit they can reply "Take this job and shove it"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert...b_4608891.html

Last week's massive spill of the toxic chemical MCHM into West Virginia's Elk River illustrates another benefit to the business class of high unemployment, economic insecurity, and a safety-net shot through with holes. Not only are employees eager to accept whatever job they can get. They are also also unwilling to demand healthy and safe environments.

The spill was the region's third major chemical accident in five years, coming after two investigations by the federal Chemical Safety Board in the Kanawha Valley, also known as "Chemical Valley," and repeated recommendations from federal regulators and environmental advocates that the state embrace tougher rules to better safeguard chemicals.

No action was ever taken. State and local officials turned a deaf ear. The storage tank that leaked, owned by Freedom Industries, hadn't been inspected for decades.

But nobody complained.

Not even now, with the toxins moving down river toward Cincinnati, can the residents of Charleston and the surrounding area be sure their drinking water is safe -- partly because the government's calculation for safe levels is based on a single study by the manufacturer of the toxic chemical, which was never published, and partly because the West Virginia American Water Company, which supplies the drinking water, is a for-profit corporation that may not want to highlight any lingering danger.

So why wasn't more done to prevent this, and why isn't there more of any outcry even now?

The answer isn't hard to find. As Maya Nye, president of People Concerned About Chemical Safety, a citizen's group formed after a 2008 explosion and fire killed workers at West Virginia's Bayer CropScience plant in the state, explained to the New York Times: "We are so desperate for jobs in West Virginia we don't want to do anything that pushes industry out."

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[BlueStreak]

"I don't need you and your high and mighty attitude."

That's what every American worker should be able to tell his boss. It's called "Freedom". The kind of freedom Republicans despise. They'd rather be free to keep everybody desperate, so we HAVE to put up with their slave driving shit when we go to work in their sweaty, spy camera filled businesses.

Dave

[BlueStreak]

Excellent article, Tom. So true.

Thanks,
Dave

[merrylander]

About the only thing one can say about private industry here is that if it is possible to screw up then they will screw up on every occasion that presents itself.

[finnbow]

Nowhere is this dynamic more true than for coal and chemical companies in West Virginia.

[merrylander]

Surely there is a special corner of hell reserved forpeople who cut off mountain tops.

[MrPots]

Now that Freedom Industries has declared bankruptcy, they pretty much have no accountability at all.

[piece-itpete]

There's some truth in the thread title here in Ohio. Red voters in most of the state are afraid it'll end up like Cleveland

Pete

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

There's some truth in the thread title here in Ohio. Red voters in most of the state are afraid it'll end up like Cleveland

Pete

Isn't that cute?

Pete went and got himself a picture of a commie for an avatar.

Which one of your sales seminars did you get that trick from Pete?

[piece-itpete]

This trick? The secret unpublished tapes of Zig Zigler. It's the opposite of the puppydog close.

Pete