LEFT OF DAYTON
DAYTON CHRYSLER/BEHR SUPERFUND SITE MAKES YOUTUBE
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DAYTON RESIDENTS USE YOUTUBE TO HELP WITH A HUGE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM AT A SUPERFUND SITE IN THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD. A GROUP CALLED BVOCAL HAS MADE A SHORT VIDEO, “THIS IS OUR NEIGHBORHOOD!” TO TELL THEIR STORY WORLDWIDE AND TO ENCOURAGE STRONGER ACTION FROM THE U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY.
THEY WANT THEIR HOMES RETESTED FOR TRICHLOROETHYLENE, A DANGEROUS INDUSTRIAL CHEMICAL.
Here is the link to the video on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8tXRg3-bEg
Three years ago, people who live in the McCook Field neighborhood of Dayton Ohio learned that the former Chrysler Airtemp plant at Leo and Webster Streets, now owned by Behr, had leaked trichloroethylene (TCE), into the ground and that toxic vapor from the chemical was coming up into their houses at unsafe levels. Over 400 homes have been tested for vapors and elevated TCE levels were found in more than half. Contamination levels as much as 650 times the official “action level” have been found. One school has been closed due to contamination. The USEPA says this is one of the worst contamination sites in the country and has made it a Superfund site.
Mitigation systems, which are a patch but not a fix for the problem, have been installed in many homes but the TCE plume continues to move through the groundwater causing levels under the homes to constantly change. For that reason, all of the homes need to be periodically retested in order to insure that they are safe, something the USEPA has not yet agreed to do.
BVOCAL spokesperson Jerry Bowling says, “We want to tell our story and to encourage the USEPA to retest all of our homes on an ongoing basis until the problem is resolved.”
The Ohio Department of Health has found that TCE exposure is linked to kidney cancer, liver cancer, non Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and several other types of cancer including Hodgkin’s lymphoma and cervical cancer. A cancer incidence study of the McCook Field area completed by the Ohio Department of Health in August 2008 found that for all cancer types, the neighborhood had a significantly higher than expected number of cancer cases and that for 4 types of cancer associated with TCE exposure; liver, non Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and cervical cancer, there were more observed cases in the area than would have been expected.
TCE exposure can also cause other health effects such as headaches, lung irritation, dizziness, coordination and concentration difficulties, skin rashes, nerve and immune system damage and damage to fetal development. Many of these problems have been reported by residents of the neighborhood.
Chrysler discovered the TCE contamination on its property in 1989 or 1990. Almost 20 years later, the site is still not being cleaned up despite the severity of the contamination and the number of people affected.
Now that Chrysler has filed bankruptcy, it appears that it may try to completely walk away from it’s responsibilities to this neighborhood. The BVOCAL group is working to make sure that doesn’t happen and that the USEPA does everything it can to protect this community.
BVOCAL can be reached at, bo68chev@att.net , 937-224-5058, 522 Herbert St., Dayton, OH 45404.
The suspicious, disturbing death of election rigger Michael Connell
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The suspicious, disturbing death of election rigger Michael Connell
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
December 20, 2008
Michael Connell, the crucial techno- lynch pin in the theft of the 2004 election, and much more, is dead at the age of 45. His unnatural, suspicious death raises serious questions about the corruption of the American electoral process that now may never be answered.
Connell died Friday, December 19 when his Piper Saratoga plane crashed near his northern Ohio home. He was flying himself home from the College Park, Maryland airport. An accomplished pilot, flying in unremarkable weather, his death cuts off a critical path to much of what may never be known about how the 2004 election was shifted from John Kerry to George W. Bush in the wee hours of November 2. His plane crashed between two houses in an upscale neighborhood, one vacant, just 2.5 miles from the Akron-Canton airport.
A long-time, outspokenly loyal associate of the Bush family, Connell created the Bush-Cheney website for their 2000 presidential campaign. Connell may have played a role in various computer malfunctions that helped the GOP claim the presidency in 2000. As a chief IT consultant and operative for Karl Rove, Connell was a devout Catholic and the father of four children. In various interviews and a deposition Connell cited his belief that abortion is murder as a primary motivating factor in his work for the Republican Party. (more…)
Mike Turner and the Real Estate/Development Interests {orig. post from Daytonology}
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Monday, January 21, 2008
reposted from Daytonology [thanks to Jeffery for some Excellent research on Congressman Mike Turners ties to the Construction/”development” industry.]
Mike Turner has received significant contributions from a cluster of donors best described as the real estate/development special interest community. This includes PAC and individual donors from real estate, contracting, construction, engineering and architecture, and building trades unions.
read the rest of this story [ and be sure to check out the comments section!] at
http://daytonology.blogspot.com/2008/01/mike-turner-and-real-estatedevelopment.html
SHADOWS ON HIGH: Tuesday’s Vote Tells The Nation A Lot About Ohio ‘08
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| By Brian Rothenberg – Nov 7th, 2007 at 12:35 pm EST |
| Also listed in: Ohio Bloggers |
Congratulations go out to Ohio Democrats and Progressives where big-city Mayors changed hands in Lorain and Canton (long held by the GOP) and Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman and his well-run coordinated campaign cruised to a third term in a landslide.
There were few misfires down at blue headquarters on State Street, but there are trends that give a glimpse into November 2008. Lest progressives start high-fiving, Ohio is not going to be a cakewalk in a Presidential race. Just a sobering reminder: the Quinnipiac Poll has the two Presidential front-runners in an Ohio dead heat with Rudy up two points over Hillary in their latest Ohio head-to-head poll. (more…)
Watch Your Wallets Ohioans; It’s Electric Re-reg Time!
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Post from Brian Rothenberg’s Blog:
SHADOWS ON HIGH:
| By Brian Rothenberg – Oct 19th, 2007 at 10:58 am EDT |
We take it for granted that it will power our appliances, chill our food, keep us cool and allow us to watch the Cleveland Indians, OSU Buckeyes (when the powers that be let us — but that’s another story) or the Daily Show’s daily dose of sarcasm.
If we’re in the hospital, everything from the bed to the equipment can’t work if the power doesn’t.
Each passing generation becomes more reliant on it – especially in our computer age. Without it, life would be much different.
And the fact is that if the price of electricity goes way up, it has probably more impact than George W’s rant on taxes, as most of our monthly bottom lines would be much different and the spiral of spending constraints could make a real impact on Ohio’s economy.
Which is a long way of saying that Senate Bill 221 deserves your attention, especially the part that explains what leeway legislators want to give the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to set the rates we all pay for electricity.
SB 221, as introduced, was largely the work of Gov. Ted Strickland, who joined with business leaders, labor leaders and municipal electricity companies and in expressing concern for Ohio’s bottom line.
The seeds for SB 221 were planted in 1999 after Ohio and 17 other states rushed to the finish line like 49ers to the gold rush to deregulate their electricity services and let the open market set the prices. This was after all the height of the free market Reaganomics in all its glory: Dereg of utilities, dereg of phones, dereg of airlines and yes NAFTA – a gold rush of profits many of which have lost their luster.
(By the way, anyone notice we deregulated phone companies, sliced them and diced them from the old Baby Bells and now they are put back in large part as supergiant AT&T? Makes you wonder who made all that money through corporate mergers on the way back to a monopoly, doesn’t it. And gee, who pays for phone service – why all of us of course. Dereg is a great thing.)
Now back to electricity.
The goals of deregulation were lofty: The market would result in competition, causing prices to go down and consumers to benefit. On the floor of the Statehouse, it was discussed as if the savings in our wallets were a foregone conclusion.
The problem: No competitive market actually emerged, so the market began setting prices as high as the market would tolerate. In Maryland, where the phase-in has already ended, prices spiked up 72 percent in one year.
And quality began to suffer as power companies traded the unseen commodity of electrical energy in a fluctuating market much like gasoline deregulated into OPEC oversight in the 1970s.
Just in the years since we’ve begun to phase in deregulation, we’ve watched Enron go bust from the diversification and accounting games that accompanied a non-transparent utility, we’ve seen a major blackout that began in Northern Ohio and blacked out electricity from New York to Montreal, and of course, who can forget the revelation of a rusted cap at the top of an Ohio nuclear power plant.
So here we are, at the end of the phase-in of deregulation that was supposed to lower our costs and make utilities more efficient and the market was supposed to demand increased quality; and at the end of next year, the market will begin setting the prices in Ohio, causing fears that our prices will skyrocket, much like Maryland’s did.
Other than a handful of self-serving utilities, nobody really is arguing that there really is a competitive market but the Governor gave it a nod by allowing one to exist if someone can prove it exists, and most experts are convinced that unless Ohio does something before the end of next year, we really will end up like Maryland.
Given the general agreement that deregulation was a failure, the arguments over ending our flirtation with deregulation center largely on how much leeway the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) should have — if and when Ohio returns to a system of regulating electricity prices. And how much you and I and the other ratepayers should know about what goes into the PUCO’s pricing calculation. Transparency. We should have the right to know what fees and charges are being levied for the electric energy we are using.
In Ohio, there is a strong case to be made for the public’s right to know – not only given our recent political history, but given the experts who oversee our utilities. If you don’t believe me, you should believe the Lehman Brothers (well-regarded bean counters from Wall Street.)
Lehman does an annual ranking of state utility regulators and the PUCO in Ohio is routinely ranked about the most utility-friendly in the nation. And why would we not expect that after 16-years of cow-towing to corporate leaders who know how to play the political system in Ohio. After all, we are a company town as a state. We host industry giants First Energy and AEP that are behemoths of the industry and have much greater territory than just the Buckeye State.
It’s clear from things the Commission has done – and not done – that average consumers are left to battle for their pocketbooks. And it’s clear from utilities’ annual reports that electricity stockholders are doing quite nicely.
The consumer/utility balance is so out of whack that large industrial companies like Ford, and GM, and AK Steel, and Worthington Industries have banded together to gang up on the PUCO and demand that if it’s given the power to set utility rates, those of us who pay the rates should be allowed to peek in the utilities’ books. That’s the only way we’ll know if the prices the commission is setting (and the prices we’re paying) are fair, just and reasonable.
Back in pre-deregulation days, we all got to peek in the books – it was considered part of the progressive agenda of Teddy Roosevelt’s Republicans that the monopoly of large utility companies could only be balanced by the transparency of an open corporate set of books.
Back before they fixed electricity to help our pocket books, when a utility company wanted to raise rates, they had to go before the PUCO to justify the higher costs. All parties viewed this arrangement as part of the compact between the utility companies and the customers:
The state guaranteed each utility a base of customers, the regulators guaranteed the utilities a profit, the utilities guaranteed the state that it would provide electricity to those customers for a fair, just and reasonable price. To prove the prices were fair, the PUCO demanded a peek into the utilities’ books.
All that changed in deregulation – in the name of protecting your wallet – irony of ironies.
David Boehm, a lawyer who is working for some of Ohio’s largest employers, testified in favor or SB 221 and explained why open books are necessary – and how the process should work:
- “Witnesses would be heard and subject to cross-examination and all interested parties would be represented.
- Utilities could put on whatever other evidence they think relevant including evidence of market rates. If, thereafter, negotiations are entered into with the utilities, the basic data underlying those negotiations is open and transparent and known to everyone.
- We do not see how anyone in an open society could oppose such a provision. While flexibility is an obvious goal of S.B. 221, it must not be at the expense of due process or transparency.
- A federal appeals court judge, Damon Keith said in 2002 ‘Democracies’ die behind closed doors. The Framers of the First Amendment did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.”
Although Mr. Boehm might not know how anyone in an open society could oppose it, Ohio’s utilities found a way to oppose it.
With the ever increasing throng of lobbyists, consultants and employees, the utilities offered a string of audacious amendments. The bottom line: The want to continue to have a guaranteed set of customers and a guaranteed profit – but they want authority to veto any PUCO decisions they don’t like.
And they don’t want us to peek in their books.
That’s right. Let’s get this straight, they want guaranteed customers, they want guaranteed profits and want veto authority over a board appointed to protect the public’s interest.
See a problem here? Why have a PUCO?
And that’s what makes this issue so fascinating. For a company whose mission is to illuminate our lives, they sure seem to be angling for some reason to protect their profits, while shielding their costs.
And in Ohio, when you see the shadowy deal making in the Statehouse start to move away from transparency into darkness, you better grab your wallet and run.
So, here’s hoping our legislature finds the light switch or else we all need to padlock our wallets. After all the last time they tried to save us money – it created this mess to begin with.
What’s that definition of insanity again?
Gov. Strickland Visits Piketon;SONG Demands Piketon Investigation
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SONG News Release:
Strickland Visits Piketon;
SONG Demands Piketon Investigation
as Architect of Nuclear Waste Plan Retires
On Sunday, Ted Strickland paid his first visit as Governor to Pike County, where he was met by many opponents of the plan to store high-level nuclear waste at Piketon. Only hours later, the legislative architect of the waste storage plan, David Hobson, announced he will not seek reelection to Congress.
Hobson is best known for securing big budget items for his suburban Dayton-Springfield district, as former chairman and now ranking member of the Energy and Water Subcommittee of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. He was not so kind to neighboring Ohio districts. The plan for Piketon would have made lots of money for contractors in the wealthy Dayton-Springfield area, but would have sent the waste south, to Appalachian Ohio, for dumping in a poor rural county.
Strickland appeared in Pike County at noon, to speak in the gymnasium at Piketon High School. He was met by a decidedly split audience. About half of those in attendance had some affiliation with SODI, one of the contractors on the waste project. The other half had some affiliation with SONG: The Southern Ohio Neighbors Group. About twenty in the crowd sported red-white-and-blue SONG caps.
In his speech, which focused on statewide and national issues, the governor did not once mention the atomic site at Piketon. It is likely the first time since 1952 that a major politician has spoken in Pike County without boostering for the atomic boondoggle du jour. The US Department of Energy, which owns the site, is now stuck in a compulsory multi-billion dollar cleanup of the site, without the funds to do it. The waste project would have drastically reduced cleanup costs by allowing much of the contamination to remain in place.
After the talk, the governor was approached by three SONG representatives, who handed his aides copies of the SONG petition that now has over 5,000 area signatures. The petition opposes any importation, storage or reprocessing of high-level nuclear waste in southern Ohio, and calls for establishment of a Citizens Advisory Board.
The three also gave the governor a letter (attached) that calls on Strickland to return to Pike County for a town meeting, and that demands a full investigation of fraudulent misrepresentations in the waste dumping proposal. The three were Kathleen Boutis, president of SONG from Hobson’s Congressional district; Geoffrey Sea, who owns a historic home on the fence line of the atomic site; and Denny Bloomfield, former president of the union that represents Piketon workers.
The letter highlights a promise made by Strickland in last year’s campaign to oppose both waste storage and nuclear reprocessing at Piketon. The letter notes, however, that on April 27, Strickland sent a letter to the Energy Secretary endorsing reprocessing at Piketon. SONG is calling on the Governor to retract that letter.
“Ted, keep your promise!” is the letter’s refrain, and the phrase was used on a large banner in the parking lot outside the gymnasium where Strickland spoke.
SONG: Southern Ohio Neighbors Group
P.O. Box 161, Piketon, OH 45661
E-Mail: SHIPPSONG@aol.com Website: www.OhioNeighbors.org
THIRD DAYTON CHARTER SCHOOL SUED BY OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL
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The shift in political direction at the state level becomes ever more evident with each passing day. Charter schools [a category in which Dayton leads/bleeds the state] are notoriously UNACCOUNTABLE for the millions of dollars they siphon off from the city school system. This loss of funds is a major factor in the overall performance of and support for the City’s school system. The failure of the last School levy, which I believe was at least partially racially motivated, has exacerbated this difficult situation. Public Money that could be going to improve our schools, teacher pay etc has been going to fund privately operated “schools” which have consistently [with exceptions] been shown to under perform their public counterparts. Accountability has to trump hype. I am glad to see the Attorney General taking such an aggressive stance. Following is the press release from Mr Dann’s office:
ATTORNEY GENERAL DANN FILES SUIT AGAINST MORAINE COMMUNITY SCHOOL, ASKS COURT TO CLOSE IT AS A FAILED CHARITABLE TRUST.
September 21, 2007
DAYTON ~ Citing a continued failure to educate children, Attorney General Marc Dann asked the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court to declare the Moraine Community School to be a failed charitable trust and to enjoin its governing body from further operating a charter school.
The Attorney General filed similar suits against two other Dayton-area community schools, Colin Powell Leadership Academy, and New Choices Community School last week in a drive to hold the state’s publicly funded charter schools accountable for their performance.
In the complaint filed today, the Attorney General states that Moraine Community School, which has received $5,879,111 in public funds since opening five years ago, has failed to achieve its stated purpose of establishing a “high quality program” in which “all children will achieve success.” As evidence of that failure the complaint notes that over the past five years Moraine Community School has:
- Met only three of the 32 applicable indicators for school performance;
- Amassed persistently dismal Performance Index Scores, averaging 66.1 our a possible 120, giving it an institutional GPA or “F”;
- Failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress standards for the past four school years;
- Consistently lagged behind the performance of the West Carrollton City School District on State tests.
“By any measure, this school, like those we filed suit against last week, is an utter failure,” Attorney General Dann said. “I am using my authority to regulate charitable trusts to protect the kids MCS is not educating and to protect the taxpayers whose money is being wasted. Hopefully, as a result of this suit and the others we’ve filed and may file in the future, that money will now be redirected to traditional public schools and community schools that will use it to prepare Ohio’s children to compete and succeed in the 21st Century.”
Ohio report cards use muRiple measures to determine each school’s designation. To earr
one of the 30 indicators for 2006-07, at least 75% of students tested must score proficient
or higher on a given assessment. Any resutt at or above the state standard is
shown in bold.
TO view details of the suit, which outlines the schools failures in specific detail, visit : http://www.ag.state.oh.us/press/07/09/pr070921_case.pdf
SHADOWS ON HIGH: LET THEM EAT PAINT
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| By Brian Rothenberg – Sep 7th, 2007 at 10:30 am EDT |
| Also listed in: Bloggers |
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For Cheung Shu-hung, the cultural humiliation was too much.
A Chinese manufacturer who co-owned Lee Der Industrial Co., he was faced with the recall of millions of toys including Big Bird, Elmo and Dora the Explorer products. Why? Because lead paint was discovered by the American companies that outsourced manufacturing to his Beijing facility.
On the heels of an already alarmed U.S. public over trade issues abroad, and a much publicized tainted pet food scandal last winter, Chinese authorities were cracking down by banning his company from exporting products and requiring a recall worth a financial loss in the area of $30 million dollars, according to the Associated Press.
Soon after the problems were disclosed, Cheung Shu-hung committed suicide.
AP reported that Cheung’s best friend’s company supplied the tainted paint. Since then, over 9 million toys have been recalled, including Barbie items and Thomas the Train wood products.
A world away in Ohio, we have no such cultural shame. A lame duck session of legislators last December, over the objections of then ruby red Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro and current cobalt blue Attorney General Marc Dann, put a cap on Ohioans’ rights to sue over lead paint exposure in their homes. Out-going Gov. Bob Taft had his own reservations but let it – he thought—become law.
Ted Strickland then vetoed the bill on his first day in office. The Ohio Legislature quickly sued, saying the Secretary of State had no right to give the bill back to the new Governor for his veto. The Ohio Supreme Court disagreed and reversed the veto.
In Ohio, there isn’t shame over lead poisoning – our leaders have effectively said, “Let Them Eat Paint.” Which leads to the rather embarrassing question; how is it that in Communist China, they can crack down on product liability and thrive economically – but in the name of jobs – our own Ohio legislative lemmings seek to look the other way?
And why is it that we care more about paint chips flaking on Barbie and Tickle Me Elmo than the paint on your window sill – when both are abundantly edible to our young children?
A legislative analysis of the bill passed in the whirlwind session last year, S.B. 117, states that “a manufacturer may not be held liable in a product liability action based on market share, enterprise or industry wide liability.” Even if you could sue a paint company in Ohio, the law limits consumer sales lawsuits to actual economic damages, plus an amount not exceeding $5,000 in noneconomic damage, or three times the consumer’s actual economic damages.
It further requires proof that the company is directly responsible for the damaged consumer product – provided some much-needed wiggle room in an age of limited liability companies and outsourced manufacturing.
- “The act requires the claimant, in order to subject a manufacturer to liability for compensatory damages based on a product liability claim, to prove, in addition to the defective nature of the product and proximate cause as described in (1) and (2) above, that the manufacturer designed, formulated, produced, constructed, created, assembled, or rebuilt the actual product that was the cause of the harm for which the claimant seeks to recover compensatory damages. The act provides that proof that a manufacturer designed, formulated, produced, constructed, created, assembled, or rebuilt the type of product in question is not proof that the manufacturer designed, formulated, produced, constructed, created, assembled, or rebuilt the actual defective product in a claim. (R.C. 2307.73(A)(3) and (C).)”
The Ohio law would appear to allow in the case of these tainted toys, for the American company selling the item to pass of liability to the outsourced manufacturer a world away under this new language. Even the notorious toy-hater BurgerMeister MeisterBurger in the classic Christmas cartoon would have to marvel at that little piece of real Ohio law – (we can only wish it were a cartoon.)
In short, it appears to be a sad fact that Communist China takes consumer product liability more seriously than our Grand Ol’ Ohio Democracy here in Ohio’s legislature and Supreme Court. Hoo-Ahh – now there’s a gut punch to our Ohio pride.
Of course in Ohio, it’s always about cash in the system.
Earlier this year, Ohio Citizen Action researched fundraising from both the paint industry and the lobbyists and organizations representing paint companies (law firms, manufacturer’s association and chamber of commerce). The study included money paid to judicial candidates in the years preceding their Supreme Court elections. Obviously, some of these organizations represent other clients and interests – but the study clearly showed large corporate interests were not shy about advocating for the paint industry.
1999-2000—Justice Terrence O’Donnell [lost, later appointed and elected] (Total: $25,450 ($8,000 total from Jones Day, $7,950 total from Sherwin-Williams, $3,000 from OMA)
2001-2002 Evelyn Lundberg Stratton and Maureen O’Connor were running for the Supreme Court in this election cycle.
- Stratton Total: $34,100 ($20,750 total from Jones Day, $6,400 from OMA, $3,250 from OH Chamber, $3,700 from Sherwin-Williams)
- O’Connor Total: Total: $24,450 ($3,250 from the Ohio Chamber, $6,400 from the OMA, $12,700 from
Jones Day, $2,100 from S-W)
2003-2004 –Thomas Moyer, Terrence O’Donnell, and Judith Ann Lanzinger were all elected or re-elected to the Supreme Court in this election. Although Maureen O’Connor wasn’t running, contributions to her are present in this election cycle. All of her contributions are recorded as being received prior to March 6, 2003.
- O’Connor Total: $5,450 ($3,450 from Jones Day)
- Moyer Total: $27,551.67 ($1,526.67 from OMA, $21,525 from Jones Day, $2,000 from S-W)
- O’Donnell Total: $29,051.67 ($6,250 Chamber, $2,526.67 OMA, $15,775 Jones Day, $4,500 S-W)
- Lanzinger Total: $22,876.67 ($5,650 Chamber, $5,526.67 OMA, $7,450 Jones Day, $4,250 S-W)
2005-2006 — Terrence O’Donnell and Robert Cupp won election or re-election to the Supreme Court this cycle.
- O’Donnell Total: $22,675 ($5,625 OH Chamber, $2,100 OMA, $12,450 Jones Day, $2,500 S-W
- Robert Cupp Total: $14,875 ($5,675 Chamber, $2,200 OMA, $5,500 Jones Day, $1,500 S-W)
When the decision to overrule the governor’s veto and preserve the lead paint lawsuit limits came down last month from the Ohio Supreme Court, it was written by Justice Cupp and supported by Chief Justice Moyer and Justices Stratton, O’Connor and O’Donnell. Rather uncharacteristically, Justice Lanziger dissented, disagreeing over the way days are counted leading up to a veto. Justice Pfeiffer strongly dissented.
This, of course, shouldn’t surprise Ohioans. Less than a year ago the New York Times wrote an article by Adam Liptak and Janet Roberts titled, “Campaign Cash Mirrors a High Court’s Ruling” in which Ohio’s notorious pay-to-play system took yet another inglorious black eye, front and center, as national news.
And just what exactly does this mean to Ohio kids whose Barbies and Doras are quarantined, but who still have flakes of paint lying around?
According to the National Safety Council, young children under the age of six are especially vulnerable to health problems because of the development of their brains and central nervous system. “For them, even very low levels of exposure can result in reduced I.Q, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, behavioral problems, stunted growth, impaired hearing and kidney damage. At high levels of exposure, a child may become mentally retarded, fall into a coma or even die from lead poisoning.
In the last ten years, cases of death from lead poisoning have been reported in New Hampshire and Alabama. In adults, the NSC reports that lead poisoning can increase blood pressure, cause fertility problems, nerve disorders, muscle and joint pain, irritability and memory or concentration lapses. In pregnant women, lead poisoning can be transferred to a fetus.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that about 25% of the nation’s housing stock or some 24 million homes contain significant lead paint hazards largely from older homes with deteriorating lead paint or lead-contaminated dust.
Back in December, when the Ohio Legislature passed the cap on damages, Maureen Martin, senior fellow for legal affairs for the right-wing Heartland Institute, told Environment News, “There are relatively simple and inexpensive methods available to homeowners and landlords to keep lead paint intact or to fix it if it deteriorates. So unless there is reason to suspect deteriorated lead-based paint is present in Akron houses and apartments, such inspections might not even be legal. They certainly are not necessary” – HUH?
Doesn’t that just smack of a modern day Marie Antoinette “Let-Them-Eat-Paint” attitude?
Translated to our Chinese Toy crisis, unless you see a toy begin to have paint chip away or pieces start to flake – just let those kids gnaw away – right Ms. Martin? It’s about the free market correcting itself – and hey a few kids mentally afflicted will correct the market in a hurry. Quite a socially responsible and economically responsible attitude.
Apparently, when it comes to China and imported toys, free market ideology takes a backseat to practical public perceptions. Just last week, both U.S. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois; and Rep. Mike Ferguson, a Republican from New Jersey, weighed in with their concerns about product safety. Rep. Ferguson told AP that companies in China have to make sure their products meet our American standards. “If they don’t, I believe Congress must give federal regulators the authority to ensure our kids’ toys won’t actually harm them.”
It makes you wonder – did Rep. Ferguson ever think of pointing that searchlight on our own product liability standards? It sure seems like under the Ohio law, if an Ohioan sued Mattel or any other American toy company, they likely would kick the product liability responsibility to the Chinese manufacturer. Even if you prevailed, even with catastrophic effects on your child’s mental development, your damages for a life of diminished skill would be capped – and this after years of litigation.
But it sure didn’t take years of litigation for the Chinese to correct their toy problem, or for the Consumer Product Safety Commission to force a recall.
But back in Ohio there is just a callousness about the way in which this liability cap issue was passed in a lame-duck session of legislators and a Governor both stuck in their waning days, and on the part of the Ohio-based manufacturers who pushed the issue so expeditiously.
In early August, the Ohio Alliance for Civil Justice — a coalition of businesses — told the Columbus Dispatch after the Governor’s veto was overturned that the law “benefits all Ohioans by protecting jobs and our economy and keeping the state’s businesses competitive.” But you have to wonder about that, given the fact that the Chinese economy does not seem to be slowing down – and if anything, it was the American importer’s lack of quality control that allowed these toys to go into the American market.
Could it be that it was our American callous view of the bottom line that imposed this laisse faire attitude on the Chinese manufacturer? After all, clearly American culture does not react culturally to business improprieties in the same manner as many pan-Asian cultures.
And it raises even more troubling societal issues for each of us as Ohioans.
Do we not care about lead-paint in houses because it mostly deals with older, urban and rural housing where lower-income residents frequent? Do we care more about toys made in China because all kids are exposed, including those in suburbia whose post-1978 housing has no lead-based paint?
Are we xenophobic to the point that we can make the Chinese manufacturer a villain here, which is easier than digging the depths of our souls about the behavior of our own Ohio manufacturers and legislators?
And most of all, although the act itself is not condoned — and at some level a by-product of the totalitarian system in which he lived — there was some sense of cultural duty and humiliation that Cheung Shu-hung felt that August day that he took his own life.
Why here in Ohio, is there no such corporate humility about past actions? Have we really gotten to the point that Ohio legislators and manufacturers are so caught up in their own profit-based ideologies that health of the customer be damned?
The one thing factually certain is that, in China last month a totalitarian Communist regime found a manufacturing scoundrel and moved quickly to shut it down. But in Ohio, we just watched our Ohio Supreme Court re-define our Ohio Constitution to instead say essentially to the same situation: “Let them eat paint.”
It makes you wonder what the purpose of government in Columbus is for, if it’s not to protect our kids health and mental development.
Read more Brian Rothenberg @ progressohio.org
The Joe Shump Legacy
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The decision by 3 county offices to close on Tuesday in memoriam to the passing of former Montgomery Co. Democratic Party chairman may be well intended, but, it is ultimately a very bad decision .Very very seldom am I in agreement with republicans on any issue but Greg Gant, Chairman of the Montgomery Co Republican Party, hit the nail on the head when he said “I think it’s a lack of remembering that you serve the public first“. The inconvenience caused by a partial shutdown of County government will most assuredly backfire as legions of people trying to conduct business will be unable to do so due to the passing of someone they likely neither knew nor care about.
As a leftist political outsider I never knew Joe Shump personally, but I did know he ruled the local Democratic Party with an iron hand, old school party boss style. Decision making by crony-ism, favorite-ism The Party’s history writers will probably say this was a necessary thing during the time when he came to power. I disagree.
The insularity of the Democrats during the period of his dominance guaranteed that, unless you were willing to play by Shump’s rules, you could simply forget being an active or influential player in the Party. It was Joe’s way or the highway. Decision making was definitely not something to be entrusted to the general membership…
Dayton had an activist left during the 70’s and 80’s: The New American Movement, Modern Times Bookstore, the anti-Vietnam war movement, the Miami Valley Power Project, the Dayton branch of the Black Panthers, The Revolutionary Union, Republic of New Africa, The American Friends Service Committee, Dayton Women’s Liberation, just to name a few…Joe Shump’s Democratic Party worked with none of them. None of them. Crony-ism and a vaguely conservative political bent ruled the roost.
Ok, so Democrats got elected. Hand picked in a top down party structure, you were vetted by the few and elected by the masses who followed the party’s dictum’s. That did not, however, build the party’s internal organization, which is why the method’s of old line Bosses like Shump eventually began to lose elections in Montgomery County. No vision, no future.
The revolt that eventually took place and ousted Shump and his cohorts was two steps forward, one step back. Democrats got elected, in a more open nominating process, but a focus on developing the ideological underpinning so vital to the future of a real party has not happened.
The organization Dennis Lieberman “rescued” and which Mark Owens is now leading, is stronger than it has been in years. However, if the party is to truly shake off the more negative aspects of Joe Shump’s legacy it must address the more fundamental question of not just how do Democrats get elected, but why, and, importantly, how are those elected officials held accountable to the people who elected them. You cannot do that without a party base that has a coherent, unified political philosophy . That is the real task that now faces Party leaders. Closing County offices Tuesday is not going to help in that process.
Gov Strickland Outlines New Energy Policy Goals
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| 8.29.07 – Governor Strickland Proposes Energy, Jobs and Progress Plan | ||||
| Columbus, Ohio – Ohio Governor Ted Strickland today announced his Energy, Jobs and Progress plan that will ensure predictability of affordable energy prices and serve as a catalyst to enhance energy industries in Ohio, bringing new jobs while protecting existing jobs.
The Energy, Jobs and Progress plan will achieve three objectives: * Ensure affordable and stable energy prices to protect Ohio consumers and existing Ohio jobs
Read the whole press release @ http://www.governor.ohio.gov/News/August2007/News82907/tabid/348/Default.aspx |
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LEFT OF DAYTON 