A World Where One Wealthy American's "Freedom" is Hundreds of Thousands of Other American's Damaged Health . . .

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Jeebus Fuck:

“Freedom Industries, the company whose chemical leak contaminated the tap water of 300,000 West Virginians, will cease to exist once it goes through bankruptcy, but that doesn’t mean its executives are out of the chemical business,” according to an excellent investigative report by The Charleston Gazette.

A January spill of a coal-cleaning chemical from one of Freedom’s rusty tanks triggered a major crisis for Charleston residents, who had to find alternate sources of water. Roughly a third of them experienced negative health impacts from the polluted water, experts estimate.

But while Freedom Industries is technically going out of business, its leaders are quietly starting up again under a new name, as the Gazette explains:

Lexycon LLC, a chemical company whose characteristics are strikingly similar to Freedom Industries, registered as a business with the West Virginia secretary of state about a month ago.

The companies share addresses and phone numbers, Lexycon was founded by a former Freedom executive and it has ties to at least two other current or former Freedom executives. …

After the Gazette emailed [Kevin Skiles and Bob Reynolds, former senior Freedom employees who now work for Lexycon,] to ask if the new company was affiliated with Freedom, the two men’s names disappeared from the Lexycon website and a new phone number was listed in their place. …

The companies’ descriptions of their businesses match, almost verbatim. …

http://grist.org/news/the-men-who-poisoned-charlestons-drinking-water-now-have-a-new-business/


Well --- The Gadfly most certainly has to admit that one cannot say that America is not the land of freedom and opportunity.

Too bad that the freedom and opportunity in question in these modern times refers primarily to the freedom and opportunity for those with money and political connections to poison a major American city's fresh water supply as a result of criminal negligence, walk away without any accountability, and with the "freedom" and "opportunity" to just start up a new business, with a new name, in the same industry, working with the same poisonous chemicals, and under the same protectionist, deregulated government framework to insulate your criminal actions.

What a great fucking country huh?



----TFG