floridagal – Page 9 – Progress Pond

In Florida FEMA giveth, then taketh back, then refuses to give.

Well, that is just a way of putting it, but they do not have a good track record here.

South Florida was hit by Katrina when it was still a Category 1 hurricane. They are being screwed in many ways because FEMA screwed up during the four hurricanes that hit Florida last year.

This article shows that the people who are caught in a Category I hurricane will be victims not only of the storm, but of FEMA’s own fears.

Genuine storm victims pay for FEMA’s past mistakes

But in the case of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA’s renewed devotion to detail means some legitimate storm victims might not get much-needed relief.

The type of disaster declared by President Bush for Broward and Miami-Dade on Sunday, three days after the storm hit, means local governments will get reimbursed for certain expenses, such as emergency personnel overtime and debris removal.

But individuals and homeowners impacted by Katrina are on their own.

As of Monday, FEMA had declined to activate its individual assistance programs, which bring up to $26,200 per household for uninsured damages, repairs and temporary lodging.”

There is more about this, and people will be hurt by these policy shifts from storm to storm. I guess that’s what we get for having a president who hires an Arabian horse guy to lead our emergency management.

Destruction not bad enough for FEMA

“Wednesday, FEMA told Ibanez – and hundreds of other Katrina victims in South Florida – that they aren’t giving individuals there money for repairs or relocation.

“They said this is not a disaster zone,” she said, in Spanish.”

FEMA officials said that local and state governments, along with volunteer and charity groups, have the capability of helping people like Ibanez in Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe Counties.

South Florida officials disagree and are livid. They can give families a meal or two, but say they are incapable of providing semi-permanent housing or financial aid.

“We’re not geared for the long term,” said Don DiPetrillo, Davie’s fire chief and emergency management coordinator. “I’m not sure if the county is geared for that.”

Then, to add insult to injury, FEMA is asking that many Floridians pay them back…yes, I said pay them back. They goofed, and they are going to make Floridians who went through two storms last year pay them back.

Payback Time for Hurricane Victims in Florida

AP) The Federal Emergency Management Agency has asked thousands of Floridians whose homes were damaged by last summer’s four hurricanes to give back more than $27 million in aid overpayments.

FEMA earlier this year began mailing letters to residents in efforts to recoup the overpayments from people who received federal aid after Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne hit Florida last August and September.

According to data supplied to The News-Press of Fort Myers through a Freedom of Information Act request, the agency detailed 6,579 cases in which they say people owe a total of $27.2 million.

I call this one “damage is whatever FEMA says it is.”

FEMA May Not Assist Individuals

FEMA is giving aid to local governments, but has yet to decide on helping individual storm victims. One reason: criticism that it was overly generous last year.

But damage to individual homes in South Florida is spotty and scattered. And emergency managers in Miami-Dade and Broward have worked to help FEMA inspectors find all the trouble spots in the two large counties.

”There was more widespread flooding, but apparently the flooding did not go into a lot of homes,” said Craig Fugate, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. “Most of the damage that the [FEMA] staff has seen has been very isolated.”

FEMA uses a complex, shifting formula to make its decision. Emergency managers say FEMA needs to identify anywhere from 100 to 800 homes with major damage to send help. FEMA says there’s no magic number.”

Sounds good on paper unless you are one of the individuals who fall between the cracks, so to speak. Some of the people who being asked to pay back are not even through getting their homes repaired from last year’s hurricanes and were within the legal guidelines. I don’t see much of Jeb speaking out on this. He has been hunkered down with insurance companies and developers figuring out best how to screw those with houses on the coastline. They will now require they have 3 separate policies….wind, flood, and other..regular coverage.

South Florida was hit by a hurricane, and FEMA changed the rules mid game. No way in hell to tell what they will do in New Orleans.

This is not New Orleans. This is a picture of Miami after Katrina.

I found this at a link for pictures of Katrina damage. I just happened to notice the caption. There has been almost no coverage of how bad things have been in Miami.

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In this Aug. 26, 2005 file photo provided by the Miami Dade-Fire Rescue Dept., homes in South Dade County (Fla.) are seen submerged in rising water caused by Hurricane Katrina. The loss of life and property caused by Hurricane Katrina is expected to exceed the wrath of record-setting Hurricane Andrew, which struck in 1992. (AP Photo/Miami Dade-Fire Rescue, Lt. Eric Baum, File )

I don’t have too much to say about this, except I did not know about it. Is the media really that good at being lousy? Or did anyone just not notice. I searched for more pictures, and I hardly found any at all. Maybe more will show up at a later date.
I found this from the Miami Hurricane website, the football team that is. Looks like it hit the campus pretty bad.

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I just did not know about this.

The most tragic effect of Florida hurricanes: 95% of low income housing destroyed.

When I heard the head of FEMA talking tonight on CNN, I just got angry. Maybe I am wrong to be that way, but he sounded like he had it all down pat. Maybe they are better organized there, as they have had private companies working a year on catastrophic hurricane possibilities. My previous diary lists the 3 companies involved in New Orleans supposedly.

FEMA may have privatized New Orleans emergency management.

I do kmow they did not have it together here. Eventually they showed up. The most aid went to Miami, and the damn hurricane did not even hit there! They did help a lot in many areas, but it was NOT immedidate. There were huge delays. They had become part of Homeland Security, and just were not set up as they should be.

Now after rambling, here is my point. I think the most tragic part of this will be the new homeless class from these hurricanes. Bottom line is that when low income housing was destroyed, nearly 95% in Charlotte County where Charlie veered ashore suddenly, they consciously decided not to rebuild it. Instead they are enriching the tax base by building nicer homes and new businesses.

The people in FEMA village there, some 500 trailers, will have to get out in February. This article shows their quandary, which basically is that they have nowhere to go.
Misery Follows Charley’s Path: First of Four Hurricanes to Terrorize Florida in 2004

In many ways, it could be just another development of the kind so common to Florida — an instant neighborhood, hastily constructed and treeless, with little space between the homes.

Unlike typical developments, though, this one bears the stamp of planned obsolescence.

The community just outside Punta Gorda, officially called the Airport Mobile Home Park, is scheduled to vanish Feb. 13 — 18 months after Hurricane Charley made landfall on Florida’s southwest coast and churned northeast through the state.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency built the 59-acre community in a cow pasture next to the Charlotte County Airport to house people displaced by Charley. The agency laid sewer and water lines, installed an electrical grid and built roads to serve the largest temporary housing center FEMA has ever built.

It was good that FEMA provided these services. I have no gripe with that. But these people on the whole have nowhere to go. Their housing needs would not override the monetary importance of businesses and fancy homes that pay more taxes.

The park gives off a harsh, almost blinding aura as the summer sunlight reflects off the homes’ shiny, white metal skins and bounces off the limestone roads laid out in a grid. No trees dilute the glare, and the only color comes from the cars parked beside the homes. The sterile atmosphere doesn’t seem to bother Hurst, who said he’s grateful to FEMA for providing a home, rent-free.

“I’d be lost without them,” said Hurst, 38, who is legally blind and lives off monthly disability payments of $720. “I’ll stay here until I run out of money.”

Residents are only required to pay for water and electricity but can opt for cable and phone service, said FEMA spokeswoman Bettina Hutchings.

These are the kind of people the right wing extremists and bloggers call irresponsible, say they need to pay their way. I believe most have jobs and are productive citizens, but they can not find housing they can afford. It is not being rebuilt because of cutbacks in federal funding and just plain greed.

NOWHERE TO GO

But where Rusty and his dad will live after the makeshift village closes remains unsettled. FEMA estimates that Hurricane Charley wiped out 95 percent of Charlotte County’s low-income housing.

“There’s no place to go,” Hurst said. “We can’t live anywhere down here with these rents. The prices go $800 to $1,000 down here.”

DAMAGE PERSISTS

A year after Charley, Punta Gorda is a hodgepodge of devastation and renewal, with new homes and businesses rising amid the wreckage of the old.

Some houses remain unoccupied in the historic district near Charlotte Harbor, and vacant lots signal the disappearance of others.

“We’re starting to get new businesses opened that were not here previous to Hurricane Charley,” Nemec said. “Out of the rubble, we’re starting to see a lot of positive motion.”

And out of that rubble they are building finer things, and the people in FEMA village have nowhere to go. And I have seen very few articles that point this out, and very few people who care.

3 private companies contracted for New Orleans hurricane planning over a year ago.

They contracted with FEMA and Homeland Security to work up a plan for hurricane catastrophe in that area. This was over a year ago.

IEM Team to Develop Catastrophic Hurricane Disaster Plan for New Orleans & Southeast Louisiana

June 3, 2004

“IEM, Inc., the Baton Rouge-based emergency management and homeland security consultant, will lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans under a more than half a million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

In making the announcement today on behalf of teaming partners Dewberry, URS Corporation and James Lee Witt Associates, IEM Director of Homeland Security Wayne Thomas explained that the development of a base catastrophic hurricane disaster plan has urgency due to the recent start of the annual hurricane season which runs through November. National weather experts are predicting an above normal Atlantic hurricane season with six to eight hurricanes, of which three could be categorized as major.

The IEM team will complete a functional exercise on a catastrophic hurricane strike in Southeast Louisiana and use results to develop a response and recovery plan. A catastrophic event is one that can overwhelm State, local and private capabilities so quickly that communities could be devastated without Federal assistance and multi-agency planning and preparedness. Thomas said that the greater New Orleans area is one of the nation’s most vulnerable locations for hurricane landfall.

“Given this area’s vulnerability, unique geographic location and elevation, and troubled escape routes, a plan that facilitates a rapid and effective hurricane response and recovery is critical,” he said. “The IEM team’s approach to catastrophic planning meets the challenges associated with integrating multi-jurisdictional needs and capabilities into an effective plan for addressing catastrophic hurricane strikes, as well as man-made catastrophic events.”

Links to these companies sites below the fold. I am not sure how much of the burden falls on them, and whether FEMA will do its share.
I do hope the afterstorm problems are handled in a more effective way that they were in Florida. I can barely control my anger at the lack of planning here. I admit my thoughts are colored by my experiences. But to learn this administration cut funding for management in New Orleans, just as they did here in Florida….and to learn they have in effect privatized hurricane management there just really upsets me.

Welcome to IEM

Over the last 19 years, Innovative Emergency Management, Inc. (IEM) has become one of the leading risk management companies in the US, providing services to private industry and government agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the US Department of Defense.

Virtually all of our corporate efforts are focused on keeping people safe–at home, at work, and on the battlefield. Our clients rely on our science-based solutions to sensitive and complex problems….”

James Lee Witt and Associates has Witt as chairman and Wesley Clark as Vice Chairman.

James Lee Witt and Associates

“Founded in 2001, James Lee Witt Associates (JLWA) is a crisis and emergency management consulting firm based in Washington, DC with offices in Atlanta, Chicago, and Sacramento. JLWA has unrivaled experience and hands-on knowledge of public safety, disaster mitigation, continuity of operations, and emergency management issues. JLWA bridges government agencies and non-profits with industry and constituents, advises educational institutions, and assists state and local governments, as well as international bodies to prepare for and recover from disasters and crises.”

Also on board are Dewberry Associates out of Virginia:
http://www.dewberry.com/

and also
URS Corporation
which is the largest global engineering design firm and a leading U.S. federal government contractor.

I hope they have used the year and three months wisely to plan for these people of New Orleans. Evacuation was not good today, but then that is hard anywhere. I hope the after care is better than Florida….so many of ours are still messed up.

I hope this administration did the right thing, and that it regulated and oversaw the planning…but somehow I don’t feel very confident about that.

Democrats for Life and "Judgement Day" or don’t call it murder.

In the spirit of letting it all hang out about the trojan horses calling themselves Democrats…I submit a Daily Kos diary I wrote about a month ago. It was not crossposted here, and I think we need to stay on guard with these folks. I don’t want to hear about Judgement Day and my rights. This post also shows that Democrats for Life and Feminists for Life are working together.

From my DailyKos Diary July 26.

I want our Democrats to be very careful in allying with groups who want to control a woman’s right to choose. Those groups may be well-intended, and I am sure they help out a lot of women.

My fear is that we might be getting in over our heads without fully realizing how involved we are getting involved with less moderate Christian groups.

I found this speech by the then president of Democrats for Life. That is the group now pressuring Howard Dean to work with them, and many congress people are doing the same.

Here is the link to the speech and its referral to Judgement Day…an implication I don’t like. That is putting too much religion into politics. The speech is from 1997, and it shows that Democrats for Life is connected and works with Feminists for Life. It shows a moral judgement being made on those who have abortions. We need to be careful about that.

More below.

Speech by president of Democrats for Life

“Also at the booth will be literature from Feminists for Life of America. I serve as the state contact for Feminists for Life.

“Feminists for Life members are teaming with Crisis Pregnancy Centers to offer referrals and other information for the use of health clinics on college campuses. .

The Democrats for Life and Feminists for Life organizations are proof that all people can and should be pro-life.”

Now the part that even though I am a Christian I find offensive. It has a condemning tone and it intrudes religion into what should be private. Remember this is the president of Democrats for Life.

“So, my rallying cry for this rally is to call upon former Democrats who are pro-life to come back to the party, take your place, and make your opinion known. Democrats who are closet pro-lifers, I call upon you to stop being afraid to speak the truth. On Judgment Day you will not be asked if you are a follower of the Democratic platform, but if you were a follower of the word of God. A little political power is not worth becoming an accomplice to the murder of millions of babies.”

Here is the Democrats for Life website with Tim Roemer featured prominently.

Democrats for Life

Here is the Feminists for Life website with Jane Roberts featured prominently.

Feminists for Life

I have concerns. I think they are putting tremendous pressure on Howard Dean to not only welcome this group into the party but cede them great authority. I am not sure this is the right thing to do.

Dear God, please stop our Democrats from talking like this.

There has been too much of this kind of talking about the president and the war and Saddam. I read this today, and I wanted to scream. Harold, stop this.

Harold Ford sort of ties 9/11 to Saddam

“I support this war in Iraq. I supported it from the very beginning for one reason. Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. Now, there are those who criticize and quarrel with this, and make the point over and over again that perhaps we shouldn’t have done it the way we’ve done it, and I would agree. But I wouldn’t blame the president, or anybody else for that matter, from waking up on September 12th and wondering aloud what would happen if Saddam Hussein and bin Laden married.”

“It would be very easy for us to sit back in the comfort of our own homes and say, Well, one is secular and one is religious and they won’t . It would be very easy for us to think that 9/11 wouldn’t happen, but it did.”

“Bush’s “instinct” had been right, said Ford, who has visited Iraq three times in the last two years and plans a fourth visit, but there is “a lot of room for change” in how the president pursues operations in Iraq. “I love my president. I love him personally,” Ford said. “But he’s just wrong. – wrong for not being willing to admit that we’ve made some mistakes….It was right to take him [Saddam] down but wrong to think that we can’t right this course.”

Talking this way is non-productive. Ford bothers me with his words sometime. I know I don’t live in Tennessee, but his votes affect me as well. Hardly anyone ties 9/11 to Saddam now, but he just apparently did. He should know better.

We destroyed their groves of dates and oranges.

Just a little remembering of what we have done in Iraq. This article just brought tears in 2003 when I read it. There were just two tiny pictures with it. The story was not long, but it tells a portion of our sad legacy there in that country of Iraq.

To Avenge Their Trees, Iraqi Farmers Threaten Resistance

DULUIYAH, October 10 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Khudeir Khalil was a simple quiet Iraqi farmer before U.S. forces drove tanks onto his property.

Claiming his lush date and orange groves provide camouflage for resistance fighters, the U.S. occupation forces leveled Khalil’s plantations.

But he feels skeptical, wondering “what kind of civilized people are those who are destroying my plants”.

“They say resistance fighters could hide in the fields, but I tell you these are my fields and nobody goes into them. There are no attacks around here,” he told Agence France-Presse (AFP), as a mob of angry men in traditional Arab white robes nod in support.

Khalil is sitting on the side of a dusty road leading to his native Duluiyah, a large village where Sunni Muslim tribes farm a modest living out of the banks of the Tigris river. But the plantation fields are barren resembling the aftermath of a hurricane after U.S. troops last week razed the paddocks of fruit trees. Now a handful of residents are scavenging the trunks and debris to make charcoal.

“We cannot benefit from the fruits anymore, so we will try to earn some money from charcoal,” explained Mohammad Saleh amid the stone houses which were once shaded by the plantation.

These two pictures speak louder than any words could speak. This is part of our legacy there. We won’t be forgotten.

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The worst thing Bush has done is to divide families.

Suddenly in 2002, I realized that there were people called “liberals” who were held in serious disdain by the people who were called “conservatives.”

It happened the day we said to a family member that we thought Bush was wrong to attack Iraq, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. All hell broke loose. It never occurred to me that this family member could not see it. They are highly educated, intelligent.

It did not register until during the confrontation I heard the word “liberal” being tossed about angrily. It took days before it all sank in. I realized they really had no clue, they only heard what the RNC said and what the military said. Much of their contacts were still in the military, and it never entered their minds to question.

Even sadder and scarier, I tried to share my heartbreak with another family member in another state. Again a well-educated, well-read individual whose family had fallen under Rush Limbaugh’s spell. They trusted him for their news. Another heartbreak there. We never really finished the conversation that day.
Yet another, one of my children, stunned me. He called to see why everyone was so angry with me. Apparently they had contacted him. I told him his Dad and I questioned the reasons for war. He said he trusted the president, and the others did as well.

He said it is not the time to be questioning our nation’s leader. This is not a stupid guy. He is a brilliant young man with a good life and several graduate degrees.

We have tried since then, but we can’t get back to where we were. I have made it clear that I am not going to back down, that when they are ready to talk….I am willing. But I told them they had better come well-armed to dispute me on things, as I had facts on my side.

We still try, our son calls. We talk about mundane things. It is really easier not to really talk much.

This family of mine was once one which never thought it would split apart like this. I think they all now know, they have to know by now…they have to know by now what horrible things Bush as done. As I say, they are nothing if not brilliant people.

But there is a stubbornness that lingers, and I have it as well. I feel like they left us hanging out to dry and questioned our patriotism and our understanding.

I never even thought of myself as anything but a moderate, religious person who cared about people. This president managed to turn my family upside down, and I am still dumbfounded at how it all happened.

I hear other stories, and the people always say to fix the problem….don’t let it go. But I don’t think some things are really fixable, not yet. I refuse to give up what I believe, and I have facts on my side.

It may not be fixed for a long time. Their power was so entrenched in our culture that we were divided before we even defined ourselves. It was a sudden onslaught of hate and anger that caught good people off guard.

I forgive them for the things they said, but that is all I can do right now. It is their turn to step up and realize they lost their country also.

Howard Dean: "We became afraid of the Right, afraid of the anger"

In his book, “You Have the Power”, Dean talks about the Democrats’ loss of power in the 90s. I think his words were vital and clear. They were not meant to attack or belittle; they were meant to point out that we could just could not do this any longer.

I want him to keep that clear voice, not let it get muddled.

He has many good things to say about Clinton, quite complimentary. However, he goes on to blame the DLC for claiming credit for Clinton’s win for the wrong reason. He says Clinton won because he was Bill Clinton, because he had a personal kind of magic. He says the DLC claims he won because he moved to the right.

“The Democrats, throughout the 1980s and early 1990s didn’t stick up for the people who were left behind by the Reagan revolution and the corporate restructuring that came at the end of the first Bush recession. Eschewing ‘class warfare’, they didn’t stick their necks out for the millions of American whose wages and living standards were frozen or falling.”

The Democrats missed the growing resentment of the ‘angry white men’ who would later vote them out of congress because they just weren’t listening. And when….tried to catch up with the Republicans by belatedly wooing angry white men, they failed to understand that we needed to woo them differently…not with the unsubtle appeals to racism and homophobia used by the Republican Right, but with economic arguments. We began to soft pedal our opposition to racism….and downplayed our remarkable achievements on civil rights…”

SNIP…“We became afraid of the Right, afraid of the anger, and instead of being steadfast, we pandered….The Democratic Party has paid a big price for that. Worse, our people have paid a big price for the collapse of our will to lead. We failed to articulate a vision for American that keyed into Americans’ hope of overcoming economic and social instability. …”

….“By remaining silent about the things that mattered so much to Americans, we allowed ourselves to be painted into a corner and to be defined by the Republican opposition. ..”

Then he says this kind of behavior “laid the groundwork for the rise of the radical right”.

Further,he talks about trying to get help from congressional Democrats in 1991 for the states to pass health care bills on their own. He and several governors went to talk to the House leadership. They asked for changes in federal laws that were keeping states from working out their own plans for universal health care. The leadership refused to help on the grounds, he says, that many had waited their whole careers to pass it, and they did not yet have the votes….and they did not want to states to do it. (Page 62)

And a paragraph from page 63 that just makes me furious. Again from 1991 and early 90s.

SNIP..”Many of the congressional Democrats wouldn’t take a risk on anything that might be unpopular, be subject to attack, or allow other people to outshine them in getting some actual work done. So they wouldn’t give a green light to the governors in 1991; and a few years later, they wouldn’t hear the signals coming from Bob Dole that he was willing to compromise on Clinton’s health-care plan. They were paralyzed between their fear of losing an election and their fear of change. In the end they lost and became the victims, in 1994, of the most sweeping congressional changes in sixty-two years. They set the table for Newt Gingrich. It was an awful irony: After decades of domination by the so-called party of the people, the party of FDR and Harry Truman, America continued, at the turn of the millennium, to be the only country in the industrialized world that didn’t have health insurance for all its people. “

“The Democrats, who by the early 1990s had been in power in Congress without interruption for forty years, became so obsessed with keeping their seats and staving off challenges that they forgot why they were there.”

I want Howard Dean to keep up the straight talking. He was not being anything but honest in these words. We need them now as well. I know he has to stand up for everyone in the party, but I do hope he keeps calling things as they are. Someone has to do it, but no one else is or has.

I can hear his anger coming out from things that happened in the early 90s, back when I was not even paying attention. Because he spoke out, I am paying attention now.

A Ribbon of Wastewater: "This is one really big experiment" Dying Gulf of Mexico

They say the deadness in the Gulf of Mexico is a mystery. It is not. It was probably in part due to that one “really big experiment”.

The article about the deadzone Monday.
Gulf of Mexico Mystery

Right now, anywhere we go from shore to 20 miles offshore, from Sarasota to Tarpon Springs, we can’t find a single creature alive on the bottom right now,” said Miller.

Miller says he’s never seen such death and devastation under water in his 20 years of diving.

“All the coral, all the sponges, all the crabs, not a single living thing, all the star fish, the brittle stars, everything’s dead,” said Miller

They should not have been surprised at all. They knew what was going to happen, and profit for corporations outweighed their caring for the environment.

Last Stand: A Ribbon of Wastewater

“This is really one big experiment” … and Keys’ waters are the guinea pig. Remember that everything that goes into the Gulf of Mexico… including what comes from the Mississippi River… unless it settles to the bottom, flows through the Strait of Florida… past the Keys. Dilution is not the solution to pollution. This 8/02 Miami Herald article describes the “experiment”.

“For two weeks, a barge has been dumping millions of gallons of wastewater from a bankrupt fertilizer plant into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, looping currents have drawn water from the dump zone, along with a huge plume of runoff from the Mississippi River, toward the Keys and into the Florida Straits. Satellite tracking showed traces of the stream off Marathon on Friday and it likely will continue to flow up along the East Coast.

Scientists monitoring the state’s ocean dumping plan don’t expect significant effects, but the nutrient-laced stream brings with it considerable uncertainty and the unsettling specter of fish-killing red tides and the ”black water” algae bloom that devastated sensitive corals, sponges and seagrasses in the Keys last year.

”We don’t really know what the impact will be,” said Mitchell Roffer, a Miami-based biological oceanographer hired to monitor the dumping for the fishing industry. “This is really one big experiment.”

There is little to worry about, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection insists.

The agency concocted the controversial and expensive ( about $120 million) scheme to dispose of about 500 million gallons of highly acidic water brimming in pits perilously close to fragile Tampa Bay.

It was still going on in 2003, and in 2004 to some degree after the hurricanes here. Jeb knew it. His legislative friends knew it, the DOE and the EPA knew it. They did not care.

I wish I could find my back records on these phosphate mines. I know that the owners polluted, sold, and left the country. Last I heard, one of them, a close Bush friend was living high on the hog in a middle east country. I will find it someday. These companies knew they were destroying my state in many ways, radio-active gypsum piles still standing, acidic water not controlled.

They knew dumping toxic wastes in the Gulf of Mexico would kill the life there. They just did not care.