House Panel Probes "Poisoned Patriots"
Ex-Marines Seek Nearly $4B For Exposure To Chemicals At Camp LejeuneI do not know who should be blamed for this tragedy, but on some level we are all to blame. Whoever is directly responsible for this needs to be punished, and we, as a civilization, need to do a better job of ensuring this never happens again. Through our collective power, that is administered through government, we must do a better job of protecting ourselves and our world.
WASHINGTON, June 12, 2007
(CBS/AP) Marine families who lived at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina over three decades drank water contaminated with toxins as much as 40 times over today's safety standard, federal health investigators said Tuesday.
The government disclosed results from a new scientific study on the same day that some families testified for Congress about cancers and other illnesses they blame on drinking tainted tap water at the sprawling training and deployment base.
The House Energy and Commerce panel on oversight and investigations, which is holding a hearing on the subject, describes the sickened Marines as "poisoned patriots."
Chemicals from a local dry cleaners seeped into Lejeune's water for three decades, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin. During that time, 75,000 people lived there and some 20,000 children were born.
That is why I do not understand the propensity of those on the Right who claim that "goverment doesn't work." They then run for office in government based on that ideology and set about proving their ideology by running government badly. If they fail to make sure government fails, they run the risk of invalidating their own belief system.
Ronald Reagan, the ideological leader of the Right, claimed "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" With that as their mind set, it is no wonder then that when the Republicans had complete control of government for the first six years of this century, they succeeded in making the government dysfunctional.
Capitalism without government regulation and oversight is dangerous. It leads to tragedies like the story above. The conservative and libertarian pursuit of an unrestrained free market and their worship of the "almighty" dollar is hazardous to the health and welfare of everyone.
If unregulated capitalism were a good thing we would not need entities like the FDA, the EPA, and the SEC, but neccessity was the mother of invention for those government agencies. History has proven their worth, but despite this, when Republicans get into power, they do everything they can to diminish the power of those agencies to protect the public.
And the public is still willing to vote for them? This is insane behavior. About half of the public actually buys the Republican lie that says "government doesn't work," yet those same people depend on the government for public services. Roads, police, fire departments, national defense, public schools, and more are needed and used by the public constantly. That is why I do not understand the conservatives' opposition to "socialized" medicine. All the public services that I just mentioned are forms of socialism, yet "socialism" has become some sort of scary word used by Republicans to frighten people away from something that 70% or more of Americans want: socialized medicine.
We have and need public roads, public schools, and public defense; we should have and do need public medicine. It is that simple.
I know that no system is perfect, and certainly government is no exception, but why do Republicans want us to believe that a "free market" is. The only thing that is "free" about a "free market" is the freedom of the wealthy to exploit the health and welfare of the poor to gain more wealth. And "free trade agreements" are just an extension of that practice; they are used by the wealthy to exploit the poor in other countries for greed.
We need to change the debate in this country and in the world so that our ideals are to have a "fair market" supported by "fair trade agreements." Because in a fair market we would have regulations and protections that benefit not just the wealthy but the poor as well.
By exemplifying the ideals of a fair market economy, we can strive to better our country, improve the poor conditions in other countries that lead to war and terrorism, and put an end to the poisoning of patriots.
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