351–360 of 366 posts
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For that you need to stop produce idiot voters.
Well to be fair, it's difficult to be an educated voter since the candidates are allowed to say whatever they want in the election period and aren't beholden to follow through with the terms they were elected for.
Electioneering should be treated the same as advertising and have the same penalties for making false or misleading statements.
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The majority of us did not vote for this. Without gerrymandering or the electoral college, Congress and the White House would be overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats.
Actually this is the result of a two party system, not some nefarious political conspiracy. The electoral college is the way we elect presidents for a reason. If we went by population, a huge chunk of the country's vote wouldn't matter and the Democrats would win every election. I'm pretty sure that's exactly the opposite of what the founders of the country envisioned. If you're not happy about what's going on, get y…
It's funny that you say that because in France the house is often divided, but one common way to get a law passed is put a vote when most representative are absent, except those of the preseident's party.
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Most of those companies were destroyed for it. That's why the parent is speculating companies wouldn't do it now that the medical dangers are fully understood and the matter has been turned into a vast, lucrative profit field in the legal realm.
>Most of those companies were destroyed for it. But how many CEO's were?
Having just lost a father-in-law to mesothelioma (June 2018), this makes me incredibly sad. I understand this is not an actual rule change and blah blah blah. 3,000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma each year. What a slow and horrific way to go. Slowly losing your breath. Lungs filling with fluid and being rushed off to ER to drain. Endless breathing treatments. Never sleeping more than an hour without waking up…
It does say it's only being approved in special cases. I wouldn't expect the building industry to suddenly start using it again. How many of those 3000 are a legacy of the previous eras misunderstanding of the chemical? I doubt any company would ignore that risk and produce a product that put people at a direct and unknown risk, especially given the legal liability since we now know the full risks of the chemical and…
I'm sorry, but they have done and still do exactly that all the time in the name of profit! Often it takes decades for the public to learn the truth.
Here's a few examples:
- 3M knew already in 1970 that PFOA and PFOE (used in their non-stick frying pan coatings) was toxic and accumulated in peoples blood[1]. - Volkswagen emission scandal[2] - Oil companies' continuous support of fake science, lobbying, advertisement and grant making to oppose regulation. Exxon knew about climate change 40 years ago[3]. - Leaded fuel..
And that's just the few I could think about at a moments notice..
[1]: https://theintercept.com/2018/07/31/3m-pfas-minnesota-pfoa-p... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal [3]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...
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This is so true. We should just ban lobbying because it is only used by rich corporations and individuals.
Do many technology companies (Facebook, Google, etc.) not use lobbying to fight for tech interests?
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If something is popular, problems tend to become apparent. It can be an unknown with a new chemical, but for something like chlorine which has had massive public exposure for a very long time, it’s fairly safe to say that it doesn’t have much in the way of negative effects at low levels of exposure.
What about cigarettes, lead pipes, lead paint? There's quite a few chemicals/toxins that were in use for thousands of years before any did anything about them. Even something as simple as hygiene is new to doctors as of the 18th century.
Are there any examples of things that were in pervasive use around, say, 1970 but didn’t get recognized as dangerous until recently? I think there are examples in nutrition, but I don’t know about environmental toxins.
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Lobbying is just a legal form of corruption. Ban it, and it will still continue to exist underground anyway. What we need is to stop voting for idiot politicians.
As long as good politicians feel they'll be disadvantaged if they aren't selling themselves like the idiot ones are the good ones will line up for the money. Certainly it's better to outlaw it rather than to simply allow it to happen. You will never catch 100% of the people breaking the law, but you can create an environment of transparency and accountability to help and you can make it costly enough for those who ar…
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yes. that's right. it was the proliferation of costly lawsuits in recent decades which diminished the use of asbestos in the US. companies are still trying to resolve all of these lawsuits. what kind of incentives would need to be in place for a company to willingly put that lawsuit target on its own back?
I've heard people argue that a much more effective way to do environmental regulation would be to basically not regulate and instead increase liability standards for environmental/health damage. Right now, in many cases, if a factory is dumping toxic sludge into a river and they're within EPA limits, there's nothing anybody can do to stop it. If you allowed farmers downstream to come after them for damaging crops (or…
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"all levels of asbestos exposure studied to date have demonstrated asbestos-related disease ... there is no level of [asbestos] exposure below which clinical effects do not occur" https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/81-103/pdfs/81-103.pdf
> However, in general, people who become ill from inhaling asbestos have been regularly exposed in a job where they worked directly with the material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos > Asbestos can be found naturally in the air outdoors and in some drinkable water, including water from natural sources. Even nonoccupationally exposed members of the human population have tens to hundreds of thou…
His "regular job" did not involve working directly with the material and Asbestos continues to kill hundreds of pople each year who do not directly work with this material. https://www.teachers.org.uk/edufacts/asbestos
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Also from snopes: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/russian-asbestos-trump_fac... >Did a Russian Asbestos Company Put Trump’s Face on Their Product? >A Russian asbestos producer shared a photograph of their product to social media with a seal of Donald Trump’s face and the text "Approved by Donald Trump”.
They should probably also mention that all of the United States asbestos imports comes from Brazil. >All asbestos used in this country is imported. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the only form of asbestos currently imported into the United States is chrysotile, all of which originated from Brazil in 2017(USGS, 2018). USGS reports that in 2017, the United States imported approximately 300 metric tons…