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L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

latimes.com

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Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#111

Post by nickpp »

1propionyl wrote: post #17
faitswulff wrote: post #9

> “We found actual photos of the workers at 2 in the morning dumping — not only dumping barrels off of the barges in the middle of the Santa Monica Basin,” he said, “but before they would dump the barrels, they would take a big ax or hatchet to them, and cut them open on purpose so they would sink.” Incredible.

See? This is why we don't need environmental regulations. The market will regulate itself if externalities are properly priced in! (Just pay no mind to how those externalities might be systematically priced and how penalties might be retroactively enforced. If you do you're a freedom-hating socialist!)

After the 2nd world war, governments all over the world exploded atomic ordinance on land, on islands, in water and underground. The environmental effects were unimaginable.

Regulate that.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#112

Post by jameshart »

LittlePeter wrote: post #34
gattilorenz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, DDT is like "IBM". It might mean "International Business Machines", but many people wouldn't immediately recognize it unless the acronym is used (while the opposite is true: if you know what the acronym stands for, you usually know the acronym as well). And I'm sure Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane wouldn't add much for most people that read a newspaper :)

Even from the context, it was not clear to me what DDT was. I suspected it was some chemical. I would have appreciated a sentence or two explaining why it is bad and what it does. What IBM is would typically be clear from the context: "IBM reported record loss in 2nd quarter of 2020".

A sentence like this one in paragraph 7?

> From 1947 to 1982, the nation’s largest manufacturer of DDT — a pesticide so powerful that it poisoned birds and fish — was based in Los Angeles.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#113

Post by MrFantastic »

tsdlts wrote: post #55
dusted wrote: post #2

It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff by dumping it into the sea.. It'd not be unreasonable to hunt down those responsible, and make them pay for cleaning it up. Sure, they're probably dead by now, but they probably left a lot of money. I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at t…

"I don't think it's even relevant that it was not legal at the time". Imagine setting the precedent that the government can unilaterally decide to steal your property based on something your great grandfather did which wasn't even a crime. Do you not see how such a power might be abused in future when you can retroactively punish people for laws where the ink has yet to dry and that they never even committed?

Corporations live forever. They should have an unlimited Statue of Limitations as well.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#114

Post by MrFantastic »

macspoofing wrote: post #63
Hokusai wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> post-hoc punishment post-hoc punishment is the only reasonable punishment. The alternative it to punish people before they commit a crime, and that seems immoral at best. > push a policy My guess, it was already illegal to poison the environment. They just got caught now. > those responsible with something like reconciliation committees ... symbolic gestures are accepted in lieu of prison or capital punishment. Cor…

>post-hoc punishment is the only reasonable punishment. Maybe a little charitable interpretation is warranted? I clearly meant, post hoc rationalization for the punishment. Typically you punish when AN EXISTING law is broken. In this case, OP is arguing for new punishment based on new laws that were broken in the past. >My guess, it was already illegal to poison the environment No. The devil is in the definition of '…

The SCOTUS basically ruled that Corporations are people in the Citizens United case.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#115

Post by eesmith »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #105
eesmith wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's punishment for the children of the rich, then those children born to parents who are broke must also live a punished life, yes? If you are against children being punished because of the economics of their parents, then surely you are in support for a strong social safety network for children (universal subsidized/free childcare, including meals, and healthcare), yes? Which requires taxation or other funding…

The rich will still be rich. They'll come up with complex workarounds. They'll impart the money on their kids while they're still alive. The people who will be screwed are the middle class people who's only (if any) windfall in life is inheriting part of their parents house and using that to pay off their own mortgage or send their kids to college or whatever (and who's kids will likely inherit a share of the house a…

It seems you are making an argument from apathy - since there's nothing we can do about the rich, we shouldn't do anything?

Because we can certainly reduce the number of complex workarounds - which were deliberately introduced to allow the rich to have those workarounds. We can increase the taxation rate for the highest tax bracket, like the 90% it once was. And we can increase the estate tax.

The current federal estate tax has an exemption of $5 million. Just how many middle class families do you think would be unable to send their kids to college if the estate tax rate after the first $5 million was increased? For that matter, how many middle class families would be unable to send their kids to college of the exemption were lowered to $2 million? Because $2 million seems like a lot to me.

Poorer people will receive no windfall in life. Since you want people to have windfall ... how do you want to support poor people? How should the children of the poor go to college or whatever?

Because otherwise what you write sounds like a standard wedge argument - get the middle class to fear for losing what little they have, in order so the rich benefit even more, while the poor get left out.

Higher pay via stronger union rights (repeal Taft-Hartley now!), universal college education. These help give your desired economic windfall for the middle class and my desired windfall for the less well off.

The rich and the children of the rich will still be rich.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#116

Post by LittlePeter »

jameshart wrote: post #112
LittlePeter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even from the context, it was not clear to me what DDT was. I suspected it was some chemical. I would have appreciated a sentence or two explaining why it is bad and what it does. What IBM is would typically be clear from the context: "IBM reported record loss in 2nd quarter of 2020".

A sentence like this one in paragraph 7? > From 1947 to 1982, the nation’s largest manufacturer of DDT — a pesticide so powerful that it poisoned birds and fish — was based in Los Angeles.

You're right. My expectations we wrong. I expected short concise news article, but this seems to be a long-form article. My bad.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#117

Post by vaccinator »

dusted wrote: post #2

It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff by dumping it into the sea.. It'd not be unreasonable to hunt down those responsible, and make them pay for cleaning it up. Sure, they're probably dead by now, but they probably left a lot of money. I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at t…

> Common sense should be the first law.

That's how I thought it was when I was a kid... now I can only wish it was in some instances.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#118

Post by bzbarsky »

macspoofing wrote: post #77
dusted wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you noticed how we generally do not bear any responsible for the wrongs of our parents? For instance, we are not forced to pay their debts, yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind? Seems asymmetrical to me. I'd say, yeah, I guess if you accepted the money, you should accept at least some of the responsibility for how they were amassed.

>yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind The kids of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are getting a miniscule amount of their fathers' wealth - how is that possible if supposedly they have a right to it? So you have it all backwards. The descendent are not entitled to the wealth of their parents or ancestors. The right to property (including disbursement through inheritance) is given to those…

This is very country-dependent. In a number of European countries, the children are in fact entitled to some minimal share of the wealth of their parents (in France this share is between 50 and 75%, depending on the number of children for example), and what Buffet and Gates are doing would be illegal, as I understand it.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#119

Post by sumtechguy »

billyhoffman wrote: post #67
dusted wrote: post #2

It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff by dumping it into the sea.. It'd not be unreasonable to hunt down those responsible, and make them pay for cleaning it up. Sure, they're probably dead by now, but they probably left a lot of money. I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at t…

> I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at the time" The idea that a government can make something illegal and retroactively punish previous offenders is so colossally bad that in the United States the Founding Fathers wrote a prohibition against it into the Constitution. It's not an amendment, such as the right to free speech. They wrote it into Article 1 . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_f…

To add https://www.senate.gov/civics/constitution_item/constitution...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder

The constitution commands the congress to do this "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."

The people who wrote the constitution knew how the crown was abusing people. They wrote it specifically to stop that. It is also attached in many cases to state constitutions.

Specifically in this case

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

Also I am not a lawyer so ....

Perhaps a middle ground can be reached. Where there is some sort of incentive for the inheritors of who did it, to fix it?

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#120

Post by vaccinator »

faitswulff wrote: post #9

> “We found actual photos of the workers at 2 in the morning dumping — not only dumping barrels off of the barges in the middle of the Santa Monica Basin,” he said, “but before they would dump the barrels, they would take a big ax or hatchet to them, and cut them open on purpose so they would sink.” Incredible.

I would make sure that it sunk too if I was dumping toxic stuff in the ocean... That is what BP did when they had that huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico... The dispersant (Corexit[1]) that they used to sink the oil was even more toxic then the oil itself, but at least it hid the mess.

1. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/04/bp-corexit-d...

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