A Leftist view on Orange County, USA

From British daily The Morning Star:

A ‘Commie Girl‘ in California

(Sunday 11 May 2008)

Commie Girl in the OC by Rebecca Schoenkopf
(Verso, £9.99)

IF you’re anything unlike me, you will know “the OC” – Orange County, California – from the teen soap aired on Channel 4. I’ve never seen the dratted thing, so all I have is the vague impression of wealthy Yanks with great teeth and computer-generated hair arsing about in Mercedes Benzes having affairs and voting Republican.

Vaguely Gonzo-style journalist “Commie Girl” – aka Rebecca Schoenkopf – admits from the off that there is a lot of truth to this stereotype of a land populated by smug, “Versace-decked, Chardonnay-swilling, Humvee-crashing” bourgeois, but wishes to plead the case for an alternative OC, where “liberal” sensibilities still survive and real humans live vibrant lives.

Commie Girl lives in Orange County and writes for one of its few leftish newspapers. From this base, she ventures out to bring you slices of Americana, descriptions of nights spent with second division lounge singers and punk club owners. She also gatecrashes local meetings of the conservative right and government seminars on “the evil of drugs.”

Dow Chemical pollution and the Bush administration in the USA

This video on Dow Chemical is called Bhopal Disaster – BBC – The Yes Men.

By Naomi Spencer:

US environmental regulatory official forced out after dispute with Dow Chemical

12 May 2008

A regional US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator in a long-running fight with Dow Chemical over pollution announced her resignation May 1, after high-ranking federal officials stripped her of her enforcement powers and told her to quit or be fired by June 1. The ouster is the latest example of the Bush administration’s political interference into science and regulation at the EPA on behalf of big business.

The administrator, Mary Gade, headed the EPA’s Region 5 office in Chicago, which oversees federal enforcement throughout Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Since she was appointed by Bush to the Midwest office in 2006, Gade had pressed for clean-up efforts and pursued penalties against Dow for dioxin contamination surrounding its Midland, Michigan plants.

For decades, Dow has dumped dioxin—a highly toxic byproduct of herbicides and chlorinated chemicals—into local rivers, contaminating fish and wildlife and saturating the water and soil within 50 miles of its plants. Dioxin is known to cause cancer, mutations, and serious skin diseases. The EPA considers the chemical dangerous to public health and the environment even at very low levels because it bioaccumulates, or builds up in the environment and in the body much faster than it breaks down.