You remember that little bonus, licorice-like flavoring that a West Virginia chemical company accidently added to the water of hundreds of thousands of people back in January, 2014?
Remember how those people were told not to drink that water, or even use it to bathe? For days and days?
Polluting profiteer Freedom Industries got the equivalent of a swat from an arthritic, declawed cat as the federal government fined them a whopping $11,000 for the negligent chemical spill that poisoned the water supply of more than 300,000 West Virginians.
It is doubtful whether the company will even have to cough up that paltry amount because, of course, Freedom Industries filed for bankruptcy protection shortly after the spill.
A study estimated the cost to West Virginia business from the ecological disaster at over $61 million.
If corporations are people, why is nobody in jail for this? Certainly not Freedom’s top exec, who asked to be paid during bankruptcy proceedings.
Doing the math, the feds fined Freedom Industries $0.037 per person that had their water supply poisoned by the company’s shoddy chemical storage procedures.
Yes, that’s 3.7 CENTS per person.
Meanwhile, the top execs of Freedom are happily sipping scotch and smoking cigars from their ivory towers. For they assuredly found a way to profit from the demise of Freedom.
And freedom.
