Who Needs Fresh Air?

[sandnsea]

I about fell over when I saw this at Yahoo a while ago. What good is fresh air??? Unbelievable.

"'What good is fresh air if you have a lot of unemployed people breathing it?' asks Stec, president and CEO of Lexington Home Brands."

This is the first time I have seen a CEO attack environmental regulation in such a breathtaking fashion showing the blatant disregard for not only his employees, but entire populations. Lexington joined a trade petition in August of 2003 claiming Chinese manufacturers are selling products at artificially low prices, otherwise known as dumping. Now they are claiming it is the $1 million per plant pollution upgrades that are to blame for his company moving plants overseas. Funny, but I would have thought building a new plant would cost over a million dollars and would require the most modern pollution controls anyway. Is Mr. Stec saying he intends to disregard the environment and health of the Chinese as well?"

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=401

[Cleita]

1. Well, they need to visit Libby, Montana where breathing

the polluted air created by their mining industry kept the town employed and now they are all dying of cancer.

[ken-in-seattle]

2. china air quality?

[Cha]

5. Again, Wow! It feels really strange

looking at that picture of China..I would expect more people.

[Cha]

4. Wow..that's sad..who

knew? Course they ain't gonna broadcast that!

On edit~ Calling Erin Brockovich!

[Cleita]

6. Too late for Erin.

This is what happens in states with practically no regulations on companies that pollute. Montana learned it the hard way.

[sandnsea]

9. Mining began in 1920

We didn't even know what asbestos was then. How could you regulate for something you didn't know existed?

[Cleita]

10. Mining pollution has been a problem througout Montana.

Regulation came too late even after they knew about the asbestos and arsenic poisoning in other mining towns. We kind of had the same problem in the fifties and sixties in LA. The air pollution was so bad from the oil refineries sometimes you couldn't see green/red light across the street. Yet, although it was blamed on car exhaust and burning trash, on the days the refineries didn't operate, like on the weekends, the air cleared up considerably.

It took decades of fighting the oil industry to clean up their act. Yet I wonder how many children's asthma and adult COPD's can be blamed on that time. I think that is why I have asthma.

[sandnsea]

12. I lived in Montana

They've been working harder at cleaning up their rivers and air than any other place I've lived. I lived in the central valley of CA in the 70's too. I wouldn't be bragging about CA air quality. It hasn't gotten any better.

[Cleita]

13. Yes, the Montanans have been trying very hard finally.

They have learned that they have to. Boy, you really picked the worst part of California to live in didn't you? No, our air quality still has a ways to go in urban areas but it's sure an improvement from fifty years ago.

Also, on edit. In traveling through forested states including Montana, back in the nineties, it seems like guys dying in the woodchipper of the lumber mills was a gruesome accident that seemed to happen rather regularly. I hope that safety standards have improved since then.

[apple_ridge]

8. Or come to Maine, a very rural state that regularly posts the

highest ozone levels in the country on hot summer days.

[Cha]

3. It's black or

fucking white with them. How about jobs provided by alternative energy sources?

They obviously need a biology crash course to brush them up on the needs of the plant, animal, and humanoid body.

[porphyrian]

7. Yeah, all unemployed people should just fucking die!

C'mon! Who's with Robert Stec, president and CEO of Lexington Home Brands, in beginning this initiative to stop working towards fresh air as long as it's being wasted on those worthless unemployed pieces of shit? As CEO of Lexington Home Brands, Robert Stec is certainly an expert on the worthlessness of the unemployed, having seen them on TV and on the street from his limousine window on several occasions. Not a single employee of Lexington Home Brands, the "spectacular world of home furnishings choices to suit your home, your lifestyle, and your taste," is unemployed, and Robert Stec plans to keep it that way. With brands such as Bob Timberlake GrandKids created exclusive of clean air and the unemployed, Lexington Home Brands, under the leadership of CEO Robert Stec, hopes to spearhead the boycotting of fresh air as long as the undeserving unemployed will be breathing.

Visit http://www.lexington.com/ContactUs.cfm for contact information.

[SmokingJacket]

11. "What's the point of having a job if it poisons you?" nt

[Cleita]

14. I don't know, but I do know that my dad did it.

He spent forty-four years working in the electric plant of a copper mine in Chile. He lost his hearing and got Parkinson's disease. Many of his co-workers suffered from the same ailments making it suspiciously work related, but really OSHA type reforms only became standard in the latter half of the last century. Now they want to reverse the advances.