I truly believe that the corporatism that the Clintons espouse has a disastrous hold on this country. Look at Jackson Stephens background...diehard republican, club for growth board member, brought BCCI to the US, and bankrolled the Clintons & Bushs. Did the Clintons reward this financial backing with monetary reward? You bet they did...IN MY HOME STATE AND TO THE POOREST OF AREAS IN AN ENVIRONMENTALLY DISASTROUS LOCATION:
Here is a portion of activist/mother, Terri Swearingen's acceptance speech for the Goldman Environmental Prize, given April 14, 1997:
I am not a scientist or a Ph.D. I am a nurse and a housewife, but my most important credential is that I am a mother. In 1982, I was pregnant with our one and only child. That's when I first learned of plans to build one of the world's largest toxic waste incinerators in my community. When they began site preparation to begin building the incinerator in 1990, my life changed forever. I'd like to share with you some of the lessons I have learned from my experiences over the past seven years.
One of the main lessons I have learned from the WTI experience is that we are losing our democracy. How have I come to this sad realization? Democracy is defined by Merriam Webster as "government by the people, especially rule of the majority," and "the common people constituting the source of political authority." The definition of democracy no longer fits with the reality of what is happening in East Liverpool, Ohio. For one thing, it is on the record that the majority of people in the Ohio Valley do not want the WTI hazardous waste incinerator in their area, and they have been opposed to the project from its inception. Some of our elected officials have tried to help us, but the forces arrayed against us have been stronger than we or they had imagined. Public concerns and protests have been smothered with meaningless public hearings, voodoo risk assessment and slick legal maneuvering.
Government agencies that were set up to protect public health and the environment only do their job if it does not conflict with corporate interests. Our current reality is that we live in a "wealthocracy" big money simply gets what it wants. In this wealthocracy, we see three dynamics at play: corporations versus the planet, the government versus the people, and corporate consultants or "experts" versus common sense. In the case of WTI, we have seen all three.
The second lesson I have learned ties directly to the first, and that is that corporations can control the highest office in the land. When Bill Clinton and Al Gore came to the Ohio Valley, they called the siting of the WTI hazardous waste incinerator next door to a 400 student elementary school, in the middle of an impoverished Appalachian neighborhood, immediately on the bank of the Ohio River in a flood plain an "UNBELIEVABLE IDEA." They said we ought to have control over where these things are located. They even went so far as to say they would stop it. But then they didn't! What has been revealed in all this is that there are forces running this country that are far more powerful than the President and the Vice President. This country trumpets to the world how democratic it is, but it's funny that I come from a community that our President dare not visit because he cannot witness first hand the injustice which he has allowed in the interest of a multinational corporation, Von Roll of Switzerland. And the Union Bank of Switzerland. And Jackson Stephens, a private investment banker from Arkansas. These forces are far more relevant to our little town than the President of the United States! And he is the one who made it that way. He has chosen that path. We didn't choose it for him. We begged him to come to East Liverpool, but he refused. We begged the head of EPA to come, but she refused. She hides behind the clever maneuvering of lawyers and consultants who obscure the dangers of the reckless siting of this facility with theoretical risk assessments.
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http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/wti/et0897s17.htmlThere has always been something incongruous about Stephens Inc. Despite the Little rock firm's attempts to portray itself as a small- city operation that closes for the duck season and got fabulously lucky on a couple of down-home deals like Wal-Mart, it was, at the incinerator's inception, the ninth-largest investment bank in the country. Since it is not headquartered in New York, its dealings are local news, little noticed by the national press, even when they have national implications. And, as a source close to the company once remarked, "The farther you get from Arkansas, the better it looks."
Stephens Inc. was founded by Witt Stephens, a state legislator's son who parlayed a Depression-era belt-buckle, Bible, and municipal-bond business into an immense personal fortune. After his retirement in 1973, the company was run by his shy younger brother, Jackson (a classmate of Jimmy Carter's at the Naval Academy). Witt Stephens and Stephens Inc. did much to create the economic paradox that is modern Arkansas: a desperately poor state with a scant 2.3 million inhabitants that is nonetheless home to a number of wealthy companies. Without the financial assistance of the Stephens brothers, Sam Walton might have ended his days as the most innovative merchant in Bentonville. Stephens money was also important to the fortunes of enterprises as various as Tyson Foods and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, the television producer and reigning First Friend. Stephens Inc. is an important client of the Rose law firm, whose chairman, C. Joseph Giroir, made Hillary Rodham Clinton a partner. And back in 1977, Stephens assisted BCCI's infiltration of the American banking system by brokering the latter's purchase of National Bank of Georgia stock held by Bert Lance, former President Jimmy Carter's friend and disgraced budget director.
Jackson Stephens (who turned over the reins to his son, Warren, in the late eighties) and his firm were both substantial contributors to the campaigns of Presidents Reagan and Bush (to the tune of at least $100,000 in 1980 and 1989), but they have been closer still to Bill Clinton (whom Witt Stephens had been known to call "that boy").
On two occasions, once when Clinton was running for reelection in Arkansas in 1990 and again in March 1992, when his battered presidential campaign was broke, the Stephens family saved Clinton's bacon with an infusion of money. Indeed, it may not be too much to say that their Worthen Bank's emergency $3.5 million line of credit saved the presidential campaign from extinction. --L.J.D.
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http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1993/11/davis.htmlWho is the octopussy that might be lurking in the Ohio River Valley? Perhaps we should start by asking shy Arkansas billionaire Jackson T. Stephens. After all, Stephens introduced BCCI from Pakistan to the United States and the WTI waste incinerator to East Liverpool, Ohio. Stephens would be a good sketch artist because he's seen some monstrous scandals in his day. Stephens' family firm is the largest privately owned investment bank outside Wall Street. In September 1977, President Jimmy Carter's Budget Director Burt Lance was forced to resign amid allegations about his bank dealings with Stephens (Stephens and Carter were classmates at the Naval Academy). In 1978, Stephens, Lance and BCCI were charged with violating U.S. security laws. The charges were dropped after the defendants promised not to violate security laws in the future, even though they admitted no guilt.
The New York Post reported in February 1992 that it was Stephens who enabled BCCI to gain a foothold in the U.S. and helped the fraud-plagued bank secretly acquire U.S. banks. In Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin's book, False Profits, perhaps the best account of the BCCI scandal, the authors outlined how opium revenue from Afghanistan Mujahedin fighting the Soviets ended up in the accounts of BCCI, founded by Agha Hasan Abedi. The Post reported that Stephens allegedly introduced Abedi to Lance shortly after Lance resigned.
In 1991, Lance testified that he urged Abedi to acquire a Washington bank holding company, but he denied any knowledge of BCCI's subsequent secret ownership of First American Bankshares. The Post reported that Securities and Exchange Commission documents from 1977 substantiate that the idea originated with Stephens.
During Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential run, Stephens and his son Warren boasted of raising more than $100,000 for the campaign. The Stephens family also owned a 38 percent share in Worthen National Bank that extended a crucial $2 million line of credit to Clinton in January 1992.
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http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/wti/bob.htmlEnvironmental Justice Case Study: Waste Technologies Industries, Inc. and the Fight Against A Hazardous Waste Incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio
The Problem
The Waste Technologies Industry, Inc. incinerator is located in the floodplain of the Ohio River in East Liverpool, Ohio. The surrounding area is elevated on a bluff, such that incinerator's stack is level with the windows of local buildings. The incinerator is located about 300 feet from homes and just 1100 feet from an elementary school. The location of the facility has been intensely criticized by citizens, scientists, and government officials alike. East Liverpool is located at the juncture of Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, approximately 35 miles from Pittsburgh.
The WTI struggle is a regional issue that drew much national attention during the early 1990's, much to the credit of organizer Terri Swearingen, a citizen of Chester, W. VA. who coordinates the Tri-State Environmental Council. Tri-State Environmental Council became outraged by the various environmental problems that the WTI facility has created for several reasons. First, there has never been a comprehensive study of the potential health effects upon the surrounding community, either from inhalation of toxics or accumulation of materials (such as dioxin, a known carcinogen) in fatty tissues and subsequent transmission via mother's milk or the food chain. Also, the incinerator will be pumping hazardous chemicals into the environment, including mercury and other heavy metals. It is expected to emit 4.5 tons of lead per year, and this less than 400 yards from an elementary school and residential area.
Foremost, issues of environmental justice have been avoided by regulatory officials through this struggle, although it has been observed that East Liverpool and the surrounding communities are predominantly low-income and minority neighborhoods. These neighborhoods have already incurred adverse environmental effects from existing local industry. Government response during the reauthorization process for WTI as well as towards these concerns has been conspicuously slow.
Back to Table of Contents
Background
Waste Technologies Industries' hazardous waste incinerator was first proposed in 1977, and has been under severe scrutiny from its neighbors since 1980. Once construction began in 1990, an intense campaign against the WTI facility and incineration as a means of hazardous waste disposal commenced in East Liverpool, surrounding communities, and eventually the nation. WTI its self has been a topic o national controversy, and was mentioned specifically during the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign. Clinton and Gore promised the American people that not only would the Clinton Administration never let such a facility become a reality, but they aimed to prevent the WTI facility from opening before questions regarding the safety and legality of its operation were answered. Vice-President-Elect Gore, along with five U.S. Senators and two Representatives, followed up on this promise by requesting a General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation of the facility. However, after sixteen years of community struggle after the incinerator was proposed, the facility is currently operating, despite an array of procedural and legal mishaps.
There have been repeated discrepancies in ownership throughout the permit application process. RCRA permits are not transferrable between parties, thus the Ohio Attorney General declared the permits invalid. Furthermore, the initial permit applications were not signed, and thus technically cannot be issued. The initial permits listed Columbiana Port Authority as part owner of the facility. Later, Columbiana Port Authority asked to be removed from the permit, and may have been listed as part owner simply because the land on which WTI sits was once owned by the Port Authority. The land then taken in emminent domain from the Port Authority, later to be sold to WTI. Emminent domain requires that a public entity show "proper public purpose" before it acquires property for public use. Whether WTI's incinerator demonstrates proper public purpose is obviously still at question by the community of East Liverpool.
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http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/mcormick.htmlDON'T FOOL YOURSELF, THEY CARE ABOUT THE RICHEST 7 MOST POWERFUL AT THE EXPENSE OF THE PEOPLE. THEY WILL WIN AT ANY COST JUST LIKE THE BUSH'S DID.
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