Don’t Trust Government Then

We should all be familiar with Love Canal – where the company who had dumped the chemicals told the local authorities not to put housing there but they went ahead anyway. We’ve now something similar in New Orleans:

In the 1980s, black New Orleanians were encouraged to buy houses built by the city on top of a toxic landfill. Three decades later it is one of Louisiana’s worst cancer hotspots, but residents of Gordon Plaza are still fighting to be relocated

Note that, it’s the city that did this. We’re not talking about rapacious capitalism in the slightest. The pollution itself is from the city, the development of the housing was by the city.

Over the past three decades, residents here have won two class action lawsuits against city agencies and insurance companies totaling more than $26m. A 2015 settlement with insurance companies garnered small payments – about $3,000 to $10,000 – for all but nine plaintiffs on the case. But the city has yet to pay out anything because there is no legal mechanism to force them.

It’s the city that won’t pay out the compensation either.

Government, eh? Responsive to the people, caring for their needs, right?

As Perry says, the state is not your friend.