{"id":186375,"date":"2014-02-11T19:37:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T00:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/02\/11\/reconstruction-was-ended-way-too-soon\/"},"modified":"2014-02-11T19:37:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T00:37:00","slug":"reconstruction-was-ended-way-too-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/02\/11\/reconstruction-was-ended-way-too-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"Reconstruction Was Ended Way Too Soon"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 391px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" border=\"no\" height=\"300\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"http:\/\/player.theplatform.com\/p\/2E2eJC\/EmbeddedOffSite?guid=n_maddow_5ash_140210\" width=\"381\"><\/iframe><br \/><i>And now the <strike>s%$4 has hit the fan<\/strike> coal ash has hit the drinking water &#8230;&#8230;&#8230;<\/i><\/div>\n<p>Maddow is all over how NC Governor Pat McCrory&#8217;s Department of Environment and Natural Resources Department of Environment and Natural Resources is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/rs\/2014\/02\/11\/rachel-maddow-a-disastrous-toxic-spill-broke-nc-interference-for-governors-former-firm\/\">aggressively protecting lawbreaking polluters like Duke Energy<\/a>, by aggressively preventing private actions against the firm, as opposed to actually enforcing the law:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">North Carolina regulators\u2019 penchant for seemingly protecting Gov. Pat McCrory\u2019s (R) former employers from repeated lawsuits over their environmental practices was only stopped following a devastatingly toxic spill, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow reported on Monday.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">On two prior occasions, Maddow said, officials at the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) invoked a provision in the federal Clean Water Act allowing them to step in as plaintiffs against Duke Energy when Duke was being sued by environmental activists over the toxic coal ash ponds at its facilities. The state reached settlements worth a collective $99,000 for those incidents.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">But Monday night, she explained, a third such settlement was delayed in the wake of a pond spill that produced up to 82,000 tons of coal ash and 27 million gallons of contaminated water \u2014 the third-biggest spill of its\u2019 kind in U.S. history.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">And despite not making any statement about the Feb. 3 disaster until four days after it happened, McCrory \u2014 who worked with the company for 28 years \u2014 used the first two DENR settlements to boast that his administration took \u201clegal action\u201d against Duke Energy.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cRight,\u201d Maddow said skeptically. \u201cBy stepping in and blocking other peoples\u2019 lawsuits against the company, and then settling with the company for nearly no money, and, importantly, [requiring] no promise from Duke Energy that they would fix what they were doing wrong.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Talk about a cheap date.&nbsp; Even the Department of Justice requests a lie from the offenders to refrain from future wrongdoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And now the s%$4 has hit the fan coal ash has hit the drinking water &#8230;&#8230;&#8230; Maddow is all over how NC Governor Pat McCrory&#8217;s Department of Environment and Natural Resources Department of Environment and Natural Resources is aggressively protecting lawbreaking polluters like Duke Energy, by aggressively preventing private actions against the firm, as opposed &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1079,1028,978,985,1027],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-environment","category-people-i-do-not-want-to-piss-off","category-politics","category-regulation","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186375"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}