A frightening new study released by Heliyon points to contaminants in our tap water contributing
to over a hundred thousand cancer cases in the US since 2010.
Host of RTs Redacted Tonight, Lee Camp, dear friend of mine is here to break it down for
us.
Lee, the study authored by Heliyon points to scores of cancer cases that are linked
with contaminants in our drinking water.
How has the EPA gone about prioritizing to protect our water supply?
Uh, have they really?
I think they've, I think they've, you know, this, this is the ongoing capture of the regulatory
agencies by our, you know, corporate state and they've been just gutting these regulations.
It's ongoing years and obviously, you know, Trump has sped it up, but you know, he's done
that by just putting into place people at these agencies that just want to tear apart
the agency.
They call it roll back, right.
Roll back of regulations.
Really what it is, is gutting the remaining regulations.
And I, I think we should also keep in mind, it's not just Trump, it's it, these people
have to be approved.
You know, Wheeler had to be approved by our Congress and Scott Pruitt and, and these,
these absolute villains that, you know, just want corporations to, to run wild.
They, they act like they have a right to do, right, that's what, what Trump said.
It, it gets in the way of the rights of farmers, et cetera, et cetera.
But really don't we have a right to clean water?
Don't we have a right to not get cancer in this country?
Understand, most of the cases I handle now with big environmental cases actually originated
back in the Clinton years.
Yeah.
So if we're ever going to get a handle on it, we have to first understand that the regulators
that are put in these positions, most of the time they come from silk stocking corporate
entities.
They may be the silk stocking Covington and Burling firm in Washington, DC but they're
always the big money people who really don't give a flip about consumers.
They care about their bottom line.
That's the way they've come up.
And when they move into that regulatory position, they, they don't, they go golfing with everybody
they're supposed to regulate.
Right.
And then they get a job offer from that person they're supposed to regulate.
But who, who do these findings put at risk?
As you look at this material, Lee, who is it that's at biggest risk from these findings?
Well, I mean that's, that's truly the sad part is it's, it's, you know, the weakest
among us, right?
Who suffer the, the, the quickest and harshest penalties.
It's, it's the, you know, infants, it's the elderly.
It's, it's a, it's a kind of similarity to our economic sanctions on other countries.
Who gets hit the worst?
It's those who, you know, are not strong enough or don't have the, exceptional wealth to be
able to avoid drinking out of the tap water.
You know, now we're almost getting to a point where the truly wealthy can use bottled water
for everything.
They, they feed their dogs bottled water.
They, they, they feed their plants coconut water, which is cannibalism, but they, you
know, they, were getting nearly to that point and it's because, you know, they, they, they
don't care.
The ruling elite that are making these decisions.
The head regulators like you say, are, are in bed with these corporations.
And apparently they don't care that it's 38% of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer
at some point in their lives.
And again, the wealthiest have generally the healthcare plans that can help deal with that
if they end up in that situation.
And, and speaking about what you were saying about the, the, the corporate interests and
everything, and how this has been going on under many presidents for a long time now.
You know better than, than anyone that these people you're going after in these lawsuits,
they give to both sides of the aisle.
They fund both sides so that they can know whoever gets in that top office is still going
to reward them.
DuPont, they, they, they poisoned the water of 70,000 Americans in the Ohio River Valley
with something that every scientist that has looked at says, yes, this causes cancer.
And so I, I guess if you think about it, I add to that now, Trump's wanting to repeal
the clean water rule.
I mean, what's his motivation there, Lee?
Where does that take Trump to be able to repeal the clean water rule?
What happens?
Why does a president say, yeah, that's a good idea?
Well, we do know Trump's about one person and that's Trump.
So it does bring up the question, what does he care about the clean water rule?
Is this, you know, that's not something he spent his life caring about.
But really what it is, is just rewarding his corporate base.
He's basically, the ID of the corporate state has just run wild.
You know, it's, there's nothing stopping it now.
The, the, the curtain has come off and we can see what it looks like and he's not, as
we know, he doesn't even read these documents.
Do you think the bills that got these regulations and do you think he's really spending his,
you know, 4:00 AM hour reading through these things?
No, he's watching Fox news and tweeting.
So who is it that's doing this?
Well, it's the people he's putting in place.
He has rewarded the corporate totalitarian state by giving them these positions, by giving
it to Wheeler, giving it to Scott Pruitt and then those people are approved by our corporate
bought Congress.
So, you know, he's basically just said, gloves are off.
At least...
They, go for it, you know?
Yeah, right.
At least in the past, presidents who've done that have been somewhat apologetic when they've
done the same thing.
Trump simply is not apologetic.
Thank you for joining me, Lee.
I appreciate it.
Absolutely.
I'd like to do this story again because we're gonna find more and more of these types of
stories developing in that, certainly in the next year when Trump maybe may feels like
he's out of time.
Over the past year, there's been no shortage of stories highlighting the swath of immigrants
and their children being detained at the behest of president Trump's immigration crackdown.
Why is it that we're still seeing reports of these detainees being confined in absolutely
abysmal conditions?
We've got Allen Orr here, VP of American Immigration Lawyers Association, and we're going to talk
about that.
Allen, let me ask you something as we go forward on this, the, the American public is kind
of getting a one sided story here among other attorney groups who, who've compiled a formal
complaint regarding the sickening conditions inside migrant detention centers across the
country.
I don't know that the public is getting the full story here.
Talk to us about which agencies you're putting in the cross hairs as well, the types of treatments
that you've come across.
Right.
So what we're doing...
What's happening out there?
Of course, happy to do that.
What we're doing right now is that we're ringing the bells within the agency first within CBP
in the, in the office of civil rights.
Then within the greater DHS, which everything sort of falls up under the Department of Homeland
Security.
But in addition to that, the FBI about these really troublesome conditions in which we're
putting foreign nationals in, in these facilities.
Okay.
People don't understand.
Talk to us a little bit about the constitutional rights of a foreign national.
Everybody says, well, they're on American soil.
They're not American citizens.
They're in kind of this abyss of, as is the best description of it.
They're asking for asylum.
What are the constitutional issues surrounding that?
Right.
So these people are applicants for the United States and should be treated exactly as any
other applicants for the United States.
Someone coming through New York or, or California by airplane.
Therefore they have the same sort of rights to be treated as human beings.
And this is greater than just the United States constitution.
And this is a worldwide agreement of what humanity is.
Right?
Just the way we treat individuals, even prisoners of war in some cases can be treated as bad
as these individuals in these facilities.
So they have really abysmal as you've said, but sort of treating people as sort of like
packing houses for animals.
And what we want to do is sort of use it as a deterrent, which it has not been a deterrent
and actually it's very inhumane and it validates every human rights violation across the world.
And even those treaties that the US has signed onto.
We're hearing kind of that right wing mantra that gee, immigrants are coming into the United
States to get medical care because they can't get it where they're coming from.
Therefore that's being passed on to, to tax payers, American tax payers.
Pretty harsh kind of argument, But, you know, on the other side there, there's, there's
this question, who are the doctors at these facilities who are responsible for caring
for the detainees?
Wrap that up for us a little bit.
Those two parts if you would.
So let's talk about the different types of detention centers.
Some of them are private prisons, which most of them are, which means they are private
doctors that are contracted under the United States system.
And the other ones are government facilities or state facilities that are run under state
or government programs.
In all cases, these are doctors and much like lawyers, they have a higher oath to their
license to make sure they have a certain level of care to their patients.
So therefore in even in the private facilities or in the government facilities, these doctors
are running a foul of their own licensing, by not making sure these individuals have
the healthcare that they need.
As you've seen in many of the stories that there was a woman who gave birth on a bench
in a cell when people were sort of watching by and sort of care.
And this is something that a doctor should have been aware of, that the person was close
to actually giving birth and should have been called into the room to actually help in the
proceeding.
Well of course, you know, you can get, it depends on what you're looking for.
Are you looking for the good doctors?
You're looking for doctors who will come to work for just about anything.
Are you looking for the doctors that have a political kinship with what you're trying
to accomplish?
There's all types of variables there.
But at the end of the day, the, the results are, are pretty awful if I follow your story.
Is that right?
Yes, yes, the results are awful.
And it's not even about cost benefit analysis because once again, we're talking about people.
So when you're talking about people sometimes in the healthcare arena, it shouldn't really
be about money, it should be about are you able to help someone to get in a better situation.
But in this situation, not only are we, in some cases able to help people who've traveled
thousands of miles just to get here, we're making the situation worse by having such
things as measles spread throughout the organization.
By putting people in these closed facilities where then disease sort of becomes rampant
because they're not able to take showers or have appropriate healthcare.
So we're actually aiding in these individuals becoming sick by not making sure they're in
their proper conditions.
Isn't that part of what we're hearing?
Kind of the, the right wing talkers say, you know, we, we, we have polio under, under control
in the United States.
We don't have mumps problems.
We don't have measles problems by allowing these migrants in, we're now making that worse.
Those are the types of things that we hear being discussed and they're being discussed
because the people who are saying those things understands that it scares the bejesus out
of the American public.
How are you fending that off?
Certainly that must be something that you're confronted with.
Sure.
These are flawed arguments as I've expressed before, there are hundreds of ports in the
United States in which people come in every day and at none of those ports are we treating
those immigrants of anywhere differently, no matter where they've been and what situations
they've been in.
So this concern about healthcare and global healthcare is really misled by thinking someone
is bringing something here that isn't already here and under control.
So therefore it's just a misconceiving that they're actually criminals that are coming
in with their children or that they have some disease that is unknown of in the United States.
Those are just proper things to sort of argue against helping individuals, which we've never
used before in any of our other situations.
And you will find in many of the southern states, there are a lot of Americans who are
in abysmal positions with regards to healthcare that the government also isn't stepping in
for.
That also might have some of these very same health concerns and these concerns about diseases
because they're living in very low issue and poverty areas.
Among the hundreds of migrant detention centers in the US I'm wondering how widespread are
your findings?
And let me, let me just say thanks for doing this because if you didn't do it, I can assure
you government would not do it and if they did it, we wouldn't get a true picture.
How widespread are these findings?
It's very widespread.
That you're coming across.
In the United States you have some 25,000 individuals that are being detained and it's
very widespread here.
But in addition to that, we have some 37,000 individuals that we pushed back into Mexico
that are in drug ridden areas that we already say by our State Department.
So it's very rapid in all cases.
And once again, the president of the United States has said that this is to be a deterrent.
So therefore you already know that it's some form of punishment to keep individuals from
coming and it's not coming and it's not humane.
Allen, thanks for joining me.
Keep up the work, we want to have you back on and see if this actually resolves in the
next, hopefully in the next six months there'll be some resolution here.
But thank you for joining us.
Thank you for having me.