Thanks to AIG, some of the poorest residents of rural Kentucky learned you can always be made poorer by corporate villains. What are we getting in return for the bailout? So far, predatory credit card rates, exorbitant bank fees and obscene Wall Street bonuses. But we're being robbed in other, sneakier ways, too. It seems that taxpayers in the poorest, most vulnerable parts of the county are getting plundered by the same institutions they bailed out. One example is AIG's underhanded fleecing of residents of rural Kentucky.

Middlesboro and Clinton are two tiny, impoverished towns in southern Kentucky with a combined population of 12,000. In 2008, Middlesboro's per capita income was $13,189 a year, only a few hundred dollars more than the average worker earned in third-world Mexico. That is if they were lucky to even get a job. Real unemployment hovers somewhere around 30%, and the state is so broke that half the people eligible for unemployment benefits can't receive them. Life may be tough and most people live in poverty, but that doesn't mean they can't be made a little poorer. That's the lesson locals learned after bailed-out insurance villain AIG took over their water utility and instantly raised rates to squeeze an extra $1 million in profits out of its new customers, forcing some to consider choosing between running water and food.

October 22, 2009
New York Times Editorial
Clean Water: Still Elusive
Rightly celebrated as one of this country’s most important environmental statutes, the 1972 Clean Water Act has greatly improved the quality of America’s waters, turning contaminated rivers and lakes into swimmable, fishable and even drinkable waters.
But even its staunchest allies agree that the act has grown old and fallen well short of its goals, crippled by uneven and sometimes nonexistent enforcement by state and federal agencies — particularly during the Bush years, but even before — and by shortcomings in the law itself.
A comprehensive series of investigative articles in The Times by Charles Duhigg makes it clear that the time has come to strengthen enforcement and the law. More than 40 percent of the country’s waters, he found, remain dangerously polluted. Nearly 20 million Americans fall ill every year from drinking water contaminated with parasites, bacteria or viruses. Polluters — public and private, large and small — treat the law with contempt. Violations have jumped significantly. Penalties for noncompliance are small and rarely assessed.
President Obama’s new team seems to be paying attention — chiefly Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the act as well as a related measure, the Safe Drinking Water Act. Ms. Jackson has ordered an assessment of the agency’s shortcomings, promised stronger enforcement, added new chemicals to the long list of contaminants and promised to investigate others. But she agrees that more must be done, by her and by others.

SYDNEY (AP) -- Residents of a rural Australian town hoping to protect the earth and their wallets have voted to ban the sale of bottled water, the first community in the country - and possibly the wor

Colombia’s popular movement to reform the nation’s constitution by including explicit protection for the human right to water took a giant leap forward this week.

The discussion has not yet been widely publicized, but the City of Milwaukee is exploring the possibility of privatizing its water system.

And as the water crisis becomes a more stark reality, violence over one of our most precious resources is certain to ensue.

As the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency in the face of one month long indigenous protests, 42 indigenous leaders have entered the Peruvian Congress to announce a hunger strike until t

EUREKA -- Ever since W.W. Van Arsdale tacked a claim for Eel River water on an alder tree in 1905, the basin has had its share of problems. If anything, there will be more struggles in the future.

The Government set the stage for a sell-off of Auckland's water services today.