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"Sasol also sought and received permission to use public water—thirteen million gallons a day of relatively clean water from the Sabine River. This it would use, pollute, and dump back in the Calcasieu River. In addition, the state granted Sasol permission to emit an estimated 10,000,000 TONS of new greenhouse gases every year. No effort at carbon capture was proposed."

Doesn't eminent domain mean the state can take land, but it has to pay for what it takes?

"Company trucks could cause traffic congestion. The plant would reduce property values and provide relatively few jobs, he also pointed out.

So how can such a company get a community to accept it? The plant manager's best course of action, Powell concluded, would not be to try to change the minds of residents predisposed to resist. It would be to find a citizenry unlikely to resist."

"The plant that the Waste Management Board wanted to set up would be hard to live near. The facility being considered would smell and sometimes be noisy. "Waste-to-Energy facilities also pose a potential health risk in terms of air pollution," Powell wrote."

"Why did PPG and other companies decide to build there and not somewhere else? ... The poorer the state, research found the less regulated it was likely to be. So were poor people in poor states less likely to worry about out-of-state profit "leakage" or state handouts to industry? Or were they understandably just hoping for a job and preparing to endure?"

"If, in 2010, you lived in a county with a higher exposure to toxic pollution, we discovered, you are more likely to believe that Americans worry to much about the environment and to believe that the United States is doing "more than enough" about it. You are also more likely to describe yourself as a strong Republican."

If you DIDN'T believe that, why would you live there?? YOU WOULD LEAVE.

WHY IS IT OKAY FOR BUSINESSES TO GET FAVORS FROM THE STATE BUT NOT OKAY FOR ACTUAL PEOPLE TO DO SO?

WHY DOES IT MEAN THAT PEOPLE ARE LAZY BUT NOT MEAN THAT BUSINESSES ARE LAZY?

"As companies squeeze favors out of the state, he argued, the more urgent its citizens' needs for good schools and hospitals, the less the poor are able to use what opportunities exist, and the more atrophied become other sectors of the economy—which furthers concentrates power in the hands of oil."

(continued) "A 2016 survey of the world's major economies also found that strict environmental policies improved, rather than handicapped, competitiveness in the international market."

"Templet refers me to a 1992 study by the MIT political scientist Stephen Meyer, who rated the fifty states according to the strictness of their environmental protection. Meyer then matched regulatory strictness to economic growth over a twenty-year period and found that the tougher the regulation, the more jobs were available in the economy." Hm. Potential for correlation/causation problems there.

"The logic was this. The more oil, the more jobs. The more jobs, the more prosperity, & the less need for government aid. & the less the people depend on government—local, state, or federal—the better off they will be. So to attract more oil jobs, the state has to offer financial 'incentives' to oil companies to get them to come."

Why are PEOPLE better off w/ less dependency but COMPANIES are better off w/ MORE?

"General Honoré was no nervous nelly, but he was mindful of the vulnerable communities around the 'self-regulated' plants. 'Part of the psychological program is that people think they're free when they're not,' he said. 'A company may be free to pollute, but that means the people aren't free to swim.'"

"while the state [Louisiana] boasts a reputation of an almost cowboy-style "don't-fence-me-in" freedom, that is probably not how a female rape victim who wants an abortion, or a young black boy in Jefferson Davis Parish, or Albert Woodfox see the matter."

"The United States incarcerates a higher proportion of its population than does any nation in the world outside the Seychelles Islands—more than Russia or Cuba."

"Looked at more closely, an overall pattern in state regulation emerges, and the Great Paradox becomes more complicated than it first seemed. Liquor, guns, motorcycle helmets (legislation had gone back and forth on that)—mostly white masculine pursuits—are fairly unregulated. But for women and black men, regulation is greater."

"a gun vendor in Louisiana can keep no records, perform no background checks, & sell guns to ... customers forbidden in other states: those w/ violent and firearms-related misdemeanors... on terror watch lists or 'no fly' lists, abusers of drugs or alcohol, juvenile offenders, & criminals with a history of serious mental illness or domestic violence... [they have] the highest rate of death by gunfire in the country."

(continued) "'Why,' I ask Honoré, 'don't citizens ask politicians to clean up their environment?' The General pauses. 'All the people in Louisiana hear is jobs, jobs, jobs. And there's just enough to it, that people slip into believing it's the whole story. Really, they're captives of a psychological program.'"

"'I have nothing against oil and gas making money in Louisiana," the General begins matter-of-factly. "But the oil companies need to clean up after themselves, and they haven't. They need to fix what they break, and they haven't And pretty much theirs is the only voice we hear."' (continued)

"As one man explains, 'A lot of us have done okay, but we don't want to lose what we've got, see it given away.' When I ask him what he saw as being 'given away,' it was not public waters given to dumpers, or clean air given to smoke stacks. It was not health or years of life. It was not lost public sector jobs. What he felt was being given away was tax money to non-working, non-deserving people... but honor too."

"the rivals both express and promote a culture that has produced the Great Paradox. They disdain 'insider Washington' while trying to pry as much money from it for Louisiana as they can."

"A political campaign has a central place in the cultural life of a people. It tells citizens what issues powerful people think are worth hearing about."

"The general talk around town was that the choice was between the environment and jobs."

"Talk was of 'economic progress,' and nostalgia would get in its way. 'Don't you believe in economic progress?' people could ask. Also, as a cause, environmental protection had fallen into the hands, people felt, of left-leaning government expansionists and do-nothing local officials."

"For governor of Louisiana, the Arenos had twice voted for Bobby Jindal on grounds of faith and family values. Jindal wasn't for cleaning up the environment, however."

I am less interested in reading this book because one of the reviews I read said that the characters were poorly developed and acted in predictable ways.

I'm interested in reading this book less because one of the reviews I read said that the characters are not well developed and the story is really predictable. I hope I enjoy it enough to finish it, but I don't know.

"Like other friends and family, the Arenos are Republican and had voted in the presidential election fo 2012 for Mitt Romney. 'He's a big business guy, of course,' Harold explains. 'If he were here he'd be having friendly visits with the CEOs of the companies around here. He wouldn't be cleaning up the mess.'"

"What about stricter regulation of the polluters, I ask, wondering if the Arenos had voted for political candidates who pushed for cleaning the mess up or, like Lee Sherman, had not.

'Stricter regulation would be good,' Harold replies. 'We're not against industry,' Annette clarifies... 'But for decades now, they've done nothing to clean up the bayou or compensate us to move.' "

"'The only one that didn't get cancer was my daddy,' Harold says, 'and he never worked in the plants. Everybody else—all us kids and our spouses that lived on these forty acres—come down with cancer.'"

"Lee and Miss Bobby were living on Social Security and finding it a very tight squeeze."