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Facing a pivotal federal investigation into Louisiana’s relationship with petro-chemical companies, the state’s attorney general hired lawyers who were simultaneously representing one of the main corporations at the center of the investigation, documents reveal.

The revelations, contained in documents released under public records requests, have led to allegations of a major conflict of interest and come just weeks after the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] dropped its civil rights investigation.

Internal emails, contracts and payments, show that the office of the attorney general, Jeff Landry, hired two lawyers to enter closed-door negotiations with the EPA during the 14-month civil rights investigation. But John King and Tim Hardy were also representing the Taiwanese chemicals firm Formosa in separate litigation, challenging a decision to revoke the company’s state air permits. (Moran and Sneath 2023).

Great questions! Please follow up during the interviews. I am also curious about your experiences of traveling to Naluwan via various transportation methods. Are there different senses of place when you travel by car, by train, by foot?

In the 1980s, Formosa Plastics Corporation purchased financially struggling petrochemical plants in Delaware, Texas, and Louisiana. The company subsequently shifted its operations to Texas and Louisiana, where a competitive bidding process ensued between the two states, both of which were known for industry-friendly policies (Tubilewicz 2021). As political scientist Tubilewicz (2021, 16) has argued, the politics surrounding Formosa's investments in these states were not purely motivated by profit but were also shaped by the ongoing struggles of sub-state actors such as politicians and NGOs over issues of internationalization and representation in global affairs.

An example of this can be seen in Formosa's attempt to build a rayon fiber plant in Louisiana's St. John Parish in the late 1990s, an area also known as "Cancer Alley." Protests broke out due to concerns about massive tax exemptions, displacement of Black residents, and the plant's location on the historic Whitney Plantation (Tubilewicz 2021, 11). However, the project was eventually abandoned due to declining market demand and delays. In addition, the local St. John Governor was indicted for illegal industrial rezoning of land around the plantation and receiving $200,000 in real estate commission (Tubilewicz 2021, 11).

The authors, Andrew Lakoff and Stephen Collier both study anthropology. They have written several papers together focusing on the social and cultural types of knowledge concerning health and medicine. Lakoff works at the University of Southern California and Collier is the Director of Anthropology for the New School.

The authors argue that while recent changes in health security have led to a modern knowledge base and understanding of health threats these new systems are still forming and adapting as the health problems faced change.

The main argument is supported primarily through policy changes that show a changing approach to public health safety in the government and private organizations, with specific examples such as changes to the US government funding for biodefense research in the early twenty-first century. The paper also includes examples of changing scientific knowledge during the later twentieth century, referencing studies and reports that highlight the changing opinions of the scientific community. Finally, the authors divide the paper into several sections each outlining a specific type of problem and the practices devised as a solution, this format clarifies the main argument and aids the reader in understanding the authors views.

“There is no such thing as being “too secure.” Living with risk, by contrast, acknowledges a more complex calculus. It requires new forms of political and ethical reasoning that take into account questions that are often only implicit in discussions of biosecurity interventions.” (Lakoff 28)

“On the one hand, they examine the different political and normative frameworks through which the problem of biosecurity is approached: national defense, public health, and humanitarianism, for example. On the other hand, they examine the styles of reasoning through which uncertain threats to health are transformed into risks that can be known and acted upon” (Lakoff 12)

“These initiatives build on a growing perception among diverse actors—life scientists and public health officials, policymakers and security analysts—that new biological threats challenge existing ways of understanding and managing collective health and security. From the vantage point of such actors, the global scale of these threats crosses and confounds the boundaries of existing regulatory jurisdictions. Moreover, their pathogenicity and mutability pushes the limits of current technical capacities to detect and treat disease” (Lakoff 8)

The primary method of supporting the main argument is a series of historical examples including policies such as those created by the World Health Organization, outbreaks including AIDS, and previous attempts to provide health security such as the Smallpox Caccination Program. The use of these examples highlights the changing nature of health problems and how that effects the type health security. Specific dates and data from the examples is included, which allows for a more detailed analysis to support the main argument. 

The article primarily discuss the motivations behind emergency response, and how that effects the actions taken by emergency response organizations. The authors claim that emergency response is motivated primarily by nationalism or self-preservation due to the global threat posed by epidemics and other health crisis. The idea of an emergency modality is presented, where rapid response to emerging issues is used as a preventative measure to avoid the spread of a crisis across national borders. The authors claim that emergency modality is the usual protocol for global health organizations due to the funds and resources available after an emergency due to public attention that are difficult to obtain for long term health problems.

The articles has not been referenced in other papers that are publicly available, likely due to the very recent publication. It has been published through several platforms and is widely available.