West Fertilizer Co. Failed To Disclose It Had Unsafe Stores Of Explosive Substance

From Reuters via the Huffington Post:

The fertilizer plant that exploded on Wednesday, obliterating part of a small Texas town and killing at least 14 people, had last year been storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Yet a person familiar with DHS operations said the company that owns the plant, West Fertilizer, did not tell the agency about the potentially explosive fertilizer as it is required to do, leaving one of the principal regulators of ammonium nitrate - which can also be used in bomb making - unaware of any danger there.
 
And

The West Fertilizer facility was subject to other reporting, permitting and safety programs, spread across at least seven state and federal agencies, a patchwork of regulation that critics say makes it difficult to ensure thorough oversight.

An expert in chemical safety standards said the two major federal government programs that are supposed to ensure chemical safety in industry - led by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) - do not regulate the handling or storage of ammonium nitrate. That task falls largely to the DHS and the local and state agencies that oversee emergency planning and response.
 
More here.

So, while the rich have been leveraging their economic power into political power and putting it to work these last thirty or thirty five years rigging the tax code, destroying labor unions, squeezing both workers and consumers like blood from a stone, they've also been manipulating the federal regulatory structure to their benefit.  If it's not regulatory capture, where the plutocrats manage to get their own people into key positions at regulatory agencies, it's intense lobbying to kill regulatory bills.  If it's not suspending funding for enforcement, it's stacking the courts with judges who routinely rule against regulation.  Yes, we continue to have something we call a regulatory structure, but it is increasingly superfluous and meaningless.

The result, needless to say, is events like the one last week in West, Texas.  Like the numerous and now routine food poisoning scares.  Like sky high cable and pharmaceutical bills.  Like the manipulation of California's energy markets that caused rolling blackouts back in the early 2000s.  Like the multiple mining disasters in recent years.  Like the saturation of our nation with guns. Like the toxic mortgage scandal that brought down the financial sector creating the Great Recession from which we haven't even really started to recover.  And on and on.

There will always be unethical businessmen who will cheat, lie, steal, and murder in order to make a profit.  If there are no consequences for their behavior, if there is no enforcement of laws, indeed, if there are no laws, then it's an invitation to rape and pillage while pretending it's all capitalism.  

I don't understand how we can call what we have "civilization."

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