Two incidents, days apart, both causing harm and devastation. How are they different and how are they alike? And what do our reactions to them say about us? Inquiring minds want to know!
Not that anybody's inquiring...
Anyway, here's the breakdown:
| Boston | West |
|---|---|
| 3 dead, 200+ injured | 15 dead, 200+ injured |
| Destroyed public trust, eroding social fabric | Destroyed public trust, eroding social fabric |
| Motivated by religious self interest | Motivated by religious self interest |
| Bomber was well liked | Bomber was well liked |
| Red flags ignored | Red flags ignored |
Wow, so much in common! Yet while the Boston bomber is the most well-known teenager in the country with his face plastered 24/7 on every TV in the country, most don't even know the name of the West bomber, Donald Adair. Gee, why is that? Could it be because the religion of our profit motive must be protected at all costs?
Texas town holds no grudge against exploded fertilizer plant owner
After the plant exploded last week, flattening homes, damaging schools, killing 14 people and leaving some 200 others with injuries including burns, lacerations and broken bones, they still described [owner Donald Adair] as honest and good.
...resident Chuck Smith, who helped neighbors leave their homes amid the dark smoke and acrid fumes after the blast, was not prepared to point a finger at the Adairs.
"When all is said and done, they call them accidents for a reason. I mean the people that work there, the people that own that place, that go there ... all of them were raised here, have kids here, have family here," he said. "There was no malicious intent. There was no trying to skimp."
So much for Texans' reputation as fierce fighters for their rights! Texas is a bidness friendly state, another way of saying people don't count. Of course, the state only gets away with this because we Texans don't think we count either! Safety is for sissys! Ain't just cows that get led to slaughter here, so are our children.
But even nationwide there is a lack of outrage. Had the Boston bombers been small business owners would it lessen our anger? Would they receive more sympathy had they done this in the name of preventing "burdensome" government regulation? Somewhere, somehow, there is a disconnect. Just what are we trying to protect here? The profit motive? I'm thinking we need a new definition of profit.
Investigators have ruled out natural causes such as a lightning strike
In a bygone era, tragic events birthed social reforms. Then, we got used to them. Now, they're just tragic.
Just over a century ago, a deadly fire swept through a blouse factory in Manhattan, killing 146 garment workers, most of them immigrant women. The Triangle factory owners, who had locked their employees inside for fear of theft, were acquitted of criminal charges, but the disaster led to the first real workplace safety laws, beginning in New York state, and much later, to the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration by President Richard Nixon in 1970.
Last week's massive explosion at the West Fertilizer Company plant in Texas that killed at least a dozen people comes three years after the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in West Virginia that killed 29 and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 and resulted in the worst oil spill in American history. All three explosions occurred at facilities with negligent safety policies, operating in an era of sporadic inspections by an understaffed regulatory regime. A new, post-Nixon Republican Congress responded to the earlier two disasters by proposing to cut OSHA's budget by 20%.
This is not an overnight thing, this corruption has been a long time building. The cult of corporation is certainly a hallmark of the 21st century. And while America has always worshiped at that altar, at least we used to fight for our rights, to be free of harm of life and limb. But that is no more in this age of long term unemployed who, according to the statistics, literally do not even count. Just who the fuck does count?
The Adair family have been among the biggest recipients in the area of farm subsidy payments from the federal government. Donald Adair received $874,522 during the period 1995 to 2011 and his son Gary received more than $1.2 million in subsidies during the period, according to a database of U.S. government data compiled by the Environmental Working Group.
So we can't fund OSHA but we can fund the farm vote? Texas is close to passing a (very expensive) bill to test welfare recipients for drugs. Wonder if they'd still consider it if it meant testing all recipients? We freely give these people our tax dollars, they blow up our families and homes in return and then we call them "good". Brainwashed much?
Yes, we love the Boston bombers because we can stand up on our hind legs and proudly point our fingers in moral outrage. But corporate killings? Meh. We good with that. But I just can't wait to see the look on everyone's faces when it comes to light one blast is the same as the other and we see the mutual blood upon our hands. Bet all the "no mercy" fuckers will be singing a different tune then!
While the country's remained fixated on the aftermath of the Boston bombing, a deeply disconcerting set of details about last week's fertilizer plant explosion in Texas has been largely overlooked. Being overlooked is a familiar state of affairs for the West Fertilizer Plant, however. Federal authorities have been overlooking the site of one of America's largest industrial accidents in recent memory for decades. Not months, not years but decades. According to the Huffington Post, the last time "the last time regulators performed a full safety inspection of the facility was nearly 28 years ago."
Oh dear that's bad. Three decades is a long time to avoid doing anything — much less anything involving massive amounts of explosive material. There were some partial inspections done, but the number of red flags in the air around that plant are starting to obscure the blue sky. There are so many!
Take, for example, the quantity of ammonium nitrate at the plant. Ammonium nitrate, of course, is the material that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh used in his 1995 attack that killed 168 people. The West Fertilizer Plant had 135 times the amount of ammonium nitrate as McVeigh used — 270 tons to be precise. That sounds excessive, and according to the Department of Homeland Security, it is. In fact, Reuters reports, the plant was storing "been storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security."
Lawmakers are starting to get pretty upset by the state of affairs. Whereas the Boston bombing was an unspeakable tragedy, an apparent random act of violence, the West Fertilizer Plant explosion was an accident that might've been prevented by simply adhering to safety procedures already in place. "It seems this manufacturer was willfully off the grid," Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking Republican member of the House Committee on Homeland Security (DHS), said on Monday. "This facility was known to have chemicals well above the threshold amount to be regulated under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act, yet we understand that DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew up."
File that last line under things we never want to hear a congressman say again. The whole point of the DHS is to catch things before they blow up. While it will take a while before we realize who failed to catch the Boston bombers before they acted, it's immediately apparent that government failed to enforce long-established safety measures. And half a town is now gone as a result.
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