Tuesday, April 23, 2013

The free market levels the playing field

And also the apartments, and the nursing home, and several homes in the adjacent neighborhood. Along with the people living in them, and the first responders.


Gov. Rick Perry said Monday that spending more state money on inspections would not have prevented the deadly explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. plant that was last investigated by Texas environmental regulators in 2006.

Perry told The Associated Press that he remains comfortable with the state's level of oversight following last week's massive blast in the rural farming town of West that killed 14 people and injured 200. Federal and state investigators say they have yet to identify the cause of the explosion.

Perry suggested that the majority of Texas residents agree with him.

"(People) through their elected officials clearly send the message of their comfort with the amount of oversight," Perry said Monday. 

So there you have it: the governor believes he has a mandate for inaction. Whether he actually does or not depends on whether Texas Republicans are willing to extend his political career as governor in 2014... or in a rerun for the presidency in 2016.

In the meantime it would be great if the invisible hand of the free market whips Rick Perry's ass.

4 comments:

Elderlady said...

Unfortunately, Perry may be right.

People keep voting for him, and lack of regulations. Things keep blowing up and killing people. But... people keep voting for him.

It boggles the mind.

In this instance, looks like the taxpayers will foot the bill.

One can always hope, after this disaster, that somebody (like OSHA) will make a list of the rest of these places in Texas that store hazardous materials, and check on them every once in a while.

PDiddie said...

Yes. It's incumbent upon Texas Republicans to fix this. Or not.

Zacherydtaylor said...

With all this propaganda about the Boston Marathon Bombing this is getting much less attention nationwide than it should so it might be easy to sweep it under the rug for the time being. Unless of course it gets better attention locally and enough people wake up and start thinking more rationally.

Hopefully this becomes more likely when enough people see the disaster and it would help if their was less indoctrination and more education.

Unknown said...

I am going to be the cynic here.

We have made our choice as a state, and probably as a country.

We have decided that corporations are more important than human beings. Sometime after we made them legal persons, I mean...

Don't want to over-regulate the giant corporations' right to kill the citizenry. That would be communism!

I believe this will be what our times are known for, if there ARE later times. Through a series of logic fallacies, we let abstract legal entities become like gods.