The Texas explosion has been overshadowed by the Boston Marathon bombing. Has those who caused the explosion in Texas that killed at least 14 and 160 people injured that leveled a four-block area around the fertilizer plant been detained and interrogated and castigated for their crime by the media? No.
The owner of West Fertilizer Co and Adair Grain Inc, Donald Adair, broke his silence Friday and expressed his “heartfelt sympathy for those affected.”
It is virtually certain that he will not be going to prison, no matter how wilful safet negligence proves to be have been at the fertilizer plant. But, of course, the difference is that he did it in the interests of profit while the Boston bombers did it for a prophet.
According to the Wall Street Journal the risk-management filed by the company said the plant had no alarms, automatic shutoff system, firewall or sprinkler system. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration had not inspected the plant since 1985, when it was cited for five serious violations and fined $30. Yes, $30! The company has also been fined in recent years, including by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration for not having filed a risk-management plan and for safety violations, respectively.
When are we going to start holding corporate executives accountable. No one from BP went to jail when the Deep Water Horizon platform blew up, killed several workers, and ended up poisoning the Gulf Coast for who knows for how long. The Massey coal mine owners got away scot-free.
The ones that pay for the greed (with their lives, homes and family members that were also killed/injured), as usual, are members of the working class. Worker that only received wages for selling hour long parts of their lives (punched neatly on time-cards) so they can afford to feed and house themselves and their families. They die for their meagre wages whenever there is a cave-in at a mine or an explosion at a factory because those at the top think safety costs are too much to invest in.
The upper class are above the law. Laws apparently only apply to the masses below that do all the work that creates the wealth being syphoned almost entirely towards the idle rich and their bought politicians.
In case we forget, in 2010 an average of 13 workers were killed on the job every day.
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