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Authorities have identified four more sets of remains of first responders who battled last week's fire and explosion at the fertilizer plant in West, Texas.
"The plant was storing 270 tons of highly volatile ammonium nitrate fertilizer that should have been reported to the Department of Homeland Security but was not. The Texas Department of State Health Services was aware of the dangerous chemical but failed to alert DHS."
Why should owners of facilities that don't follow proper safety laws or in this case, Homeland Security regulations, be shielded from prosecution?
The same principle applies to the bankers who brought on the financial crisis, and none of them went to prison. They knowingly did wrong, and walked away with bonuses, and the American people lost their jobs and their homes. I think it stinks.
I'm not talking about shareholders, I'm talking about the owners of privately owned companies, and CEOs. And in the case of the Texas plant, whoever was responsible for those enormous amounts of ammonium nitrate, and failed to report them to the DHS.
As for the firefighters, they should have known that, especially since the plant was a big presence in their community.
I think there is a difference between criminal prosecution and civil, but how do you imprison a corporation. If an individual person committed a crime then that is a different argument. You can imprison a stock trader, but you can only fine Goldman Sachs.
The shareholder is the owner. In order to get the shareholders you have to pierce the corporate veil. Public companies have more shareholders than private but the corporate structure remains the same.
The firefighters were volunteers. It isn't reasonable to hold a volunteer to the same standard as a fire science graduate. Good samaritans are not held to the same standard as nurses/doctors.
I'm sure the fertilizer plant did some pretty bad things, but banning them is not the answer. Fertilizer helps us grow our food, and feeds the world. I'd say it's a necessary industry.
Companies mess up all the time. Normally no one gets killed or hurt. Why would the guy running the place knowingly risk his own life for a few bucks? (as liberals claim).
Government has taken on the responsibilty of making sure every worker is safe with inspections and regulations and rules, until an accident happens. Then magically it is the companies fault. I say it's just as much the governments. Probably more.
Get government out of private companies business and then we can blame companies when things like this happen.
They built a government middle school right across the street from a ****ing fertilizer plant. And government claims they know about safety??? Morons.
That's what I say! And I have never heard if those apartments are HUD, but it wouldn't surprise me if that turns out to be the case. You'd be surprised at all the public housing units right next to refineries. The refineries were there first, so guess who probably built those housing units? The government. What's wrong with those people?
This is what you have in Texas...no zoning regulations, companies that can and do fly under the radar, avoiding and ignoring those pesky federal regulations.
But then you have a 'legislator' like Cruz (who wanted to deny Sandy storm survivors of any help and relief! who wanted to secede!) demanding every available federal dollar for emergency relief.
I have the feeling if Texas and any of it's sisteridiotstates ever DO secede, they'll become the biggest sponges of foreign aid the real US ever had.
Cruz did not want to deny Sandy storm survivors any help, but did vote against the pork in the bill. Even New York senators complained about all the pork in that bill. And a Google search did not come up with one time Cruz said he wanted Texas to secede from the union. This secession thing is really getting old, btw. Only 1 - 2% of Texans want to secede, so that means the rest do not. Not exactly a huge groundswell of support for secession.
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