The loss of life in West, Texas, was tragic, but the tragedy itself is an illustration of the downside of the Republicans’ unstoppable zeal for deregulating industry at any cost. The cost in this case included the lives of 14 people who were killed when a fertilizer plant exploded on April 17.
In the wake of the blast, however, Gov. Rick Perry, who loves to brag about “poaching” businesses from California, where regulations are enforced, in part because the environment is fragile, deftly sidestepped accountability in the media, at least, by feigning outrage over a cartoon in the Sacramento Bee that shows depicted him saying, “Business is BOOMING in Texas,” in one frame and a giant explosion in the next. Perry has created quite a kerfuffle in the media by demanding an apology from cartoonist Jack Ohman.
For his part, Ohman is not budging:
“The Texas chemical plant had not been inspected by the state of Texas since 2006. That’s seven years ago. You may have read in the news that Gov. Perry, during his business recruiting trips to California and Illinois, generally described his state as free from high taxes and burdensome regulation. One of the burdensome regulations he neglected to mention was the fact that his state hadn’t really gotten around to checking out that fertilizer plant. …
“Gov. Perry’s name and the explosion have been linked for several news cycles. I didn’t just make this all up. It’s out there. There is a rather stunning report about all this on ProPublica, the investigative news website. I invite you to read it.”
