Shameless Sack of S*** of The Week: Rick Perry

[riqster]

http://bluntandcranky.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/shameless-sack-of-s-of-the-week-rick-perry/

[hobbit709]

1. Just of the week? He's working on of the decade.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

2. I hadn't fully grasped the irony before. Yikes. Gov Goodhair's got balls of steel.

And a skull to match.

This week’s award goes to Rick Perry, Guv O’ Texas, who is on a national tour promoting his state’s “business friendly” lack of regulation and infrastructure at the same people there are cleaning up from a horrible explosion caused by Texas’ lack of regulation and infrastructure.

[russspeakeasy]

3. If it wasn't for Gomer, he would own the title hands down.

[spanone]

4. not fair to sacks of shit.

[riqster]

9. True, fertilizer at least makes crops grow. nt

[Nika]

5. I wouldn't shed a tear of Texas either became a republic unto itself again, or vanished from the

the face of the Earth.

It's one of my least favorite places in the U.S.

[Cirque du So-What]

7. I beg to differ

on behalf of the millions of Texans who want no part of this neoconfederate scheme. Plus, they've got a lot of stuff that was paid for by all us taxpayers. I want all that stuff back before they talk about secession.

[Nika]

10. I can appreciate that. Mine was a gut wrenching first reaction anyway.

The one time I was in Texas I couldn't believe the wrost of the people I dealt with.

For example when driving north and stopping to help as a traffic accident where these two women had hit livestock on the road, the LEO at the scene asked my friend and I to go get the "boy" to come out and see him from the nearest farmhouse.

I was actually puzzled and expecting a young boy to answer when a full grown Black man answered the door and I did a quick inner "Oh my fucking God" to this unexpected bit or racist labelling we had encountered.

There are lots of decent people in Texas, and lots of people I would not want to move out here to Oregon if they ever fled their state.

[backscatter712]

6. Rick Perry: the man so dense that light bends around him!

He is truly a singularity of stupid!

[riqster]

8. Physics and politics! Awesome.

[Buzz Clik]

11. DU is a shameless echo chamber where it's assumed everyone always swallows the bullshit.

Here is the quote:

This week’s award goes to Rick Perry, Guv O’ Texas, who is on a national tour promoting his state’s “business friendly” lack of regulation and infrastructure at the same time people there are cleaning up from a horrible explosion caused by Texas’ lack of regulation and infrastructure.

For the past week as this bullshit has been repeated over and again, I have challenged someone, anyone, everyone to step forward and tell me what regulation or regulations were absent and specific to Texas that led to that explosion.

Anyone?

Or is it just too much fun saying this despite it being completely baseless?

[spanone]

12. Austerity, Deregulation and the Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion

Last evening, a fertilizer plant owned by Adair Grain Inc. in West, Texas caught fire, then exploded, killing several people and wounding at least one hundred. The blast, caught on video from afar, destroyed nearby homes, businesses and a nursing home for seniors. There are still lingering questions about how this happened, but documents suggest the plant faced little regulatory scrutiny.

The Dallas Morning News reported that the plant filed papers with state and federal environmental regulators in 2006 claiming that there were “no” fire or explosive risks at the plant. "The worst possible scenario, the report said, would be a ten-minute release of ammonia gas that would kill or injure no one," noted reporter Randy Lee Loftis. Residents complained about the smell of ammonia as they "went to bed" that year, according to a filing.

As I pointed out on Twitter last night, in the last five years, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has only inspected five fertilizer plants in the entire state of Texas—and the plant in West, Texas was not one of them. OSHA is severely understaffed and operates with a tiny federal budget. With the agency's current resources, that means "OSHA can inspect a workplace on average once every 129 years and state OSHA inspectors could inspect one every 67 years."

There are specialized inspectors for chemical plants that, in theory, should have covered where OSHA or environmental regulators left off. The US Chemical Safety Board, which came into operation in 1998, is the commission tasked with investigating safety violations. Like similar boards, the Chemical Safety Board has virtually no resources: only a $10 million budget to cover every violation in the country. The Center for Public Integrity has a new, incredibly damning report, showing that the agency has failed to investigate several recent disasters, including the death of a worker at refinery in Memphis last December.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/173931/austerity-deregulation-and-texas-fertilizer-plant-explosion#

[Buzz Clik]

13. Point 1. West Fertilizer Company is not a "chemical plant" by any definition.

2. You are speaking of national regulations, not Texas deregulation.

It's the same shit over and over again and leads to the same point: Nobody has any idea about Texas regulations other than Rick Perry and, in the past, GW Bush, telling us Texas has fewer regulations.

The bottom line is a lot more simple than all of that: the owner/operator lied about having ammonium nitrate on hand, and that lie (whether a lie of commission or omission) cause the deaths in that fire.

[spanone]

14. texas also has regulatory agencies.....

The Department of Homeland Security, the federal agency charged with regulating the highly explosive substance ammonium nitrate, wasn't aware that West Fertilizer Co. stored 270 tons of ammonium nitrate - 1,300 times the threshold that triggers federal oversight.

But the small company did submit the information to another government agency - the Department of State Health Services.

http://www.chron.com/news/kilday-hart/article/State-regulators-focus-on-emissions-not-safety-4450243.php



Who regulates these fertilizer plants?

At least seven different state and federal agencies can regulate Texas fertilizer plants like the one in West: OSHA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the Texas Department of State Health Services, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas Feed and Fertilizer Control Service.

Some of the agencies don’t appear to have shared information before the blast.

Fertilizer plants that hold more than 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate, for instance, are required to notify the Department of Homeland Security. (Ammonium nitrate can be used to make bombs. It’s what Timothy McVeigh used to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.) The West plant held 270 tons 2014 yes, tons 2014 of the chemical last year, according to a report it filed with the Texas Department of State Health Services, but the plant didn’t tell Homeland Security.

http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2013/04/what-went-wrong-in-west-and-where-were-the-regulators/

[Buzz Clik]

16. All of this is quite well known. All of it.

What I want to know is what is Texas lacking in regulation or enforcement that caused that fire and explosion?

[spanone]

17. obviously the DEPARTMENT OF STATE HEALTH SERVICES in texas dropped the ball.

if they had passed the info onto homeland security, it appears this could have been prevented.

[Buzz Clik]

18. Correct. Likewise, if West Fertilizer Co. had informed DHS directly, as they are required to do! nt

[spanone]

19. complicity all around....

wonder why they would share their obviously illegal activities with state regulators and not federal?

seems like ANY agency that received such an outlandish report 1300 TIMES THE THRESHOLD THAT TRIGGERS FEDERAL OVERSIGHT... would bring it to the attention of the federal overseers.

[Buzz Clik]

20. That is an excellent question, and it could get back to Texas bristling at the Feds.

But, then, the various Texas agencies are constantly feuding against each other.

Who knows.

[tabasco]

22. Maybe you are aware that state employees enforce federal regulations

Maybe you are not.

[Buzz Clik]

23. In some cases. So, how is that relevant?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. Tax and regulation and,...wasn't there a third thing?

[Gothmog]

21. Juanita Jean has some good comments about Goodhair

Juanita Jean loves the fact that Goodhair's feelings were hurt. http://juanitajean.com/2013/04/26/dont-hold-your-breath/#comments