After Plant Explosion, Perry Should Get Tough Questions About Texas Business Practices

[white cloud]

Texas Gov. Rick Perry visited Illinois this week to try to persuade local businesses to move to Texas, one of his selling points was his state’s weak worker safety protections.

In a state-by-state comparison sheet on his “Texas Wide Open For Business” website, Perry bragged that Texas’s unionization rate is only 5.7 percent, compared to Illinois’s 14.6 percent. Texas businesses pay 39 cents per $100 in covered wages for workers’ comp insurance. It’s $1.10 in Illinois.



But Perry showed up here less than a week after America’s worst workplace disasters in years, a fertilizer plant explosion that killed dozens of people in West, Tex. Given that Texas is so proud of restricting workers’ rights, I think its fair to ask whether lax safety contributed to the fire and the blast.

read more


Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/After-Plant-Explosion-Perry-Should-Get-Tough-Questions-About-Texas-Business-Practices-203588761.html#ixzz2RKiYRCav

[Buzz Clik]

1. I guess the concept is that if the truth is distorted often enough, we can alter the truth.

It's a flawed concept.

I would challenge the writer of that opinion piece to a) provide a quote where Rick Perry said that Texas has weak safety regulations and that's a positive selling point for businesses considering a move to Texas; b) demonstrate that safety regulations had anything at all to do with the explosion in West; c) show that Texas's so-called weak regulations in the context of the fertilizer facility in West are weaker than those of any other major agricultural state.

I have read dozens of these stories this week, and not one has cited anything specific about Texas regulations in this context. Not one. The streak continues.

[DhhD]

3. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:V-JK8Sg8rAIJ:www.txbiz.org/External/WCPages/WCWebContent/

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:V-JK8Sg8rAIJ:www.txbiz.org/External/WCPages/WCWebContent/WebContentPage.aspx%3FContentID%3D265+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiwcIC7mWHm7c0XmXPM1VvDXbrtJfx16M4HU3M8hrsl56RtIUNO7A9bCHWXp5j4z5W4kwF76SmCm3kJfSeSWcrNcpHxOFd0DbDP6ZwKxYxm7JX3S2RP18z211k_KIlKnTbW6JBE&sig=AHIEtbScJFJGCw6VZmmEmXGUtCSWigYJrg

[Buzz Clik]

6. Ok. This one is essentially lobbying priorities put together by Texas businesses for 2013.

Still hypothetical. Nothing to do with the explosion at West Fertilizer Co.

[DhhD]

13. But everything to do with stopping it: doing nothing to protect the people and the workers.

Doing nothing: sin of omission.

[Buzz Clik]

15. I have not been arguing that Texas is the Gulf's answer to California.

My argument is specific to West Fertilizer Company and their disaster.

[DhhD]

4. http://www.independent.ie/world-news/americas/texas-explosion-plant-ignored-safety-rules-29211063.ht

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/americas/texas-explosion-plant-ignored-safety-rules-29211063.html

[Buzz Clik]

7. This one is about non-compliance with Dept of Homeland Security, not Texas.

I did find this to be disconcerting:

Filings this year with the Texas Department of State Health Services, which weren't shared with DHS, show the plant had 270 tons of it on hand last year.

Will the 20 or 30 articles I've read about this subject, this is the first time I've seen this said explicitly. Not sure if it's because no one else stated it clearly or if The Independent has it wrong. It Texas Department of Health Services knew about the ammonium nitrate and told no one else, they are partially culpable for the deaths. However, this says that Texas regulations were out front of DHS, not the other way around.

[DhhD]

10. Ask the Texas State Fire Marshal about the chain of documents required. That sends it in both

directions.

[Buzz Clik]

11. Ok. When I see him.

[DhhD]

14. Sin of commission. Neither did the others.

[DhhD]

5. http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/blog/abj-at-the-capitol/2013/03/senate-committee-on-business-and.h

http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/blog/abj-at-the-capitol/2013/03/senate-committee-on-business-and.html?page=all

Business tea party will continue to discuss lighter regulations in the Legislature. So the story is in action and will be completed by the end of the session, last of May 2013.

The yellow rose of Texas may have information in writing about what the Legislature has and is considering on any given date from early January through the passage of bills.

The answers to your questions may be forth coming.

[Buzz Clik]

9. Those are all bills in progress as far as I can tell.

The "titles" are so vague it's hard to say what the bills will do, but none of them seem to have anything to do with fertilizer distributors. And none of them exist today.

We're still at the same place as we were.

[DhhD]

12. A business is a business, with state sales taxes due. When was the inventory report sent?

Businesses are ZONED. Housing and schools are zoned.

Chemical regulation and blending? What was in writing by state and county agencies on this plant? A verbal agreement? By whom? Where is the inspection reports from all who are in charge of regulation? Unless there are no regulations to protect the public made appropriate by Texas.

Looks like systemic failure by many.

A flame has a color to indicate what is being vaporized. A chemist knows flame tests. I understand that a chemist looking at the 1947 flames in Texas City told everyone to leave because the chemist knew what was burning and that it would get hotter and hotter. He lived. You might look into the rest of it.

Right now the Texas Legislature Interim Reports are available. I expect those effected to request a federal investigation.

After the findings, we will not be in the same place.

[blkmusclmachine]

2. Oops.

[DhhD]

8. Texas Senate clearinghouse trends. Have regulations lessened over the sessions?

http://www.senate.state.tx.us/SRC/Pub.htm

http://www.house.state.tx.us/committees/reports/