If it were just a matter of Texans killing Texans — with the victims embracing their fates — then I might be willing to let it all go with an “everyone to hell in their own handbasket” reaction. But, of course, the generalized Gresham’s Law tells us what follows from this kind of thinking:
Five days after an explosion at a fertilizer plant leveled a wide swath of this town, Gov. Rick Perry tried to woo Illinois business officials by trumpeting his state’s low taxes and limited regulations. Asked about the disaster, Mr. Perry responded that more government intervention and increased spending on safety inspections would not have prevented what has become one of the nation’s worst industrial accidents in decades…
This antipathy toward regulations is shared by many residents here. Politicians and economists credit the stance with helping attract jobs and investment to Texas, which has one of the fastest-growing economies in the country, and with winning the state a year-after-year ranking as the nation’s most business friendly.
Even in West, last month’s devastating blast did little to shake local skepticism of government regulations. Tommy Muska, the mayor, echoed Governor Perry in the view that tougher zoning or fire safety rules would not have saved his town. “Monday morning quarterbacking,” he said.
Raymond J. Snokhous, a retired lawyer in West who lost two cousins — brothers who were volunteer firefighters — in the explosion, said, “There has been nobody saying anything about more regulations.”
I’d be surprised, except for the fact that there’s nothing out of the ordinary here, if you look at matters like a (certain kind of) Texan:
Texas …is the only state that does not require companies to contribute to workers’ compensation coverage. It boasts the largest city in the country, Houston, with no zoning laws. It does not have a state fire code, and it prohibits smaller counties from having such codes. Some Texas counties even cite the lack of local fire codes as a reason for companies to move there.
Hold on a moment there, buckaroo! No fire codes? That’s a reason to locate in Texas?
I guess the goal here is to reduce the incovenience of contracting with Bangladesh.
Seriously — if you think it an act of social responsibility to demand clothing retailers to demonstrate proper work place safety for their imports, shouldn’t we demand the same of, say every oil and gas company, refiners and all, that deliver products from Texas to the rest of these United States?
Anyway — guess the inevitable consequence of such “pro-business” concern. No prize for correct answers:
But Texas has also had the nation’s highest number of workplace fatalities — more than 400 annually — for much of the past decade. Fires and explosions at Texas’ more than 1,300 chemical and industrial plants have cost as much in property damage as those in all the other states combined for the five years ending in May 2012. Compared with Illinois, which has the nation’s second-largest number of high-risk sites, more than 950, but tighter fire and safety rules, Texas had more than three times the number of accidents, four times the number of injuries and deaths, and 300 times the property damage costs.
As I said at the top…if this were a problem for Texans alone then there is a part of me that says that they voted for this government (and regulatory regime), and they should enjoy what they’ve gotten — good and hard. But (a) this ignores the fact that those most at risk are those with the least access to the levers of power, and even in a deep red state like this one, there are lots of folks who don’t want to be blown up in their back yards. Some solidarity seems in order.
More broadly there’s (b): Texas’s drive to hold harmless private businesses for any consequences of their decisions puts pressure on every other state. There are alternatives, and lots of non-feral players recognize that there’s more to a positive business climate than crap schools, an immiserating approach to health care, a failure to provide worker and public safety, and an incentive structure that rewards environmental malice. But to the extent that Texas is successful in attracting enterprises to its let-any-harm-happen frontier, the downward pressure on other states exists. Bad laws, bad regulatory frameworks drive out good, just like Gresham could have said.
National Republicans are, of course, complicit in this drive to put ever more Americans at risk. In the context of weak state protection for its citizenry, the onus falls on the federal government, through agencies like but not limited to OSHA and EPA. But they aren’t meeting that task, and won’t. There are lots of reasons why not, including some an Obama administration could address (and that we should push for), but a big part of the reason lies with the long-running effort by the GOP to hollow out government from within.
So, yeah, Texas remains too small for a country and too big as an asylum. I know it’s a near impossible task to imagine dragging it, kicking and screaming, into the Century of the Anchovy. But for our own sake, if not for theirs, we gotta try.
The first step is to remember: Factio Grandaeva Delenda Est.
Image: Alfred Rethel, The factory Mechanische Werkstätten Harkort & Co, c. 1834
Hunter Gathers
This post will make Free Market Jesus cry. Hope you’re proud of yourself.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Actually, lots of Texans here in Texas will tell you they could be a country. Hell, there were even books written about it. But, like most Republican states, they wouldn’t actually do it, and the people here will be the first to be surprised when the country goes to shit following Texas’ lead.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hunter Gathers: If he wasn’t before, he will be now.
Keith
The ol’ ‘new rules wouldn’t have prevented anything” to the rescue again!
Mike in NC
Texas was actually an independent country for a brief time, but to paraphrase Barbara Bush, it wasn’t working out very well for them.
scav
If TX can’t compete based on the quality of their workforce, then clearly the cheapness and expendability of it (and docility) must be the way to go. Bangladesh in the same time zone indeed. Gotta work with your strengths.
RSA
Texas is big on slogans, but somehow they’ve missed “An ounce of prevention is worth
a pound of cure2,400 tons of explosive ammonium nitrate.”Nate
So do companies based in Texas pay appropriately high insurance premiums? I ask honestly, because clearly they should be higher.
Short Bus Bully
This dipshit pushback against “regulations” is in part a serial longing for the pre-industrial artisan life where every man was his own boss and worked when and how he wanted, selling his wares down at the local market. This was a healthy way to live and people are right to miss it (even though they don’t actually recognize that that’s what they’re wanting).
The real irony is that capitalists are the ones who destroyed this libertarian nirvana with their factories and ever increasing need for higher productivity.
But keep worshipping “capitalism” without knowing what it is, and keep pretending that the internets version of “libertarianism” is actually compatible with it.
Meanwhile I’ll just be over here pouring myself another three fingers of scotch…
El Cid
What if consumers want more exploding fertilizer plants?
Chris
@scav:
That’s been the South’s only incentive to investors for as long as anyone can remember – a cheap workforce with very few tools at their disposal for protection or representation. If memory serves, quite a few Northern businesses supported national child labor and worker protection laws a hundred years ago specifically to prevent the South from undercutting them. As a happy side effect, less dead children and employees. A situation the state of Texas appears to be doing everything in its power to rectify.
kerFuFFler
“Texas had more than three times the number of accidents, four times the number of injuries and deaths, and 300 times the property damage costs.”
So, I wonder if insurance companies charge Texan facilities more because their regulatory oversight is so minimal. I suspect not. If Texan companies had to pay the increased rates to cover their dangerous choices they might start to see the virtue of more regulation.
But then again, maybe not. After all, they can simply choose to go uninsured, or minimally insured because Texas law does not require them to purchase adequate liability insurance. And then we lucky tax-payers from all the other states get to pay for rebuilding places like West, Texas. This needs to change.
waratah
There was a time when I had great hopes that the out of state workers these these companies and jobs created would transport some common sense to Texas politics.
Cacti
Increased oversight and regulation would not have prevented this because shut up, that’s why.
Sometimes you just have to expect that factories are going to explode.
Higgs Boson's Mate
How many Texans are collecting lifetime Social Security Disability Income as a result of their state’s lack of regulations? We are all paying the freight for Texas just as we all pay for every big box retailer whose low wages force its employees to go on food stamps and seek medical help at ERs.
But don’t you dare call it soshulism.
cvstoner
There is a simple solution: raise the cost of insurance to do business in Texas by a factor of three…
the Conster
@El Cid:
I know I do, and I have whole list of occupants I’d be willing to pay for.
Chris
@Short Bus Bully:
Yes. In many European countries, there is still such a thing as right-wing anti-capitalist populism, because people remember and understand that distinction you just made between “libertarian nirvana” and industrial capitalism.
America used to have that too. It’s remembered in American mythology with all the Westerns starring small town settlers threatened by corporate giants (e.g. “Once Upon A Time In The West”). In the real world, it expressed itself in rural populist movements like William Jennings Bryan’s. Unfortunately those movements have long since either folded up their tents and gone home, or, as you pointed out, sold out to the big capitalism they once organized against.
Patrick
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Texas supposedly gives more than it takes from the federal government. But I wonder when they calculate this, if they truly include everything, such as the issue of collecting lifetime Social Security Disability Income as a result of their state’s lack of regulations?
Cassidy
Freedom’s just another word for
nothing left to lose, blowing up 14 people, injuring approx. 200 with still approx. 60 missingNothingRegulations and safety and people’s lives don’t mean nothinghoneyin Texas if it ain’t free, now now.And
feeling gooddestroying a town, killing first responders and destroying property including 3 fire apparatuses was easy, Lord, whenhe sang the bluesTexas said watch this ya’llYou know
feeling good was good enough for me,fuck it, their lives don’t matter anyway and who need workplace regulation. Seriously what’s 200+ people in the grand scheme of things.Good enough for
me and my Bobby McGeebig business and Rick Perry.optional
I don’t know anything for certain, but I will just about guarantee you that companies in Texas do indeed have higher insurance premiums than companies elsewhere. Insurance folk are ruthless when it comes to assessing risk and charging exactly what the risk warrants. It’s also probable that the increased insurance premiums are not large enough to overcome decreased costs in having to, you know, make sure their workers aren’t killed in giant fireballs.
Suffern ACE
@kerFuFFler:
If regulation is lax in some industries, I am guessing that insurance would be another. The insurance companies would be there, but they would probably use claims risk minimization practices that would be against the rules elsewhere. Like simply refusing to pay an obvious claim but not on tuesdays unless the claimant finds a judge to make us…
kerFuFFler
@cvstoner:
Except that companies will just under insure. Texas law does not require companies to purchase adequate liability insurance. The rest of the country is forced to pay for the disasters, and Texas continues poaching jobs from other states. There ought to be a law…
Cassidy
@Patrick: You mean the same state that fudged
liedabout its school dropout and graduation numbers to appear to be successful so they could foist that god-awful shit on the rest of the country? Yeah, I think integrity in Texas went the way of workplace safety and regulations.Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti:
Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It’s just not very widely reported.
kerFuFFler
@Suffern ACE:
Yeah, and another insurance dodge can be that they are not liable if the company did something negligent or illegal. Even though the West, TX plant did carry a paltry 1 million in insurance, I doubt that much if any of that will get paid out because the plant likely did something negligent or illegal.
David Hunt
@Keith:
Well, if you go out of your way to make sure that those rules can’t be enforced, then it’s a true statement!
scav
ok may be approaching new weird TX cusp yet again. Tpm linkthrough to this West paramedic arrested on charge of possession of destructive device
Developing, so we’ll just have to see WTF.
eta because why the sudden interest in explosive devices? because they’re not llc or factory-based enough?
muddy
@kerFuFFler: And there’s no Workman’s Comp.
Suffern ACE
@kerFuFFler: Well, that’s also another thing you do if insuarance rates are too high. You just don’t by enough insurance. I mean, come on. If there hadn’t been a huge explosion, but something else…they could not hope to rebuild the plant for $1.0 million.
And yes, I am one of those folks who doesn’t think FEMA is supposed to replace insurance for private individuals and business.
David Hunt
@Nate:
It’s my understanding that the plant that exploded in West was insured against damages to its neighbors in the wopping amount of one million dollars! That should cover the school and the retirement home that were flattened, not to mention personal residences and the deaths and injuries, right?
Matt McIrvin
Texas isn’t too small to be a country. It’s too dysfunctional to be a rich First World country, and the fact that it’s in the US obscures that to some degree, even though it’s a relatively rich state as they come (it probably wouldn’t be a total basket case like the smaller Gulf Coast states would be).
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
This.
Without membership in the U.S, it would be your basic Central American banana republic. Theoretically, it has the resources to be a Saudi Arabia, but I suspect the powers-that-be in Texas are too full of themselves to harness that oil for welfare state purposes (even if they limited themselves to white people).
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
Technically, it’s South Carolina that’s too small for a country, too large for a mental institution. And as much petrochemical industry as there is, I’m honestly shocked there aren’t *more* industrial explosions. I remember a couple rattling the windows on my parents’ house growing up.
aimai
@Short Bus Bully:
I got into an online tussle with some women who were from places like Texas and Texas itself when I tried to point out that one of their husbands was being screwed over by his boss because his boss was requiring him to accept a long distance, unpaid, drive to a new work site as part of his job. While they all clearly thought of themselves and their spouses as independent contractors and free agents they were as shocked as lifelong peasants at the very idea of querying the rights and orders of their feudal overlord. They became, in an online kind of way, hysterical at the very notion that in some places workers negotiate the conditions under which they will perform a job, or negotiate for salary and gas money. I mean, what was interesting was that rather than saying “that’s interesting” or “that doesn’t apply here because the market is so bad” they became enraged with me for pointing out the ways in which their husbands were screwed by the boss and the ways that they were, in essence, subsidizing the boss’s income by undervaluing the husband’s cost-for labor.
Chris
@aimai:
Yeah, it’s somewhat shocking when you’ve been raised to believe in liberty, equality and democracy to realize just how deeply ingrained the serf instinct is in some people, or just how many of these people there are out there.
The Master is right. He must be right, otherwise he wouldn’t be the Master. It’s not our place to question him.
(Applies to more than just the workplace, unfortunately. “Wives, submit to your husbands…”)
SatanicPanic
@Short Bus Bully:
I have no idea why anyone would miss this kind of life. No sick leave? No paid vacation? No weekends? No thanks.
Waldo
Monday Morning quarterbacking, in this case, isn’t about how the home team lost the game. It’s about how you lost the home team, the visiting team, the stadium and a bunch of fans, too.
But hey, you’ll get ’em next Sunday.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@aimai: which is why I say “Fuck You” to everyone who argues against unions (not that you are). Yes, they have their faults, but there is no other organization looking out for the interests of labor.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Shanna, they bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into. I say, let ’em burn in industrial explosion because they’re too fucking stupid to zone properly.
Chris
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
As Teddy Roosevelt (think it was him) pointed out about anti-labor freaks, it’s strange that people pointing to bad union bosses or other abuses by unions think this means that all unions should be destroyed and the baby thrown out with the bathwater. After all, no one thinks that bad politicians, bad businessmen, and abuses by government or corporate power means that governments or corporations should be abolished.
MomSense
@optional:
I think that the Texas version of “tort reform” means that someone who is injured or suffers losses has little recourse.
Omnes Omnibus
@SatanicPanic: Anyone who farms or owns a small business lives that life. Many seem to enjoy it.
Jay in Oregon
@Nate:
But they can honestly state that they are in full compliance with all relevant safety regulations…
Matt McIrvin
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): The way I figure it is this.
Are unions sometimes corrupt, or, even if not corrupt, oriented toward socially destructive goals? Of course they are. But corporations often are too, which is not a fact anyone of note questions.
And the capitalist West is supposed to be built around the idea that we accomplish things by harnessing the power of enlightened self-interest; corporations are means by which a bunch of investors can pool resources and bargaining power and work toward their collective interests.
If capitalists get to do that, then workers get to do that too. That’s what a union is: an expression of the self-interest of its members. If only rich investors get this kind of representation, the system is out of balance.
Jay in Oregon
@Cassidy:
That’s not possible; libertarians are constantly telling us that the only reason companies try to skirt regulations is because they are burdensome and inefficient; if those regulations didn’t exist then every large company would behave like the perfect little angels
GodAyn Rand knows them to be.ranchandsyrup
As long as the workers that perish are poor or brown, a large segment of Texans will say that workplace accidents are a good thing.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
When the 1% agree to abolish Chambers of Commerce, I’ll agree to abolish unions. Until then, fuck them.
Denali
I really think that this country would be better off if Texas actually did secede. The Texan
mindset is harmful to the rest of the country in many ways – in their undue influence over the choice of textbooks, just to cite one example.
SatanicPanic
@Omnes Omnibus: Sure. I don’t begrudge anyone the choice to be their own boss, but I’d rather not live in a society where every man is a business owner. That sounds like a drag.
rikyrah
they killed your family members
and you have nothing to demand in terms of WHY it happened?
the stupid burns with these people…and I have no sympathy for their idiocy.
Riley's Enabler
Texas cannot secede. It’s a mistaken fable repeated in middle school hallways along the swamps, creeks and bayous.
So stop it, please. Not all of us here in the Lone Star State are idiots and/or assholes and/or rednecks.
Yes, Texas has more than it’s share of craptastic politics,and yeah- we kowtow to business interests far more than is wise or even healthy.
But not all of us are horrible and some of us are fighting hard to turn it blue.
Your paintbrush, it is overlarge.
Gex
@Nate: No, because Texas companies are very good at getting the feds to bail them out. If not directly, through the annual subsidy the rest of the nation pays them in exchange for them bitching about us endlessly.
Villago Delenda Est
@kerFuFFler:
This is exactly what is going on. The taxpayers in New York and California ultimately pay for the laxity of Texas business. So it’s cost shifting, an old and honored technique for maximizing immediate profit. The plant in question only had a $1 million insurance policy. This will probably cover the medical costs of one victim of their criminal negligence.
JPL
@Riley’s Enabler: When my sons were in elementary school, they had critical thinking as part of their curriculum. They were in the gifted program. I just read online that class is no longer funded. Is that true?
also, We lived in Dallas until 1987 and at that time, the schools were excellent.
Felonius Monk
Perhaps the best we can hope for is that Texas detonates or incinerates itself into oblivion before it drags the rest of the country down with it.
I think this says it appropriately: I Luv Texas
Patricia Kayden
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Thankfully, the whole country isn’t following Texas’ lead.
Sorry to sound mean, but if they don’t want regulations down there, why should non-Texans care? Isn’t that their choice. I’m sorry that anyone had to die, but it looks like Texans are quite comfortable with their anti-federal government “keep your hands off us” stance. Let them be.
Roy G.
They ran these ads in California earlier this year, and prolly had a good ‘yee haw’ about it.
Then, poor dumb Rick Perry got his fee-fees hurt when the Sacramento Bee ran a cartoon about Perry saying ‘business is booming in Texas,’ after the negligent fertilizer plant explosion.
Rick Perry Disgusted By “Booming Business” Cartoon
http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/rick-perry-disgusted-by-booming-business-cartoon/
Of course, it’s the nasty liberuls fault for pointing out the flaw in their grift.
Chris
@Patricia Kayden:
I tend to see red states the same way I see inner city gangland. Yes, it may be run by assholes, but it’s still America, the people in it are still Americans, and those of them who aren’t assholes are entitled to expect the country at large to protect them from those who are.
The Ancient Randonneur
Q: What’s the best thing to ever come out of Texas?
A: I-40
Riley's Enabler
@JPL:
Critical thinking is still a part of my son’s curriculum, but yes – there were rattlings when the Texas GOP denounced it in their platform. I believe they dropped that bit after much finger pointing and snickering in their general direction.
Tears of the FSM.
http://tfninsider.org/ is a great site to track developments in the schools.
kerFuFFler
@Patricia Kayden:
Non-Texans should care because we have to subsidize their risky lifestyle. The town will get federal disaster relief because the plant was under-insured. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge people federal assistance after a disaster, but on the other hand, in this case, this accident may have been preventable through higher safety standards. States should have to comply with some federal standards in cases like this if they expect federal disaster relief. This was, after all a man made mess.
(Oh, and yeah, I guess I do kinda begrudge excessive federal subsidizing of mansions being rebuilt on exposed or floodprone coastal property. If you can’t afford the insurance for the location, maybe you shouldn’t build or buy there to begin with. I think most federal disaster relief should focus on helping bring public infrastructure back up to snuff and helping residents in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophe.)
priscianus jr
@Chris: ” … I suspect the powers-that-be in Texas are too full of themselves to harness that oil for welfare state purposes …”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_University_Fund
Mind you, this was set up in 1876.
Also, everybody’s crying poor anyway. Got to keep pouring money into those investment portfolios, you know.
JWL
“”Raymond J. Snokhous, a retired lawyer in West who lost two cousins — brothers who were volunteer firefighters — in the explosion, said, “There has been nobody saying anything about more regulations.”
Assuming Snokous endorses that silence, he is one cold blooded bastard. Or maybe he never much liked either cousin, in which case he also a spiteful, cold blooded bastard- and a very stupid man on top of it all.
Citizen_X
@priscianus jr: Yeah, bit that was way back when there was an active populist, Progressive movement (that was strong in rural areas), and when states were setting up land-grant public universities as an example of red-white-and-blue, all-American Soshulizm.
I think it’s considered treasonous to remember that these days.
Tokyokie
@Chris:
Although you should keep in mind that C’era una volta il West was made by Italians who were either apolitical (Sergio Leone and Dario Argento) or left-leaning (Sergio Donati and especially Bernardo Bertolucci). A better example might be Johnny Guitar (whose plot Bertolucci and Argento largely lifted for C’era una volta il West), but then it was made by Nick Ray, a left-leaning (and probably gay) American.
Anyway, I don’t imagine it’ll surprise anybody that because Texas law doesn’t require employers to carry workers comp insurance for all their employees that the state ranks dead last by a significant margin in workers comp coverage.
Mike G
@aimai:
Authoritarian-followers dare not challenge the wealthy that they fear, but derive comfort from believing they are the pets of the powerful. Such people become very angry when you point out that they are actually just livestock.
PeorgieTirebiter
[email protected]The Ancient Randonneur: Three million votes for BHO, Townes Van Zandt, Civil Rights Legislation, Deep Fried Twinkies, I could go on. I’m a Texan born and raised in Los Angeles. I never feel an impulse to abandon my gay friends in CA because of their State’s vote on Prop 8. The simple minded dismissals of large, diverse populations based on geography is tiresome.
Fred Fnord
Check me here:
Texas does not require companies to carry workers’ comp insurance.
Texas (and the rest of the US) does not allow people to sue companies if they are injured on the job, except in cases of gross negligence (or malice or a few other mostly-irrelevant exceptions). All of these exceptions are nearly impossible to prove, and more or less nobody ever does.
Does this mean that in Texas, if you are injured on the job and your company does not carry workers’ comp insurance, you simply have no recourse and get discarded and left to fend for yourself?
Please, no speculation. I would really like an informed answer on this one.