Hi bentway; Re: "States and localities control the location and routine inspection of such plants, as well as what's allowed to be built close to the plant, not OSHA."
OSHA is federal law enforced by states. It's illegal for a State to have an OSHA that doesn't follow federal law. If Texas doesn't do a good job at OSHAing, it's Obama's job to stop that. But here's some evidence for you to consider:
“If Texas had been a ‘ State Plan’ state, I might have expected Federal OSHA to revoke the ‘State Plan’ authorization, but workplace safety in Texas was already under the jurisdiction of Federal OSHA.”
rt.com
Re: "OSHA is only concerned with Occupational Health and Safety - for the workers at the plant."
So you're going to argue that no workers were endangered. Good luck with that.
Re: "The state is on the hook for inspecting the plant for the safety of the local community. The plant had 270 TONS of ammonium nitrate fertilizer stored in the plant, which it was NOT permitted for, and should have reported. They told the state there was NO fire danger at the plant, which was an obvious lie.";
I have no idea if this is true or not. Unlike you, apparently, I don't believe every little detail I read in the media (even when it bolsters my arguments).
Re: "Which way do you want it? State or only national control? If you want national control, they'll need a LOT more money."
This is the crux of our difference. You think that some sort of control is needed and that it's only a matter of deciding whether it's state or national. I think that controls are mostly not needed.
A disaster is a wonderful opportunity for those who would make us slaves to further enslave us with our fear. But I'm not the fearful type. I know that explosions happen in fertilizer plants. This is not the first one and it won't be the last. Giving control to the Federal government won't save us from disasters whether it's controlled by Republicans or Democrats. Same applies to State government.
Democrat "solutions" tend to involve giving more power to the State. These solutions not only do not solve the problems they are supposed to solve (fertilizer explosions happen in every agricultural country on the planet, whether they're run by leftists or rightists), but they do have side effects. The most important side effect is that they cost money.
Here's wikipedia's list of Ammonium nitrate disasters, according to the place it happened:
UK, US, Germany, Germany, US, US, France, Belgium, US, France, Red Sea, US, US, US, Papua New Guinea, US, China, France, Spain, Spain, Romania, North Korea, Spain, Mexico, US, US,
en.wikipedia.org
It's obvious that a lot of the explosions happened in the US, but the US is also the world's foremost agricultural powerhouse with nearly half of the world's ammonium nitrate consumed in the US. And it should be obvious to anyone that agriculture in the US is dominated by Republican states. So fertilizer explosions in the US are going to happen in Republican states. Other kinds of explosions happen in Democrat states. For example, pressure cooker explosions.
Bringing things under federal control will not change the destruction. As noted above, Texas was already under federal OSHA control. These type of accidents are caused by human error. Until the federal government has something other than humans working in it, human error will continue unabated.
It's interesting that you admit that "national control" will need "a LOT more money". I agree on this. That's why I'm not in favor of Obamacare, it's a type of "national control". It will be inefficient and expensive and, as usual, it will not achieve what it was claimed to.
-- Carl |
