David Sirota: Workplace deaths make Texas ground zero of corporate terrorism

Brett T. | 9:17 PM on May 11, 2013

There you go: if you wait long enough, eventually as many Texans will die of workplace accidents as Americans died on 9/11. What possible connection could there be between the two? David Sirota has the answer: Sept. 11 was the result of religious terrorism, while workplace deaths are the result of corporate terrorism, which apparently runs rampant in the absence of government oversight and regulation.

Where did this latest outrage come from? The New York Times implied this week in many, many words what cartoonist Jack Ohman managed to convey in one panel in his ghoulish “Business is booming” cartoon: Gov. Rick Perry and the GOP don’t care who dies if they can make a buck.

This antiregulatory zeal is an outgrowth of a broader Texas ideology: that government should get out of people’s lives, a deeply held belief throughout the state that touches many aspects of life here, including its gun culture, its Republican-dominated Legislature and its cowboy past and present.

So, would stronger government oversight have prevented that fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas? The New York Times admits, “It is impossible to know whether tougher regulations would have prevented the disaster near West, especially since investigators remain unsure what sparked the fire that caused the fertilizer to explode.” But, corporate terrorism.

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Caution: disagreeing with David Sirota is an admission of stupidity and will likely result in a blocking.

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