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John Galt’s Trail of Death and Destruction Continues to Grow

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Building destroyed in West, Texas fertilizer explosion. (Courtesy of State Farm via Flickr under Creative Commons license.)

Building destroyed in West, Texas fertilizer explosion. (Courtesy of State Farm via Flickr under Creative Commons license.)

John Galt has been a deadly and destructive guy lately, with the largest of his most recent attacks taking place in the garment factory collapse in Bangladesh on April 24 where the death toll has now tragically topped 900 and the fertilizer storage facility explosion in West, Texas on April 17 that miraculously killed only fourteen people but injured over 200 and caused damage that is now estimated to exceed $100 million.

In an interesting development, Bangladesh has shown that at least on some fronts it is more civilized than Texas. Both the building’s owner and the engineer accused of colluding with the owner to add three unregulated floors on top of the building have been arrested, while Texas lawmakers, previously known for their refusal to vote in favor of disaster relief when it was in New York and New Jersey, now have called for socializing the losses in Texas. Of course, since the fertilizer plant owner (who has not been arrested) only carried $1 million in liability insurance (and since Texas doesn’t require liability insurance for many businesses operating with dangerous materials), those losses are bound to be socialized anyway.

From CBS News on the response to the disaster in Bangladesh:

Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith spoke as the government cracked down on those it blamed for the disaster in the Dhaka suburb of Savar. It suspended Savar’s mayor and arrested an engineer who had called for the building’s evacuation last week, but was also accused of helping the owner add three illegal floors to the eight-story structure. The building owner was arrested earlier.

The government appears to be attempting to fend off accusations that it is in part to blame for the tragedy because of weak oversight of the building’s construction.

It looks like Muhith went a bit too far in trying to deflect responsibility from the government:

During a visit to the Indian capital, New Delhi, Muhith said the disaster would not harm Bangladesh’s garment industry, which is by far the country’s biggest source of export income.

“The present difficulties … well, I don’t think it is really serious — it’s an accident,” he said. “And the steps that we have taken in order to make sure that it doesn’t happen, they are quite elaborate and I believe that it will be appreciated by all.”

The article goes on to point out that Muhith had made a similar hollow promise to improve safety conditions several months ago when a fire in a garment factory killed over a hundred workers.

In a tragic testament to the shoddy conditions in these facilities in Bangladesh, we have word this morning of another eight deaths in a fire in a garment factory. However, this time the fire was after hours and it wasn’t workers who were killed: Read more →

John Galt Kills Texans in Massive Fertilizer Plant Explosion

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West Texas

Google Maps satellite view of West Fertilizer and its proximity to West Middle School, along with many houses and apartments.

Who needs pesky safety regulations or zoning laws when there is money to made running a fertilizer plant? Sadly, the small Texas town of West, which is just north of Waco, is suffering the consequences of unregulated free enterprise today, as a massive explosion at West Fertilizer has leveled much of the town. Perhaps the only remotely fortunate aspect of this tragedy is that it occurred at 8 pm local time and so West Middle School, which burned after the explosion, was not full of children.

A look at the satellite image above shows the folly of putting “free enterprise” ahead of sensible zoning laws. At almost 20 miles north of Waco, Texas, one thing that is in abundance in the region is open space (I’ve driven past this spot several times in the last two or three years–it’s desolate), and yet this fertilizer plant is immediately adjacent to a large apartment building (see the photo at the top of this article for how that building fared in the explosion) and very close to a middle school. There is no reason at all for any other building to be within two or three miles of a facility that produces material that is so explosive.

The Texas tradition of low taxes is also having an impact on this tragedy. Note this passage in the New York Times account of the disaster:

It began with a smaller fire at the plant, West Fertilizer, just off Interstate 35, about 20 miles north of Waco that was attended by local volunteer firefighters, said United States Representative Bill Flores. “The fire spread and hit some of these tanks that contain chemicals to treat the fertilizer,” Mr. Flores said, “and there was an explosion which caused wide damage.”

That’s right. This fertilizer plant and other businesses in West apparently don’t pay enough in local taxes to support a municipal fire department, and so the first responders to a fire at a fertilizer plant were volunteer firefighters. Sadly, several of these volunteers are now missing:

The town’s volunteer firefighters responded to a call at the plant about 6 p.m., said Waco police Sgt. William Patrick Swanton. Muska was among them, and he and his colleagues were working to evacuate the area around the plant when the blast followed about 50 minutes later. Muska said it knocked off his fire helmet and blew out the doors and windows of his nearby home.

Five or six volunteer firefighters were at the plant fire when the explosion happened, Muska said, and not all have been accounted for.

Ammonium nitrate, one of the most commonly used fertilizers is also highly explosive. It was the primary component of Timothy McVeigh’s bomb that destroyed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. Texas, especially, should know of the dangers inherent in fertilizer plants, as this disaster occurs very near the anniversary of the Texas City disaster: Read more →

Fourteen Dead and 170 Infected: Poor Regulation Built That

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The latest figures indicate that fourteen people have died and at least 170 have been sickened by fungal meningitis arising from an injectable form of the steroid drug methylprednisolone. The bulk of the cases have occurred from patients receiving spinal injections for back pain but there is now at least one documented case of an infection arising from injection of an ankle. At a time when Republicans running for office all across the country routinely deride “job killing regulations”, we now have a sadly perfect example of how lack of regulation kills people.

The tainted drug causing the infections in these cases comes from a single compounding pharmacy in Massacusetts. Compounding pharmacies exist in a regulatory gray area and have pushed further and further away from their original form due to an absence of regulatory push-back. The FDA strictly regulates the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and assures that they are produced without risk of contaminating microorganisms that could cause infection upon use of the drug. However, compounding pharmacies are regulated only at the state level, mostly because their original role was to provide unique mixtures of drugs produced in response to prescriptions for individual patients. Sensing opportunity to operate in a regulatory gray area, “the free market” has moved in and compounding operations now openly flaunt the single patient idea. In the current case, CNN reports a CDC estimate that as many as 13,000 patients may have been injected with the tainted drug compounded by New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Massachusetts.

The CNN article describes that the regulatory gaps are well-known but Congress has refused to act:

If Sarah Sellers’ warnings had been taken seriously 10 years ago, 12 people might be alive today.

Sellers, a pharmacist and expert on the sterile compounding of drugs, testified to Congress in 2003 about non-sterile conditions she’d witnessed.

“Professional standards for sterile compounding have not been consistently applied,” she told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. “The absence of federal compounding regulations has created vulnerability in our gold standard system for pharmaceutical regulation.”

Nearly 10 years later, there are still no federal sterility guidelines for compounding pharmacies that make and distribute drugs all over the country.

Further, we see that the court system has acted to weaken the poor regulations that previously existed:

In the 1990s, FDA regulators began to more closely scrutinize the industry, as some compounding pharmacies grew into larger operations that resembled small pharmaceutical companies.

In 1997, Congress passed a law bringing compounded drugs under FDA oversight, requiring that they meet certain standards for production, labeling and advertising. Specifically, the law banned compounding pharmacies from advertising their products.

A 9th Circuit court ruled that this last requirement was unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court upheld the decision in 2002. The court did not rule on the other portions of the law, though the FDA has not actively enforced them.

We learn from USA Today that problems from compounding pharmacies lowering safety standards while chasing higher profits through high-volume compounding have led to many known cases of infections and other medical complications over the last ten years or so: Read more →

When Job-Killing Regulations Are Removed, Jobs Become Killers

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The city of Karachi is shut down today:

Public transport was suspended and schools and colleges closed. Factories and markets also shut while attendance at offices was thin.

This city of 18 million is in mourning for the deaths of 258 people in a fire at a garment factory. The fire was horrific:

Workers were suffocated or burnt alive at the Ali Enterprises garment factory in Karachi, which made ready-to-wear clothing for Western export, when a massive fire tore through the building during the evening shift on Tuesday.

Up to 600 people were working inside at the time, in a building that officials said was in poor condition without emergency exits, forcing dozens to jump from upper storeys to escape the flames, but trapping dozens in the basement where they perished.

How can a factory be allowed to operate when it is in such poor condition that nearly half the workforce present dies when a fire breaks out? One place to look for an answer to that question is the labor minister of Sindh province, where Karachi is located:

Ameer Nawab, who has just resigned from his post as Sindh labour minister, has said that Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah had stopped him from taking action against factories violating labour rules.

This point was corroborated by Sharafat Ali of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, an organisation that works for labour rights. He alleged on Wednesday that the CM had verbally issued directives to government officials to stop the inspections of factories in Sindh.

Noor Muhammad of the Pakistan Workers Confederation and Ayub Qureshi of the Pakistan Trade Union Federation had damning words for how regulations are enforced:

“The state and its machinery is responsible because they silently allow the violation of laws and regulations established to ensure health and safety at work,” said Muhammad.

The National Trade Union Federation held a protest outside the press club and demanded Rs700,000 for those who died in the fire and Rs300,000 for the injured.

“If inspections are allowed in jails where people serve time for their crimes then why is this right denied to labourers who strive to earn by lawful means?” asked Ayub Qureshi of the Pakistan Trade Union Federation. “Industrialists and entrepreneurs have been allowed to treat their labourers even worse than animals.”

Those in the US who rail against “job-killing regulations” should take a moment to ponder Karachi’s mourning today. The cost of allowing garment manufacturers in Pakistan to operate without inspections of their facilities was around 300 lives just this week, as another 25 lives were lost in a shoe factory fire in Lahore. Factory inspections also had been halted in Punjab province, where Lahore is located. Earlier this year, over 100 Pakistanis lost their lives due to contaminated heart medication that was produced as a result of lax regulation.

These tragedies in Pakistan should stand as a stern warning for what happens when regulations are brushed aside in favor of “industrialists and entrepreneurs”. And if you think that can’t happen here, try telling it to the four million families who lost their homes as $7 trillion in family home values was wiped out by the unregulated market for various derivatives based on mortgages that were packaged and sold in “creative” ways. If other US industries are allowed to go Galt in the way the financial industry has, days of mourning could be coming to a city near you.