Every disaster in the US has at least three Congressional representatives associated with it (2 Senators, one House rep). Those representatives have at least two roles: 1) Causing/avoiding the disaster or making it less/more bad, to begin with, by way of their efforts in congress; and 2) Helping or not helping once the disaster happens.
The three representatives for the West Texas disaster, in which scores (apparently) were killed, helped to make the disaster happen by, among them, failing to support OSHA or voting against OSHA funding. This is part of the reason that the plant has not been expected in so long most of the workers there were probably not even working there then.
The three representatives for the West Texas disaster have harmed other people in the US, in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, for instance, by voting against and helping to delay Sandy Aid.
Now, the three representatives are pushing hard to get lots of aid for West Texas. Ironically, some of the money they are demanding will go to other things than aid for the current disaster. The Sandy Aid package also contained things that were not directly related to the Sandy disaster. I’m not sure if a disaster bill has been passed any time in the last century or so that did not include some “earmarks” … were it not for earmarks, the congress would really accomplish nothing at all for years on end. .. it is a system that is broken, but works. Nonetheless, the West Texas reps have decided that this system would no longer be used for people in districts other than their own, but would be used for their own district.
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Sorry to be picky, but worth correcting due to the generally very high quality: I believe you meant ‘inspected’ instead of ‘expected’. I was in occupational health for a while and particularly disturbed by the West disaster.
Sandy relief aside, I hope they seize the resources of the West fertilizer company to pay for damages and reconstruction before they take a dime of federal money. The huge amounts of money they didn’t spend on safety and regulatory compliance went into somebody’s pockets, and that’;s the money that should pay for fixing this mess.