When two brothers (be sure to include "of Chechan origin") committed the incredibly stupid and completely insane act of random murder in Boston, America rose up in horror, vowing to hunt the killers down. We did - killing one and capturing the other.
When the owners of a fertilizer factory in Texas deliberately ignored safety laws and overloaded the plant with tons of explosive chemical, there was no manhunt nor demand for justice - just fourteen dead people, as innocent as anyone killed in Boston. We haven't heard much about the owners of the corporation - just the fact that the factory hasn't been inspected for about ten years and once, when violations were uncovered, it was slapped with a fine of - gasp - about five thousand dollars.
So what's the reason that the Boston dead are so much more newsworthy than the ones awaiting burial in The Lone Star State?
It's part of the "Too Big to Fail, Too big to Jail" syndrome that's ripping our justice system - and our country - apart. When someone commits a crime through some strange sense of religious obligation, we rant against the religion rather than the people who twist it to suit their own interpretation. When a corporation flounts the law, resulting in the death of "ordinary" people, we understand that it's just a business decision which would hopefully save the corporation money and, well, you can't make an omelet without....etc.
Of course, in states like Texas, even if you get caught, nothing much is going to happen if you're a good, American corporation. Sure, the Supreme Court said that corporations are people, but you can't put a corporation to work cracking rocks. The worst thing you can do is give them a fine, which will be paid by the stockholders. Many comapanies consider these fines just part of the cost of doing business. Ask coal mine operators, oil company oil rig owners and chemical companies. We saw what punishments were meted out to the bank CEOs who brought down the millions of home owners who believed their annual reports. You can find many of them in Washington.
So fourteen people were killed by a company that put immediate profit ahead of human life and that figured it was worth a chance to make more money rather than obey the laws that wouldn't hurt them anyway if they broke them.
I confess that, as much as I'd like to see the brothers (of Chechan origin) brought to justice, I'd just as soon see the greedy slimebags who are currently standing for American morality in the shining light of the Free Enterprise system exhibiting their nice, striped suits before the public who is supporting them through the tax breaks, giveaways and revolving door politics. Both are blights on the country.