The Progressive: Texas: America’s Rotting Banana Republic

[marmar]

from The Progressive:


Texas: America’s Rotting Banana Republic
By Stephen C. Webster, May 17, 2013


Texas Governor Rick Perry said recently that even after the massive fertilizer plant explosion last month, voters in his state really aren’t that interested in tighter workplace safety rules. That would infringe upon freedom.

Having lived in Texas for most of my life, I can tell you this makes a strange sort of sense. Despite the state’s history with populism, Texas is home to one of the most rare and powerful creatures on the political tundra: NIMBY's, in numbers you wouldn’t believe.

Whole armies of them swarm city councils and leave members in rotting heaps for buzzards and property developers to pick clean. When business and political leaders say, “All politics is local,” what they really mean is don’t cross the “Not In My Back Yard” folks.

I’ve seen Texas NIMBYs bring even the almighty Home Depot to a standstill, leaving company representatives pleading with local activists -- okay, we’ll drop our whole brand’s unique color scheme if you’ll just stop stacking the zoning board meetings already -- and it’s astonishing. This is the backdrop to what happened in West. It was all kept so quiet for so long that nobody even really knew a bomb twice the size of the blast that leveled the Oklahoma City federal building was just waiting to go off mere miles from Interstate 35. Aside from the near constant smell of cow shit, this fertilizer depot was not out of the ordinary, so the NIMBYs stayed at home. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.progressive.org/texas-america-s-rotting-banana-republic

[xchrom]

1. du rec. nt

[n2doc]

2. True to my experience as a former Texas resident n/t

[rlegro]

3. Wait, I'm confused.

From a non-Texas perspective, this really doesn't make sense. Where were the NIMBYs when the fertilizer plant got built IN THEIR BACK YARDS?

[coldmountain]

4. The community was too poor to fight back, they just wanted jobs

[southmost]

5. good read

Sounds like the hellhole I call home

[Lone_Star_Dem]

6. Excellent article.

It's refreshing to see a write up about what took place in West which actually addresses the whole problem, without just smearing an entire population as ignorant. The real issues are much more complex and deeper rooted than such a dismissive attitude.

A deserved. K&R from me.

[linbarkertx]

7. West fertilizer plant

The fertilizer plant in West was built long before any schools, houses, or nursing homes were built. Small towns like this
usually didn't have any zoning at all.