OSHA fined two meat packing companies $29,000 total for three violations of CoVID-19 safety measures as reported here and here. There are more than 494 meat packing plants in the US. Only 2 were fined. OSHA has received more than 10,000 CoVID related complaints from workers, unions and whistle blowers across industries in 6 months but has found only three violations. 203 meat plant workers have died since March. Last year’s combined revenue for the two companies OSHA fined exceeded $65 billion dollars.
This is both shameful and ridiculous. A $29,000 fine for 203 dead Americans deemed essential workers because you and I must have a hamburger instead of a PPJ sandwich for lunch while we work from home. 203 essential workers for whom essential measures were not taken to provide a safe work environment.
If ever we needed an example of how little regard America has for the lives and well being of its most vulnerable citizens, here it is.
We are witnessing in real time the weaponization of the entire Federal bureaucracy to keep Trump in power. The intelligence community, the postal service, the CDC, Justice, the military, NOAA, DHS, DOE, EPA, FDA, the Federal Reserve, now OSHA an so on down to the smallest agency. There is no end to it. In only 3 1/2 years Trump has exploited with great success the hypocrisy, greed, fanaticism, pseudo-religiousness and hate in many bosoms. How else do you explain the rapidity with which so many have abandoned every tenet of the democracy they professed to cherish and took an oath to serve? Far from Making America Great Again Trump has shown us and the world that America was Not So Great After All. We are now just one more country ruled by a corrupt despot propped up by the state apparatus.