(7:30PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
[posted late last night on the blog with the half-hour shelf-life]
[apparently Saxby tales are coming out of the woodwork in a steady stream]
Hopefully this tale will help undecided or unmotivated Georgia voters to get out and vote in the run-off election between Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin. Just to be up front here, I sent Jim Martin a donation on Nov 5. After the roving that Saxby did to a true American hero, Max Cleland, I had to do something.
Here’s the story of a United States Senator using the power and influence of his office to persuade the families of dead and severely burned victims to not seek restitution. He abused his Senate subcomittee position to tarnish a whistleblower in the case. He may have colluded with the company owner to make this all go away quietly. He is in the process of tainting the jury pool should any trial for actual damages occur.
Chambliss Refusing to Speak in Imperial Sugar Case
Fourteen dead. Scores injured. An “accident” that was bound to happen. Greed and arrogance prevailed. Lives were lost and ruined. Now it’s time for the boys in power to make it all go away. Hush it up and after a while no one will remember. Just a speck of dust blown away. No problem. Call the senator and have him fix it. Move on. Appeal the OSHA fines. Delay and postpone. Business as usual.
Saxby had been scheduled to testify before the election but negotiated a postponement to Nov 20. Now he’s in a run-off. He’s still dodging and he definitely doesn’t want this story getting widespread notice before Dec 2. Please pass this peach along. It’s a story worth sharing.
Here’s a link to a detailed version of the story. This is just one more Bush era tale of greed, arrogance and abuse of power.
Cast of characters:
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) Gained office by morphing triple amputee Viet Vet Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA) into an Osama bin Laden supporter. Another Rovian success story.
John Sheptor, CEO, Imperial Sugar
Graham H. Graham, VP Operations, Imperial Sugar, whistleblower, scapegoat
Fourteen dead human beings.
Scores of burn victims. Know any burn victims personally? I do. More than one. There’s more pain in this story than a human mind can imagine. Know any burn victims who have been victimized twice by a guilty corporation? I do.
Attorney Mark Tate, who is suing Imperial Sugar on behalf of two injured workers and the families of two employees killed in the blast, subpoenaed Chambliss to testify on Thursday – five days before the Nov. 4 election in which the senator faces Democrat Jim Martin.
… snip …
Tate wants to ask Chambliss if Imperial Sugar executives persuaded him to harshly criticize a company whistleblower during a Senate hearing on the Feb. 7 explosion. He says he also wants the senator to respond to plaintiffs’ claims that Imperial Sugar arranged a meeting between Chambliss and victims’ families to dissuade them from suing.
Here’s the OSHA citation summary by way of the local Savannah Morning News.
The whistleblower, Vice President of Operations Graham H. Graham, had worked at Imperial Sugar for just three months before the blast in Port Wentworth, near Savannah. Yet Chambliss accused Graham of trying to protect himself by coming forward, and said he should have done more to improve conditions before the explosion.
“This guy Graham knows he’s on the hook,” Chambliss said in an interview after the hearing.
Here’s Sheptor’s version of the story. Summary: the safety compliance guy I hired told me everything was OK.
Umm, Saxby, here’s another version from the safety compliance guy. Summary: Scolded, isolated and reprimanded for pushing too hard for safety improvements. [You really should take the time to read this one. It’s Bush-style corporate America in a nutshell.]
“We believe that Saxby Chambliss was given information about what happened at the plant by John Sheptor directly,” Tate said. “We think that information has to do with Imperial’s efforts to avoid liability and culpability for their actions.”
Public facts: Chambliss is the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee and Imperial Sugar is one of the largest U.S. sugar producers.
Tate said some of his clients have told him Chambliss spoke to them at a July meeting arranged by the company.
John C. Butler Sr. said Friday he attended the meeting after an Imperial Sugar executive called to tell him about it. Butler had two sons caught in the explosion, Jamie and John Calvin Butler. Only Jamie Butler survived after suffering severe burns. He’s now a plaintiff in Tate’s lawsuit.
John Butler said Chambliss told the victims and family members that “the Senate is doing all it can to make corrections where this would never happen again, putting laws in place. I think he mentioned this firm (Imperial Sugar) had been a factor in the Port Wentworth area for a long time and it would be there for our families to continue to work.”
“I think he was trying to keep the victims from going and getting lawyers to do a lawsuit,” Butler said, though he didn’t recall Chambliss specifically saying so. “That’s the way it seemed to me.”
Chambliss spokeswoman Lindsay Mabry said Chambliss requested the meeting so he could update victims and their families on the government’s investigation of the explosion and regulatory remedies being considered by Congress. She said his office asked Imperial Sugar to set up the meeting because the senator had no other way to contact the victims.
“There was absolutely no insinuation relative to litigation at all,” Mabry said.
An Imperial Sugar spokesman did not immediately return two phone calls seeking comment Friday.
This is how the system works. It’s always handy to have a US Senator in your pocket when the shit hits the fan. I think it’s time for this senator to hit the road.
[ed note: I hope you took the time to follow the links. This is a story that deserves a wider hearing. It’s just one tragedy but it’s so representative of what’s wrong with the dismantling of the regulatory structure of our government and the aiding and abetting of that by elected officials. Please pass it on.]
3 comments
Author
To me Saxby is like a pustulent boil on the Rovian ass of Bush-Cheney imperialism. He needs to get popped (in the non-lethal sense, of course).
Enjoy your day. Do what you can for Jim Martin – even if it’s just a passing prayer.
Satya.
This is indeed a story Americans need to hear, and not just in Georgia.
Obama may have been elected, but the Republican corruption machine (and oh lord this story reminds me so much of Cheney and Ken Lay) is still grinding along and it is not going to stop voluntarily.
Saxby may be able to control the courts, but we have the power in the court of public opinion, imo.
Author
My father was nearly burned to death in a manhole fire. He was an electrician whose specialty was working on those huge high-voltage underground cables in cities. Seems the gas company had somehow failed to inject the noxious gas element into the natural gas. Without that introduced odor natural gas is pretty much odorless. It’s also heavier than air so it pools. This is why you see exploding houses on the news occasionally. They turn into wooden gas balloons and go boom.
The gas ignited while he was down below and by a miracle he survived. As he climbed out of a roaring blowtorch he left the skin of his palms on the ladder. My brother was working with him that day and thought he was dead only to see him emerge from the hole. The healing took a long time.
Since the gas company had failed to do their job properly a lawsuit was filed. Pretty open and shut case but lawyers are lawyers and insurance companies are insurance companies. Every year for years while the settlement dragged further out and out, always in November, a lawyer would come around the house and offer a pittance for a settlement. The corporations were preying on the victim just before the holidays to accept a lesser amount. Pulling on the heart-strings and fatigue of fighting a seemingly endless case to wrap it up in time to go holiday shopping with the settlement money.
Scum. Pure scum.
This CEO using his pull to get the big US Senator to go to the guy’s house and plead the case to forego trial just made my blood boil. Saxby is a being without shame. Not that we didn’t already know that from what he did to Max Cleland. Saxby is beyond the pale. There are a lot of other stories starting to pop up about him the last few days. This is only one. E.g., he got five deferments back in the day for a knee problem; now he’s the second best golfer in the Senate.
This guy needs to be gone from the national scene. We have fourteen campaign days left to put a nail in his coffin. Please do what you can.