And they pretty much can.
Unlike many states, West Virginia doesn't even require inspections for chemical storage facilities.
What happened at Freedom Industries' Elk River facility is a perfect example of why we need government regulation and the corporate death penalty.
Private for-profit industries cannot be trusted to regulate themselves, and so it's left up to government agencies -- agencies that are accountable to "We the People" -- to keep them in check.
But that's only half the story.
For the first century-and-half or so after the founding of the republic, it was common practice for state governments to give corporations the corporate death penalty.
The idea behind the corporate death penalty was -- and still is -- pretty simple.
If a corporation did something blatantly against the public interest, like gambling away people's life savings or polluting local water supplies, the government would revoke its charter -- the thing that gave it a right to exist as a private, for-profit business.
Banks were shut down in Ohio, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania for behaving in ways that were "financially sound."
Oil corporations, match manufacturers, whiskey trusts, and sugar corporations were given the axe in Michigan, Ohio, Nebraska and New York.
By the 1870s, 19 states had amended their state constitutions to give lawmakers the power to "execute" corporations that violate the public's safety and trust.
The longstanding practice of giving businesses the corporate death penalty only really stopped when President Warren G. Harding was elected president in 1921 with the promise of putting "less government in business and more business in government."
It goes without saying that we need stronger regulations on companies like Freedom Industries whose activities threaten the health and safety of the general public.
And we also need to make sure that state, local, and federal agencies actually enforce those regulations.
But regulations alone aren't enough.
We need to make sure that corporations know that if they violate the public's trust that they will face serious consequences.
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