Friday, June 7, 2013

Philadelphia, Bangladesh

Yesterday an old building that was being demo-lished in downtown Philadelphia collapsed onto another building, killing six people and injuring fourteen. Today the local Inquirer tells us that several neighbors had alerted the city that things didn’t seem to be going right with the demolition, but the city did nothing. It turns out that the con-tractor hired by the building’s owner was not even required to provide proof of insurance!  Christian prayers for the bodies found by the rescue crew were of no more help than Muslim prayers by rescuers in the Dhaka building collapse.

A few years ago Ariana Huffington wrote a book called Third World America, and since then one report after another has declared the United States’ infrastructure to be in pitiful shape.  Philadelphia is rarely in the news, but when it is, it’s usually because it increasingly resembles a third world country like Bangladesh in terms of responsibility in the part of officials and business.

P.S. When I went to look up the spelling of Dhaka, the Philly building collapse was listed on Google right under the one in Bangladesh......

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