Tea bagger bus company sued over blaze that killed 23 seniors

By Lindsay Beyerstein

One of the featured corporate sponsors of the Tea Party Express had to pay millions of dollars to settle lawsuits for its role in a bus fire that killed 23 elderly nursing home residents fleeing Hurricane Rita in 2005.

The BusBank, a Chicago-based charter company, a "Tour Partner" of the Tea Party Express, a rolling protest sponsored by the Our Country Deserves Better PAC under the supervision of former Republican state legislator Howard Kaloogian, now a PR exec for the GOP-linked firm Russo, Marsh & Rogers.

BusBank is also arranging to ferry Tea Baggers to their 9/12 march on Washington to voice their demands for unfettered capitalism. (Update: A Majikthise commenter asked if there's a Dick Armey connection here. There is. Dick Armey's FreedomWorks Foundation is the premiere sponsor of the 9/12 march; and Kaloogian's OCDB PAC is a "Gold Co-Sponsor.")

In 2005, a bus carrying seniors fleeing Hurricane Rita burst into flame outside of Dallas, immolating 23 nursing home residents. Investigators later found that the bus was: driven by an undocumented migrant without a valid U.S. driver's license, lacking adequate fire extinguishers, and not licensed to operate in Texas. When the bus had mechanical problems before the crash, the driver took it to an unqualified mechanic who failed to notice the critical fault--an unlubricated axle that eventually melted and burst into flame.

BusBank (aka Global Charters) hired the subcontractor, Global Limo. BusBank boasted on its website that it had a "rigorous operator certification process" to ensure the safety of contracted bus drivers. BusBank used Global even though the subcontractor had a long record of federal and state safety violations, had entered bankruptcy, and was being sued.

BusBank's association with Global appears to have been more than a one-off, Global Limo's owner Jim Maples even listed Global Charters as his employer when he gave $5000 to the RNC in 2004.

BusBank CEO Bill Maulsby blamed insufficient federal oversight, "We're not safety experts," he said. "We clearly need to depend on the federal government."

In November 2006, a federal court convicted Maples and sentenced him to five years' probation for failure to maintain his buses. Investigators found 168 violations in Maples' four-bus fleet.

The following month, US Fed News reported that BusBank had been awarded Homeland Security contract worth up to $55 million.

In June, BusBank and Global Limo settled out of court for a total of $11 million, a pittance when split between the families of the 23 victims and the patients who survived the crash. BusBank's legal troubles are far from over, according to one report, more lawsuits are getting underway this month. The firm filed for bankruptcy in Delaware in August.

[Original reporting, please credit Lindsay Beyerstein. X-post with Majikthise.]

Comments

[Eric Martin]

Kaloogian, eh.

Last time I recall his name coming up, he was running for Congress and was putting pictures of "Baghdad" on his campaign website with captions about how much more peaceful and stable Baghdad was than the media's portrayal.

Problem: the photos were actually of a suburb of Istanbul, Turkey. Which, truth be told, was rather peaceful and stable. So this guy's got a track record for dishonest marketing.

Fun fact: he was running for Duke Cunningham's seat.

link

[John Thullen]

Well, let's see, the guy seemed to have hit all the bullet points in the RNC's platform with this disaster: dead nursing home residents, low-wage undocumented labor (to keep union costs down), unregulated fire safety standards, and, what can I say, Texas.

It was kind of Magical Mystery Galt Death Panel on wheels.

But think of the money saved and the freedom let rung.

[Slartibartfast]

Tell me you didn't just swipe this from the Onion, Lindsay. There isn't any of it that doesn't read like over-the-top parody.

Sometimes real life is like that, though.

On your journey cross the wilderness From the desert to the well You have strayed upon the motorway to hell

Seemed appropriate, here.

[Bernard Yomtov]

Nice work, Lindsay.

[Marty]

Or this is a cheap use of a real tragedy to make some ridiculous correlation to Teabaggers, I am not sure I get the point here. Since there was a conviction and a civil settlement what does this have to do with today?

[Jesurgislac]

Marty: Since there was a conviction and a civil settlement what does this have to do with today?

Perhaps you should hope that the buses being hired for the Tea Party Express are not being provided by the sponsoring company BusBank - since it appears that BusBank provides buses likely to immolate the capitalism riders.

Or perhaps you should wonder why a company that killed 23 people horribly via "unfettered capitalism" wants more and more of it - especially the fat government contracts, of course.

[bedtimeforbonzo]

Somehow, the Teabaggers will find a way to blame this on President Obama.

[Slartibartfast]

Hey, they even have their own blog!

Sort of.

[sidereal]

I am not sure I get the point here.

The point is that the company at least had the consistency to stand by its principles in opposing (or in this case, ignoring) government oversight, and the end result was the death of 23 people.

It's a compliment, really.

[publius]

I just love that we have original reporting on here now. :)

[mutt]

too droll.....such things simply cant be made up.
"Ripped from the pages of the Onion!"
The Invisible Hand dosnt turn to often for maintenance duty...out securitizing life insurance policies, no doubt.

[Slartibartfast]

My favorite bit of buffoonery:

BusBank CEO Bill Maulsby blamed insufficient federal oversight, "We're not safety experts," he said. "We clearly need to depend on the federal government."

We don't want government interference, but we do like to be able to blame the government for not interfering enough.

Epic. Fail.

[GoodOleBoy]

'A moving train collided with a train stopped ahead of it; the train operator and eight passengers were killed, making it the deadliest crash in the history of the Washington Metro. Several survivors were trapped for hours, and 80 were injured. Preliminary investigation found that after the June 17 replacement of a track circuit component at what became the site of the June 22 collision, signals had not been reliably reporting when that stretch of track was occupied by a train.'

Do we need to advise or warn potential riders of the Washington DC Metrorail System in a similar way? Oh no, I forgot, government is operating that system.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Of course the riders of the Metro need to know about issues that might affect their safety. Thank goodness there are over 1.2 million Google hits for "DC metro crash 2009."

[Carleton Wu]

Side note: It still boggles my mind that the person responsible for this only received a suspended sentence. If one negligently drove into a bus (say, while speeding or drinking), one might expect to spend time in prison.

It's like business operations get a special exemption as far as criminal liability is concerned. Whereas the opposite would make more sense to me- while there's no benefit to getting drunk and driving into a bus (something I ought to avoid even if I don't get a criminal penalty), there is much benefit to be gained skimping on maintenance and safety, and hiring unqualified individuals. Ergo, there should be more deterrent applied by the law, rather than less.

[reminds me of those pollution cases where the EPA fines are much smaller than either the cost of shutting down or the cost of upgrading the pollution source- what is being achieved is nothing more than window-dressing]

[Grover Gardner]

"Do we need to advise or warn potential riders of the Washington DC Metrorail System in a similar way? Oh no, I forgot, government is operating that system."

Since the DC Metro system uses undocumented, unlicensed drivers and unqualified mechanics, we should certainly demand that... Oh, no, I forgot, that's the free market at work!

[Hartmut]

Is the Metrorail run by the government directly or by a subcontractor. Even if the former, governments are not immune to cutting corners, if they see an advantage.
The attempts in Berlin to make the S-Bahn a cashcow for the still state-owned Deutsche Bahn (so actually privatizing (and bringing it to the stock market) the state rail would yield a higher price) by saving money on maintenance etc. has let to a near total breakdown that right now creates complete chaos expected to last until Xmas.

[passing hair drug test]

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