I don’t expect our politicians to be perfect. After all, they’re human, and as humans, we all have flaws. But is it asking too much for us to expect our politicians to at least try to be decent?

A recent investigative story published in the New York Times and the Flatwater Free Press told the story of a distraught mother who is trying to find out how her son died on a Pillen Family Farm and why roadblocks have been put up to prevent her from getting answers.

Zach Panther was a seventeen-year-old young man trying to find his path in life while working as a hired hand at one of Pillen’s farms just outside of St. Edward, Nebraska.

Zach was applying a potentially dangerous chemical foam to seal up cracks in the wall of a barn. He was working alone and wasn’t wearing a respirator or being in a well-ventilated room as recommended by Dupont, the makers of the foam.

When OSHA showed up at the farm to investigate the cause of death, they were blocked from conducting timely air quality tests. To further complicate the investigation, the coroner’s office accidentally destroyed the one blood sample that could have determined whether the chemicals in the foam were the cause of death.

There is a lot more to this story, and I recommend you read about it in the Flatwater Free Press, but the part that stood out to me was how the farm hindered the OSHA investigators from doing their job.

The day after the young man’s death, OSHA showed up on the farm with air quality monitoring devices, but they were not allowed on the premises to investigate. The toxic fumes from the chemical dissipate quickly, so time was of the essence.

Now, to be clear, there is no evidence that the Pillens did anything illegal. Lobbyists from the farm industry have successfully been able to protect farms from OSHA investigations that other industries would have to allow. And it’s very possible the destruction of the blood sample truly was an accident.

The governor is not involved with the day-to-day operations of the farms. He has delegated that responsibility to two of his children. But it’s been well documented that the Pillen Family Farms have not been overly concerned with the environmental issues surrounding their facilities.

When the Flatwater Free Press did a story a while back regarding the dangerous levels of cancer-causing nitrates in the soil and water surrounding his farms, the Governor dismissed it out of hand because it was written by a journalist who was born in China. Yanqi Xu is a respected journalist who studied at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, one of the more prestigious journalism schools in the country.

Mind you, the governor did nothing to say there weren’t these nitrates in the water, or he’ll investigate the problem, or do anything to fix it. He just ignored the report.

To the best of my knowledge, the farms have done nothing and have no plans to remedy the problem.

And I’m sure that just like the nitrate investigation, this latest revelation will have no negative effect on the governor. It’s just not scandalous enough.

But I’m not even sure a scandal can hurt a politician anymore. There was a time when it did. The presidential aspirations of Ted Kennedy were squashed by his drinking problem, and Gary Hart dropped out of the presidential race when his philandering was discovered. Would something like that hurt a politician in this political era? I’m not sure.

I know the majority of our elected officials are good and decent people, whether they are Republicans or Democrats. But it appears that being decent is no longer a requirement to hold an important office.

After all, we’ve elected a man who thought it was OK to grab a woman by the pussy. That’s not very decent.

Two years after the fact, a mother lies awake at night wondering what caused her teenage son’s death. She wonders why there are still no answers. She wonders why the Pillen Family Farms didn’t do more to get to the bottom of it and why more voters don’t seem to care about her dead son.

Nobody’s perfect, and we all have flaws and make mistakes, but we should at least strive to be decent human beings, whether we’re politicians or not.

Tom Becka is a long time Nebraska broadcaster who for over 30 years has been covering Omaha and Midwest issues on both radio and TV. He has been a guest on numerous national cable and news shows, filled in for nationally syndicated talk radio programs and Talkers Magazine has recognized him as one of the Top 100 talk show hosts in the country 10 times. Never afraid to ruffle some feathers, his ‘Becka’s Beat’ commentaries can be found online on Youtube and other digital platforms.

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