John Deering for February 19, 2023

“The water is polluted and the air is filled with death

Someday it won’t be easy to stop and catch your breath

But it’s all in Revelation, it’s part of the design

And if you’re truly wise, you’ll keep your eyes on Palestine"

(Larry Norman)

Is it just the deregulation, or the companies that take advantage of everything they can to minimize cost and maximize profit with no regard for the consequences? It is a mystery.

So which party has been running the regulatory agencies for the past 2 years?

The QOP put profit over safety.

Remember Lac Megantic

A political system devoid of moderates willing to work with each other to maintain and adjust the balance between safety and business profit can only move sideways from one crisis to the next … and not actually move forward.

Thanks, Heffalumps…

Republicans love to deregulate things and then blame others when it all goes wrong.

East Palestine residents were told water was safe after ‘sloppy’ testing paid for by rail company

Thousands of people in East Palestine, Ohio have been assured by the state Environmental Protection Agency and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine that the town’s municipal water has not been contaminated by the train derailment that took place in the town earlier this month, but the only publicly available data comes from testing that was funded by the company behind the crash.As HuffPost reported late Friday, the Dallas-based consulting firm AECOM contracted with Norfolk Southern, which operated the 150-car train that was carrying the toxic chemical vinyl chloride, to sample water from five wells and from treated municipal water. DeWine announced on Wednesday that those tests “showed no evidence of contamination,” but as one aquatic ecologist told HuffPost, the lab report indicates several testing errors that violated federal standards and should have disqualified the results.

Koch-owned chemical plant evades detection of its toxic emissions at a terrible health cost to the public

A giant chemical plant in Port Arthur, Texas, has “spent years running from the Clean Air Act” by developing ways to evade detection of spikes in dangerous emissions, according to a new investigative report. Oxbow Calcining, a company owned by William “Bill” Koch, used data from an air monitor installed near the plant to alter its emissions temporarily in ways that gamed – and may have broken – environmental protection laws, the report states.

Wonder what Grover Norquist would say if this happened in his back yard?

When will Kevin’s House of Insurrection craft a bill mandating train safety?

Back in the 1970s I knew a fellow who was VP of a big construction firm. He was a good person. He told me that he and his company wanted more government regulation. He said his company wanted to be responsible, but it was expensive; if they were the only construction company to be responsible, they would lose their contracts to companies that weren’t responsible and could do the job cheaper. He wanted a level playing field, and he said only government regulations would create that.

Warren Buffet, who controls Brrkshire Hathaway is the main lobbyist for rail deregulation. He got the keystone pipeline killed as he then made a killing moving that oil by rsil.

So the Biden admin over turn almost every single trump executive order and they veto, change a lot of things trump Danm if they were good for the country… but Amtrack Joe didnt do a danm thing about railroads? Never mind that a lot of deregulation and changes came under Obama biden

Properly operating brakes and speed control systems are for losers! What would the stockholders want? /s

The frequency and time frame of derailments suggest to me Russian payback for our damaging the Nord pipeline. You don’t ‘regulate’ terrorism away.

Why do you think passenger trains have to pullover and give freight trains the right of way, and turning a sort trip into days?? All railroads still have a mindset from the 1800’s with their archaic rules, regulations, and work rules!!!

Libertarian neoliberal dogma asserts that the Free Market is the only guarantor of fair, just, reasonable, optimal outcomes.

So this toxic waste release due to train car derailment as a result of removal of regulations to prevent such incidents has to be a result of deliberate intention by the Free Market.

The Free Market has a plan. Humans are not always competent enough to comprehend that plan based solely on their immediate reaction to an event. The plan the Free Market has often requires an amount of time/experience for we mere humans to finally be able to grasp.

Sometimes humans never grasp the purpose of an action by Free Market in their lifetimes.

But if they are good, obedient humans who faithfully believe and trust in Free Market, all will be explained to them after they die and are raised up on the impartial scale of perfect Free Market justice to at last be in the very presence of Free Market itself, and then humans will understand.