THIS IS PART TWO OF A TWO-PART SERIES. FOR PART ONE, GO HERE.
In the first post of this two-part series on deregulation, we covered planes, so next up are trains (we won’t get to automobiles, sad to say). The train derailment that occurred in East Palestine, Ohio, in early February has rocked a community numbering about 4,800. East Palestine is a part of the country that has been devastated in recent years by economic developments, and where so-called deaths of despair (drug overdoses, suicides, etc.) are off the charts. Why talk about it here? Because the incident exemplifies how deregulation has been a disaster for the American people.
When a Southern Norfolk train derailed on the night of Feb. 3—a train that had already broken down previously on this same trip, owned by a company that has booked record profits even as its accident rate climbed four years in a row—some hazardous chemicals being carried by various cars were released.
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Five of the derailed cars were carrying vinyl chloride, a manmade substance that is a key ingredient in PVC, the hard plastic resin used widely in construction and health care.
At room temperature, vinyl chloride is a sweet-smelling colorless gas. It is typically transported in the form of a compressed liquid.
Inhalation of vinyl chloride can cause respiratory symptoms like shortness of breath, along with neurological symptoms like headaches and dizziness. Chronic exposure to high levels of vinyl chloride has been associated with liver damage and cancer, according to the CDC.
Other dangerous chemicals released included ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, and isobutylene, exposure to which can result in “irritation or neurological symptoms like dizziness and headaches,” along with butyl acrylate, which can lead to “headache, dizziness, nausea and irritation to the nose, throat, and lungs.”
In addition to what was spilled, Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and local officials authorized the burning of a good amount of chemicals to prevent even worse damage from a possible unexpected explosion. While they stand by the decision, others have strongly criticized it. According to Sil Caggiano, a former Youngstown, Ohio, Fire Department Battalion Chief and hazardous materials specialist: “we basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open.”
Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro slammed the decision, questioning whether it was made to benefit Norfolk Southern’s business interests:
“Norfolk Southern failed to explore all potential courses of action, including some that may have kept the rail line closed longer but could have resulted in a safer overall approach for first responders, residents and the environment.”
Residents, despite being told that everything should be okay in terms of their safety, are still greatly concerned, as some continue to experience headaches, dizziness, respiratory issues, and other symptoms weeks after the derailment. They are also downright angry. One protester parked himself on the sidewalk at a downtown intersection and held up a placard that read: “Profits over People/They Poisoned the Community.” An East Palestine resident, Mike Routh, condemned what he called “a war of corporate greed against small-town America.”
RELATED STORY: Republicans call it 'a little premature' to improve freight rail safety following Ohio derailment
Dianna Elzer, who lives just a few football fields away from the location of the derailment, offered that “it almost seems back to normal, except we all have this looming hazardous cloud, not knowing what it's going to do to our future, hanging over our heads,” and added: “That's not real reassuring that they're just going to say, 'Oh, everything's good,' because we aren't going to know the true ramifications of what the impact on the environment is for a while.”
President Biden has offered federal assistance for Ohio, and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan visited East Palestine on Feb. 16. He vowed that the U.S. government was committed to “getting to the bottom” of what exactly went wrong, and added that the “EPA will exercise our oversight and our enforcement authority under the law to be sure we are getting the results that the community deserves.” The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is also investigating the derailment, and has written a preliminary report already.
Shortly thereafter, Regan announced that the EPA would be in charge of the cleanup in East Palestine, meaning Norfolk Southern would not be allowed to decide what measures are necessary. Furthermore, the company will have to pay the cleanup cost, which will include major fines if it doesn’t do what it is supposed to do.
In the least shocking development yet, Tucker Carlson and other white nationalist hatemongers have, as David Neiwert explained, attacked Biden’s response as reflecting, wait for it, the Democrats’ supposed “war on white people.” You can’t make this shit up. The twice impeached former guy, meanwhile, ostentatiously brought bottles to East Palestine labeled “Trump Water.” He also joined in with Rep. Jewish Space Laser and the rest of the pro-Putin Republicans to attack Biden for visiting Ukraine before East Palestine because, er, the Orange (Paper Towel) Tosser’s visit to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria did so much to help those suffering there? Republicans trying to make partisan hay about the disaster does nothing to help actual people. One resident, Nora Wright, denounced the “publicity stunts.”
RELATED STORY: Right-wing pundits leap on Ohio disaster as proof Biden administration is ‘waging a war on whites’
While less bad by comparison to the racialized rhetoric—merely hypocritical as opposed to hateful—Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio also attacked the White House on East Palestine, even calling for the president to ask for Transportation Secretary Buttigieg’s resignation. Buttigieg, who visited the town on Feb. 23 (even though the transportation secretary almost never visits the location of a derailment where no one dies), knows how to deal with this kind of malarkey:
“We heard from Sen. Rubio last week, who had some pretty strong words about this incident,” Buttigieg said, before pointing to an October 2021 letter from GOP senators Rubio signed onto. “I can’t help but notice the last time this agency heard from him on rail regulation was his signature being on a letter that was pretty obviously drafted by industry, calling on us to weaken our practices around track inspection.”
And here’s the thing: the derailment might not have happened if the railroad industry—which overall saw hazardous materials violations jump by 36% over the previous five years—and their buddies in the administration of The Man Who Lost An Election And Tried To Steal It hadn’t managed to put the kibosh on safety regulations enacted by President Obama.
We only know this thanks to some fine investigative reporting done by David Sirota, Rebecca Burns, Julia Rock, and Matthew Cunningham-Cook, and published at The Lever. (These are the same journalists who also wrote a New York Times op-ed laying out a series of regulatory steps that could help prevent or mitigate derailments going forward. The Biden administration needs to get to work on this now—with all the authority the executive branch can muster—starting by undoing the unilateral anti-safety moves Trump made.)
To start with, Buttigieg—who slammed the rail industry’s “vigorous resistance” to anything resembling regulations to enhance safety—has already called for increasing fines the government can impose when companies break the rules. How did Republicans respond? Thanks, but nah. Rep. Troy Nehls, the top guy on the House Transportation & Infrastructure Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, summed up decades of Republican corporate boot-licking in an interview with Politico: “Let’s not have more burdensome regulations and all this other stuff.” Right, because Republicans seem to think having harsh penalties as a deterrent to harmful behavior somehow only works for some kinds of criminals.
Daily Kos’ Walter Einenkel neatly summarized the appalling shenanigans the industry got away with working in cahoots with Fuck a l’Orange and his minions:
In 2014, after a series of railway accidents, the Obama administration made moves to regulate trains carrying “hazardous materials.” This included things like operation safety requirements, such as speed limits. It also included infrastructure requirements, like train car brake upgrades and container upgrades. After intense pushback from the railway lobbyists, including Norfolk Southern’s people, the Obama administration created a long runway for improvements to be made, and more importantly, narrowed what was considered “hazardous” cargo. Only crude oil was now classified as hazardous.
However, the Obama administration did leave in a mandate for safety upgrades on those train cars. The hope, according to the administration, was that with the compromise, the big railway companies would be forced to make the safety upgrades that they should have started applying to their business model long ago.
About four years later, while railway interests [were] donating “more than $6 million to GOP campaigns,” there was an enormous public safety disaster in the White House named Donald Trump. Trump’s administration rolled back all kinds of safety regulations for transportation and for fossil fuel interests. Trump’s Department of Transportation rolled those minimum safety requirements back. Specifically, even those trains would not be required to be outfitted with the newer, safer, electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes. ECP brakes promise faster stopping and less destructive derailments, in part because they offer a more robust deescalation of speed for each individual train car.
RELATED STORY: Trump and $6 million in donations to GOP candidates are partly to thank for Ohio train disaster
When it comes to regulation, the contrast between the values of Biden and those of the Party of Trump on business and the role of government couldn’t be clearer. The Trumpists believe the free market is always right, and will always produce the best overall outcome. Oh, and if that outcome hurts you, well, you’re on your own. Democrats, on the other hand, understand that corporations can’t always be trusted to do the right thing, and that consumers or those people who live near sites of production (disproportionately Americans of color) as well as transport—not to mention honest businesses trying to compete while playing by the rules—deserve protection.
Finally, when it comes to trust, please note that Republicans, on the one hand, think lower-income Americans who receive public assistance are so untrustworthy that they should have to jump through all kinds of bureaucratic hoops to receive it, and even afterward that they require all kinds of monitoring or even outright restrictions to make sure they aren’t somehow misusing it (and of course that Republican attitude has nothing to do with the racial demographics of those Americans on public assistance).
Yet, on the other hand, Republicans seem to believe that corporations require only the most minimal monitoring, I guess, because rich people never succumb to the temptation to cut corners or outright cheat to make an extra few (millions of) bucks. In the fevered, bigoted mindset of the Trumpist Party, the working-class and poor are Billy Ray Valentine from the movie Trading Places, lying to get a handout while the wealthy are his on-screen counterparts: the (dis)honest patricians Randolph and Mortimer Duke.
Actually, Republicans living in this dream world might not want to watch that movie to the end—the Duke brothers’ massive, illegal insider trading scheme blows up in their faces. In reality, from Reagan through Trump, the GQP has pushed to make sure our government allows fat cats and corporations (i.e., their benefactors) to operate without proper regulatory supervision, so we’re all living in their nightmare.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)