Greg Sargent and Jeet Heer have written good pieces about the right wing seizure upon the lackluster federal and state response to the Norfolk train disaster in East Palestine to fan White resentment and victimhood. As Greg writes:
What this illustrates is how the right uses race-baiting to deceive people into forgetting that Democrats are now the far more committed party when it comes to investing in such left-behind communities.
Jeet focuses more on Buttigieg’s slow walking efforts to undo the damage done by Elain Chao, his predecessor as Secretary of Transportation during the Trump years.
I asked Jeff Hauser—founder and director of the Revolving Door Project and an astute critic of corporate domination of government—to evaluate Buttigieg’s performance. Hauser was scathing: “Buttigieg is not supposed to be sitting in first class as a passenger in government offering up political bon mots for the press. He is supposed to be putting the pedal to the metal and accelerating the Transportation Department’s enforcement capacity after Elaine Chao’s actively damaging reign. It’s about time that Buttigieg quits auditioning for the role of White House press secretary and start doing the work of the executive branch—executing aggressively existing laws designed to protect Americans from rapacious rail and aviation companies. An engaged secretary of transportation would have begun the process of reanalyzing the costs and benefits of a new braking rule on their first day in office. It should not take a tragedy to get him focused on the responsibilities of his office.”
Before anyone starts crying that I am blaming “both sides”, let me be clear: the primary blame for deregulation of the railroad industry and for the slapdash disaster response lies heavily upon Republicans in Congress, previous White House administrations, and in Ohio. But that doesn’t let Mayo Pete or the Biden administration off the hook, considering how quickly they forced a strike resolution in the face of rail workers’ list of pressing safety concerns. If the White working class is resentful, they should be; but they should work together with the other colors of the working class to pressure government to keep their workplaces, communities, and families safe, whether they’re in East Palestine, Flint, or Detroit.
My apologies to any corgi lovers out there. I love corgis, too. When I read that pets were dying from drinking the water it broke my heart.
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