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Quid Pro, is Trump.....who phoned Zelensky asking him to "Just Say that you Have something on Biden"Sure, TRUMP! being there is a political stunt, and it was brilliant. The campaign ads write themselves. You see TRUMP! at the scene of a disaster that impacts thousands of lives and is being handled badly juxtaposed with Quid Pro meandering around 5,000 miles away. There's all upside and no downside for TRUMP! because he's not responsible to fix the disaster, while Quid Pro is.
What lies?Kind of like Trump's lies right?
Nope. TRUMP! isn't in office, Quid Pro is. Pretty lame attempt there. Anyway, an ecological disaster of this magnitude demands federal relief. The company's involvement can be resolved after we've ensured the people of the town have a safe place to live and clean water to drink.Quid Pro, is Trump.....who phoned Zelensky asking him to "Just Say that you Have something on Biden"
and I will send you that military help.
The Train Company is the one responsible for fixing what they broke, not the Government.
Right. But Northwest will be paying for the whole debacle. The government is doing its job, you can see it or not.Nope. TRUMP! isn't in office, Quid Pro is. Pretty lame attempt there. Anyway, an ecological disaster of this magnitude demands federal relief. The company's involvement can be resolved after we've ensured the people of the town have a safe place to live and clean water to drink.
Doesn't matter when talking about political optics. Quid Pro hasn't even mentioned it, much less been out there promising aid and assistance. He let TRUMP! strike first, a miscalculation.Right. But Northwest will be paying for the whole debacle. The government is doing its job, you can see it or not.
Pick one. There are thousands of them documented.What lies?
Liar.Pick one. There are thousands of them documented.
If it was so important, why didn't Biden do something about it? He had over 2 years with both houses. Asleep at the wheel?Here is what the previous administration did which helped lead to the accident in East Palestine, and possibly many other accidents, especially if as disastrous as this one:
The Trump Administration reversed a previous rule that would require trains carrying certain hazardous materials to be equipped with electronic pneumatic brakes. According to HuffPost, the rule would not have applied to the train in East Palestine, although better brakes might have reduced the impact of the accident.
The Trump Administration also sided with the rail industry to block a proposed rule that would have required two crew members on every freight train. Experts also noticed an uptick in waivers that exempted rail companies from certain rules, including from some inspections. “It was unprecedented how many of them they asked for and it was also disturbing how quickly they were approved,” says Greg Hynes, the national legislative director of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART), a union which assists the National Transportation Safety Board with rail investigations.
ccording to Hynes and Jared Cassity, SMART’s chief of safety, there were other rollbacks to rail safety during the Trump years. For instance, the time that a train could go without an inspection off air—with its air brake system depressurized—was expanded from 4 hours to 24 hours.
While the NTSB’s investigation on the East Palestine derailment is ongoing, public reportssuggest that the derailment was caused by a mechanical issue with an axle—the sort of problem that might be prevented by some of the rail regulations Trump’s Administration slashed. “For me, the lack of frequency in inspections, and the lack of quality of inspections is a very major, major deal and very well could be a contributing factor here,” Cassity says.
Trump, Who Rolled Back Rail Regulations, Slams Biden During Visit to East Palestine After Train Derailment
While Trump claimed the Biden Administration has been neglecting the town, Trump’s critics argue that the rail regulations Trump rolled back during his presidency helped set the stage for the disaster in East Palestine.news.yahoo.com
Biden has Trump beat in the lying department.Kind of like Trump's lies right?
It's called an executive order, Biden knows all about them.Biden not being AT THE SITE is not politically bad for him. You just want others to believe that. Let them.
Tell me how it works for the Biden Administration to have passed laws undoing the deregulation of Train safety laws ? What is the process?
How does it work for regulating any other safety and health law? What are the steps, how long does it take for the bills to pass and go into law?
Here is the history of what has happened in the past 10 or more years in regards to regulating train safety:
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Long before this month’s fiery derailment, railroad industry leaders battled regulations meant to boost freight train safety, including plans to bolster some of the very same tank cars that ruptured and released chemicals in eastern Ohio.
Norfolk Southern Corp. joined in fighting proposed speed limits and brake system requirements spawned by a series of high-profile accidents, including a lethal 2005 collision involving one of the operator’s own trains.
The intense lobbying campaign — which unfolded over years of direct appeals to lawmakers, regulators and White House officials — underscores the industry’s political sway in Washington and illustrates the challenge now facing Congress and the Biden administration as they vow a new crackdown.
Our experience is that “the rail industry pushes back hard on both safety and public disclosure rules — and keeps that opposition up long after the public scrutiny of tragic accidents abates,” said Kristen Boyles, managing attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice. “There should be a renewed push for safer trains and safer rail cars following the disaster in Ohio, and that pressure will need to be applied for as long as it takes to get new safety requirements and regulations in place.”
Norfolk Southern pledged in a Tuesday statement it would “learn from this terrible accident and work with regulators and elected officials to improve railroad safety.” And the company’s chief executive officer, Alan Shaw, said it will rip up tracks that had swiftly returned to use, so chemical-soaked soil under the rails can be removed.
Roughly a decade ago, Norfolk Southern was among the rail companies combating a host of proposed requirements for high-hazard flammable trains — generally those transporting at least 35 tank cars carrying particularly combustible liquids or 20 of them in a single block. The train that derailed Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio, did not fall under that category, though the accident still unleashed a torrent of toxic chemicals, including vinyl chloride used in PVC pipes and the solvent ethylene glycol monobutyl ether.
The Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration had moved to propose tank car standards in response to a number of incidents in which they ruptured and released their contents. That included a 2005 crash in which a Norfolk Southern train hauling chlorine plowed into another, killing nine people in Graniteville, South Carolina. Regulators also sought to require the use of electronically controlled pneumatic braking systems that are designed to rapidly halt trains by applying brakes across their entire span simultaneously, instead of each car individually.
The industry’s top lobbying group, the Association of American Railroads, argued the technology would yield “minimal” safety benefits at a “tremendous” cost.
And in a March 2015 meeting with the White House, the industry doubled down, with representatives of Norfolk Southern and other major railroad operators — including CSX Corp., Union Pacific Corp. and BNSF Railway Co. — insisting that the brake requirement “would not have significant safety benefits, would not have significant business benefits” and “would be extremely costly.”
“There was tremendous pushback,” recalled Cynthia Quarterman, who played a major role crafting the rules as head of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. “It was intense.”
Though the industry supported more stringent tank car standards, it took issue with the methodology and cost-benefit analysis underpinning the government’s plan for bolstering specific rupture-prone DOT-111 models with prescriptions for thicker walls and more robust pressure-relief valves. At least 16 of the tanker cars that went off the tracks in Ohio were those older models.
The Obama administration still imposed speed limits, braking system mandates and new tank car standards in 2015, but only after they were narrowed in response to industry pressure. The government also rejected a bid by the AAR to expand the new tank car standards so they applied evenly — even when a train is using only a few to haul hazardous material.
But the industry didn’t stop fighting the braking mandates.
When former President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to winnow rules two years later, Norfolk Southern offered encouragement. Railroads operate under a “mountain of safety regulation,” the company told the Transportation Department in 2017, and “the substantial costs” of the brake requirements “cannot be justified.”
The Trump administration rescinded the brake mandates a year later.
The episodes reflect a classic power dynamic in the nation’s capital, where the balance is tilted in favor of industry, said James Goodwin, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform.
“There is not a single step of the rulemaking process that industry does not dominate,” Goodwin said. Businesses and industry groups wield unmatched influence and economic might to shape federal rules, he said, one that dwarfs the voice of other public stakeholders, such as workers and community residents.
Read more: Trump’s Ohio Visit Puts Spotlight on His Rail-Safety Record
The rail industry also successfully won more time to phase in more durable rail cars — until 2029 “from an originally envisioned date of 2025,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a Sunday letter to Norfolk Southern’s chief executive officer. “While we do not yet know what the NTSB investigation will conclude regarding what caused the derailment in East Palestine, we do know that these steps that Norfolk Southern and its peers lobbied against were intended to improve rail safety and to help keep Americans safe.”
Buttigieg, who will visit the eastern Ohio community on Thursday, is vowing that can’t happen again.
“Major derailments in the past have been followed by calls for reform – and by vigorous resistance by your industry to increased safety measures,” he told Norfolk’s Shaw. “This must change.”
Railroads Fought to Crush Rules That Biden Aims to Revive After Ohio Derailment
(Bloomberg) -- Long before this month’s fiery derailment, railroad industry leaders battled regulations meant to boost freight train safety, including plans to bolster some of the very same tank cars that ruptured and released chemicals in eastern Ohio.Most Read from BloombergApple Makes Major...
I agree that the refusal to defend our borders is a pretty big mistake!Biden has made so many mistakes that it is hard to keep track of them all.
A cabinet filled with unqualified people.I agree that the refusal to defend our borders is a pretty big mistake!
But I'd say appointing weirdos like that Levine character with the long blonde wig, the homosexuals and trannies and what-not and blacks, blacks, blacks, blacks to important government posts is a huge mistake. Not that I supposed these Secretaries and appointed officials actually ever did anything important, but it's made us laughed at over the world and it degrades our offices to nothing but targets for perverts and useless people to expect is theirs by right. Now we're expected to elect a trannie or a homosexual or black again for president next --- that's how these things build up.
