This is the transcript from Glenn Greenwald's System Update #41 on Rumble, which you can watch here. The first part of the show is about Missouri Senator Josh Hawley's introduction of a law banning social media use for children under 16. If you want to skip that part, go to 33 minutes.
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Source: The Greanville Post
As seen in the Ohio East Palestine event, the government's response has been flaccid and tardy—even cruelly laughable—to what is obviously a major environmental and economic disaster. All of this points to collapsing infrastructure, alarming political corruption, and, of course, unchecked capitalist greed.
For our interview segment tonight, I'm speaking with investigative journalist, David Sirota, who at his independent news site, The Lever, has been intrepidly reporting on the failures of the Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. He was on our show a few weeks ago to describe Buttigieg’s role in the Southwest Airlines debacle, which led to hundreds of thousands of American travelers being stranded for days and now he and his colleagues at Lever News have been doing similarly rigorous reporting on the derailment of a train in East Palestine, Ohio, carrying multiple dangerous chemicals.
David has been working for the last two decades as a journalist. He was nominated for an Academy Award, last year, for his 2022 film, “Don't Look Up”, on Netflix. He was also a senior adviser and speechwriter on the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. He's the founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, an independent reader-supported news outlet. And we're delighted to talk to him about the reporting he's been doing on this train explosion.
G. Greenwald: Good evening. It's good to see you. Thanks for coming back to our show.
D. Sirota: Hey, thanks for having me.
G. Greenwald:Absolutely. So, we're here to talk to you about the derailment of a Northern Suffolk train in East Palestine, Ohio, on February 3. It released toxic fumes into the environment. We know that for sure. Let's just show a video of what it is that happened. There you can see some photographs.
But tell us for now what do we know about this derailment and the harm that it's causing in this community?
D. Sirota: Well, what we know is that this train was carrying various toxic chemicals, including vinyl chloride. Vinyl chloride was actually part of a big explosion, a big derailment and leak in New Jersey many years ago, which led to some of the push for rail safety rules that we'll discuss soon. But vinyl chloride is an acknowledged carcinogen. There was a controlled burn of the carcinogen. There are questions about why it was sort of detonated but, upon the impact of the derailment, there were reports of 100-foot flames. There were, you know – it was a huge explosion. And yet and again, I will discuss this, but the train wasn't even classified as a high-hazard flammable train, even though it was carrying these toxic chemicals. These are obviously flammable chemicals.
G. Greenwald: So, you see the footage we showed a little bit of it. It's obviously very alarming. You can imagine how frightened people in these communities are. I remember 9/11 when it happened, I was living in Manhattan and we were all assured by health authorities that there was no risk at all to our long-term health from being exposed to those burning buildings, that collapsed building, the plane that blew up. And yet, as it turned out, many of the workers, the first responders of 9/11, had very serious health risks along the way.
One of the things you've been pointing out is how little media coverage there is of this. Pete Buttigieg did several Sunday shows and was not even asked about it. Here's that headline from the Lever news in which you say Lever Weekly: The Man Responsible, and you showed there a picture of Pete Buttigieg.
What questions should he have been asked on this Sunday's show tour about what's happening in Ohio?
"Right now, the brakes in the United States are mostly civil war era brakes, if you can believe it..."  Buttigieg: Absent from action and directly contributory to this calamity. "This happens [more than] 1,000 times a year." All presidents, since Reagan on—and most definitely Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden—have been actively involved in defeating protective legislation making railroads safer, more modern if not state of the art, and ensuring that toxic derailments such as the East Palestine catastrophe never happen. Pete Buttigieg as secretary of transportation did not move to reinstate the [already ridiculously weak] Obama era rule, did not move to expand the original rule, to cover, obviously, high-hazard flammable trains and Pete Buttigieg, in fact, the agency, has been considering a proposal to weaken – to further weaken – brake safety rules. And this is all at the behest of the industry's lobbyists. |
D. Sirota: Well, beyond the questions of how the accident happened, there should be questions, I think, about what were the government policies that were changed in the lead up to this that have any relation to this. And the story is basically this: after a series of derailments in the early 2010s, there was a push to put in more safety rules for trains carrying hazardous materials. And when – it was during the Obama administration – and when the Obama administration put forward its proposal, it asked for public comment. And the National Transportation Safety Board came to the Obama administration and basically said, listen, this rule needs to be broad. It needs to cover all sorts of different chemicals, including what's known as Class 2 chemicals, which were on this train. The Obama administration said…
G. Greenwald: Class 2 chemicals. I assume these classes of chemicals are divided based on how hazardous they are if they were to leak. Is that right?
D. Sirota: That's exactly right. And so, what the Obama administration decided to do was to limit the rule to mostly cover oil trains, and trains carrying crude oil and did not expand the rule to cover Class 2 chemicals like, for example, vinyl chloride. So, they weakened the rule. They narrowed the rule to which trains it applies to and then, the rail industry lobbied against the other part of the rule that would have required better brakes on the trains that the rule applied to. The idea was that even if the rule didn't end up applying to a train like the one in Ohio, the push was on to get the rail industry to start using what's known as ECP brakes.
Only under capitalism do we allow industry lobbyists seeking measures running against the public interest to operate freely. In a truly democratic society they would be regarded as criminals, which is what they are, and dealt accordingly, all the way up to their employers.—Eds.
Right now, the brakes in the United States are mostly civil war era brakes, if you can believe it – the idea being that ECP brakes, electronic brakes, are better at deterring and mitigating derailments. The Trump administration gets in, it repeals that part of the rule. All of that becomes what happened or the context for what happened in Ohio. A train that's carrying these toxic chemicals is not even classified and regulated as a high-hazard flammable train; it does not have these brakes on it. And then, the question becomes, well, in the interim of Trump repealing it and today, what happened? Well, Pete Buttigieg as secretary of transportation did not move to reinstate the Obama era rule, did not move to expand the original rule, to cover, obviously, high-hazard flammable trains and Pete Buttigieg, in fact, the agency, has been considering a proposal to weaken – to further weaken – brake safety rules. And this is all at the behest of the industry's lobbyists.
G. Greenwald: Yes. Let me focus on that part. You know, I've often observed that there's this kind of mythology that the two parties can never agree on anything and they never can. They're always at each other's throats. They have radically different views of the world and here you have three successive administrations, two Democratic, and one Republican, who are essentially serving the same industry in exactly the same way, namely by repealing regulations they find costly. If you look at the first instance of this, which is the Obama administration, I remember very well the 2008 presidential campaign of President Obama, and the 2012 presidential campaign as well, against John McCain and Mitt Romney. And one of the causes he was most passionate about defending was the need to protect our environment. This is one of the differences, we're told, between the two parties, is that Democrats are more devoted to environmental protection.
Why would an administration so [supposedly] devoted to environmental protection scale back regulations that can only have one effect, which is lowering the safety requirements against accidents like this that could harm the environment? Why would that happen?
D. Sirota: Well, look, in fairness, the Obama administration did put forward a rulemaking process to put in place some rules. So, I think that is a difference. But I certainly think spotlighting the fact that they put forward a proposal, there's industry pushback and then the proposal is narrowed and narrowed and narrowed, so a train like this, and trains like it all across the country, are exempt from those rules. I mean, what you're seeing there is that both parties’ administrations have tended to side with the corporate lobby. And the question now becomes, after a disaster like this, will that continue?
Remember, the original Obama rule came in response to a series of derailments. So, we're in this kind of cycle of a crisis happening, the government that's in power wants to look like it's responding. The devil ends up being in the details. The first initial response gets a headline. The devil's in the details in the rulemaking, the response actually gets limited and narrowed. Then another administration comes in when people aren't in, and it repeals a rule arguing about cost. And here we are.
So, the real question, I think, is both to understand what happened and then ask what is the current regulator right now. What have they been doing? What will they do? And again, the Buttigieg-led Transportation Department is considering a rule to weaken train-brake safety and testing of those brakes and has not proposed to reinstate or expand the rules that were even on the books in the past. And so, then the question becomes, well, why? Why are they not doing that?
G. Greenwald: That's my question. Exactly. That's exactly what I mean. You have the Obama administration get into office, they do, as you say, seek to introduce this new set of regulations designed to make this industry safer. They conclude that certain types of safety mechanisms are necessary. The industry, of course, wants to fight against those because each one of those regulations takes out of the profits of this industry. They come to the government and they say with barely anyone paying attention. These are things that got very little attention. That was not part of the public debate. “We don't want this particular regulation. We want you to keep this regulation away from us, at least”. And the Obama administration does it. The Trump administration appeases them even more. Why is that? Why does this industry have so much power to do to dictate the rules and regulations that govern its own industry?
The great Ohio train disaster has been largely ignored by the media. Which is criminal but also typical. The fact that the railway company was mostly owned by leading Wall Street firms goes a long way to explain such derelict behaviour. (TGP screengrab)
D. Sirota: It's a great question. And I want to add one thing here. It's a particularly great question because the breaks that we're talking about were touted by the same industry a few years before the Obama administration. This is one of the craziest parts of the story. Norfolk Southern was touting electronic brakes in late 2000, saying these are great, a great safety innovation, they can make our trains safer. The moment the government moved to mandate these brakes, the rail industry writ large said, “Oh, the cost is too high”. PS: the cost they were citing was about $3 billion, which in a typical year is about two weeks of operating revenue of the industry. Not a very huge cost.
And the answer to your question is because, I think, both parties, when the public isn't looking, when both parties face pressure and demands from powerful moneyed interests, both parties tend to want to give to those moneyed interests what those moneyed interests really want – again, especially, when the public is not looking. And one other point on this: I think that what the politicians fear publicly, both the culpability for disasters but also the rail industry, in particular, being able to say, “Oh, this regulation is going to harm the economy. This regulation is going to mean your family doesn't get food on the table because of the supply chain or presents at Christmas”. So, this industry in particular, which is a kind of monopolistic industry, is able to make an argument that politicians most fear, a.k.a. if you touch us, if you regulate us, it will harm your constituents who will blame you.
G. Greenwald: Yeah, I mean, and, you know, I think there is such a thing as overregulation. You can imagine a government going wild and imposing all kinds of regulations that are unnecessary, that create red tape. Probably it's happened before. It's not like it's a made-up concern. But at the same time, you're talking about an industry that's carrying extremely dangerous chemicals. If there's any time that the government has an interest in making sure that's being done safely and not on the cheap, that would be one of those times.
I had mentioned, David, that you were in our show, a couple of weeks ago, talking about the debacle with Southwest Airlines, the way in which hundreds of thousands of people were stranded. It seemed very clear at the time that, of course, that falls in the lap of the transportation secretary. That's whose job it is to make sure that the nation's aviation industry is working properly.
Now, remember, at the time, there was this attempt to do everything to shift plain away from Pete Buttigieg, just like there is now, and say, “Oh, it's because of this archaic computer system that Southwest Airlines uses”. And you were here making essentially making a similar argument about what role Pete Buttigieg had to play in all of that happening.
Explain what that was and what the through line is to this critique as well.
D. Sirota: Look, the secretary of transportation has a huge amount of power as the chief regulator of the nation's transportation systems, in particular the airlines and the railways. These companies, whether it's Southwest Airlines or Norfolk Southern, or anyone else, are making corporate decisions inside of a regulatory framework. So, in the airline situation, Southwest Airlines is making the decision not to upgrade its computer system premised on the idea that the chief regulator of the airlines, the secretary of transportation, is not going to, in any serious way, financially punish them, when the system melts down. In other words, the company is making the decision that, yeah, we may screw over consumers, but ultimately, if our system melts down, the system that we have invested in because we don't want to make the expenditure, we won't really face much of a price for it. It's the same thing with the railways.
The railway companies, again, also a monopoly, they basically look out at a landscape where they say, listen, if, if, if we don't have to put out money to improve our brakes because we've made sure the department isn't forcing us to do that, and we have a derailment, we're going to get a slap on the wrist at best. We're not going to be really held all that liable, certainly not at a level that is a financial deterrent because the regulator has not regulated us and will not regulate us. There's no deterrent there.
(Below: A Norfolk Southern train—see how long it is!).
And I want to add one other thing, the monopolistic part of this. Ultimately, you could say, listen, if a company wants to try to behave like that, even if regulators don't want to regulate them, then in many industries you could say, well, at least the consumers will punish them, right? The consumers will say, I'm not going to buy that product, I'm not going to use that service. But especially when it comes to transportation monopolies, the consumers, the clients, don't have a choice. Right? To how many different – on the airline situation – how many different routes only have one or two carriers. On the railway system, it's even worse. If you have to take a good from point A to point B, you don't get to choose whether it's Norfolk Southern or another competitor. It's basically a monopoly. So, you've got the worst of all worlds. The company isn't being regulated and the consumers don't have a choice. It is basically, essentially, the company has all of the power if the regulator is not regulated.
G. Greenwald: You know, David, I don't know how much you heard of the monologue, but I was just going over this bill that Josh Hawley proposed where he essentially wants to regulate social media by forcing them to prevent anyone under the age of 16 from using their service on the grounds that that industry is creating harm and therefore needs government regulation.
And part of the poll that I referenced, that just came out today, about Republican voters, showed that, overwhelmingly, Republicans want to use the antitrust laws to rein in the power of Big Tech. They think Big Tech is too powerful. It's time for the government to step in. Things that in Republican politics in the past you would never really hear about because Republican politics would always be against the idea of having the government regulate the industry. I think there's this growing sense now that it's some of these corporations are just so out of control, they run Washington, and they don't care about the public or their country that it’s time to start reconsidering some of that.
It's always been the idea on the left, I mean, to be a leftist sort of means that you favor government regulation to keep industries safe and under check and honest. Do you feel like – given the value that Pete Buttigieg has to the Democratic Party, that he's kind of this rising star and this great asset for the Democratic Party, the future of the party – that there is sort of willingness to overlook the role he's playing and not demand more of him out of fear that they might harm an important Democratic Party superstar in Pete Buttigieg.
D. Sirota: I certainly think that's part of the dynamic here, although I am not sure it's only limited to Pete Buttigieg. I think, look, I think both parties, rank and file people in both parties, don't like criticism of the leaders of their party. And I think that is a problem because I think, ultimately, – and you and I have talked about this before – we have to look at problems as problems and solutions as solutions. Not this is a solution that's politically good or bad for my party or politically bad for your party. The point being, if there is a train derailment, it is – in a healthy democracy – it is important for the chief regulator of the railroads to be questioned and scrutinized and asked, “Why have you not better regulated this situation and will you do so in the future?” – and I want to be very clear here, I hope that the criticism and the pressure on Pete Buttigieg end up compelling Pete Buttigieg to put in place better safety rules to protect our communities. I don't care if he's a Democrat or Republican. I would say the same thing if it was a Republican secretary of transportation. And I don't think we’re going to get those better regulations if the first and foremost priority of Democratic Party voters, in this situation, is to protect Pete Buttigieg. The priority should be to protect the country.
G. Greenwald: And the community that just got exposed to hazardous chemicals.
Let me show you an exchange between two elected members of Congress from one party, one from the other, that I found very interesting. There was a tweet from Ilhan Omar – I believe she was citing your reporting – and she said,
East Palestine railroad derailment will have a significant negative impact on the health and well-being of the residents for decades. And there is almost zero national media attention. We need congressional inquiry and direct action from Pete Buttigieg to address this tragedy (Feb. 4, 2023).
And that was Ilhan Omar, pretty far to the left in the Democratic Party, and Ted Cruz, who prides himself on being part of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which, as I said in the past has been hostile to regulation, wrote, co-tweeted her and all he said was: “Fully agree” – didn't mark her, wasn't ironic. It seemed to be like pretty earnest like he thinks people should be doing more and there should be a congressional hearing into whether or not more regulations are necessary.
Do you think that for both what I was kind of alluding to earlier, that there is now a sense much more bipartisan and trans-ideological than before, that these large corporations are just so out of control that they run wild, they don't care about the country or its citizens, that need government regulation and control?
D. Sirota: Look, I think there's definitely a potential for a kind of left-right coalition on these kinds of issues, for sure. Look, I worked for Bernie Sanders before his presidential campaign. I worked for Bernie Sanders in the late nineties, and early 2000, and there were left-right coalitions back then over things like pharmaceutical drug pricing reform, trade policies and the like. I think more left-right coalitions on issues like this need to be forged to deal with these problems. {Then why even bother with politicians? Why not just have PROPOSITIONS, which, when approved, are written into law?]
By the way, I would add, I think Ted Cruz, my guess, it’s just speculating here, he's responding to the fact that there was a derailment in Texas yesterday, involving a train carrying hazardous material.
I mean, I do think there's a reality here that while the parties fight and go to social media and sort of pop up their chests and show who's fighting with, you know, either party more strongly, that there are some issues, that it's just a real-world issue.
I don't know how you can kind of politicize the response or make it partisan to a mushroom cloud of carcinogens hanging over the American heartland. You'd like to believe that a situation and a problem like that can bring people from all sides together about, hey, we better do a better job of regulating these hazardous chemicals as they move through population centers.
G. Greenwald: Well, last question, David. I guess it's kind of a two-part question. One is, first of all, do we know anything yet about whether there is any kind of short-term or mid-term, or even long-term damage to the health of the people in these communities? Or does that something that we only know over time what is investigated? And then the second part of that is – I mean, one of the problems, it seems to me, is that even though we like to think of ourselves as the richest and most advanced country on earth, in a lot of ways this seems indicative to me of this collapsing infrastructure – and this idea that we're using, as you said, kind of very old and primitive technology to transport chemicals around, our train tracks are not modernized and the like. Do you see any hope for improvement in just basic infrastructure between the two parties the more stuff like this happens?
D. Sirota: Look, I think, on the damage question, I think it's going to take a while to know how long-term the damage is. We know that there were toxic chemicals that went into the rivers. We don't know what that's going to do to the watershed. We don't know if that's going to get into the more permanent groundwater supply and the like. I think it's going to take time to know that. I think the onus is going to be on the government to do as much as possible to at least disclose to people the extent of the damage. And that's at the state level among the governors of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and the like and at the federal EPA.
On the question of infrastructure improvement, I mean, I go back to this idea that both parties want to look like they care about the economy. Infrastructure is the basic physical capital of a functioning economy. It is not good for the economy to have hazmat train derailments. That's bad for the supply chain on top of it being a public health disaster as well. So, I do think there is a chance for more bipartisan trans-ideological unity around the idea of investing in the basic things that need to be invested in to make the economy work. And there was an infrastructure bill that was one of the things that passed, I think, it was last year. There was an infrastructure bill that had some support from both parties, not complete but… And I think that making the argument that this is good for the economy, is that the economy cannot survive without some basic infrastructure improvements. I mean, there's not really a political argument. It shouldn't be a partisan argument.
G. Greenwald: All right. You know, I did say that was the last question, and I'm afraid I need to confess, apparently, I lied because I do have to show you one more thing, which is both in fairness and something you're going to like.
Pete Buttigieg finally has spoken out on this earlier today in a series of tweets that honestly I was going to pick from to show you but they were so vacuous – they really said nothing – that it wouldn't even be worth my time to show the audience that or you. But he does have a video where he responded and addressed it. I just want to show that to the audience and to you and ask you to comment. Let's show this Pete Buttigieg video.
G. Greenwald: I mean, it seems to me like a joke to them. Now we have balloons. He's been the transportation secretary for two years. He's still blaming the pandemic and everything else he can think of other than taking responsibility for himself. What's your reaction to having watched that now that you've been spending so much time reporting on him and his failures?
D. Sirota: Well, look, I think that people to judge wants to be a spokesperson for the administration. And I do think he is good at being a general spokesperson for the administration, for instance, on Sunday shows that he wasn't asked about this disaster, he was basically defending and kind of spinning the State of the Union address.
But I think here's what that says. If you want to be a spokesperson for an administration, copy the press secretary for the administration. The job of the secretary of transportation is a real job. And by that, I mean, it is a real administrative job of running a department and doing, making real decisions. And my guess, again, I'm speculating here, is that the Department of Transportation has been seen as kind of a low-profile job, but obviously, it's actually one of the highest-profile jobs in an administration, especially when there are supply chain issues. So, the real question is, does Pete Buttigieg really want to do that job? He doesn't have revocations for that job. So, if he doesn't want to do that job, we need somebody in there who does that. Again, it's a real job. But as the sole regulator of the airlines, it is the chief regulator of the rails. The economy relies on it and people's safety relies on that job being taken seriously. And it's not clear that he takes the job seriously.
G. Greenwald: Yeah, I mean, we talked about that the last time and we hear like the great mystery of why Pete Buttigieg ended up as transportation secretary. It seems like it was just a gap that the kind of thing you would usually give an ambassadorship to or some other thing he just landed there with so randomly and arbitrarily.
And you're right, I think he loves speaking about things. Honestly, the times that he's actually speaking about transportation, I find it weird because he so rarely does it. We hear from him on everything else.
David, keep up the great work for those of you who don't know Lever news or who aren’t following it. You should. I think you can see that. David, despite being open about his politics, is a reporter in the traditional sense. He holds all political officials honest and holds them accountable, which is what we need a lot more of. So, David, keep that up. And thanks once again for taking the time to talk to us. Really appreciate it.
D. Sirota: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
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