Greenwald on Ohio Train Mini-Chernobyl: How Corruption and Greed Created Catastrophe, w/ David Sirota

 Note From Glenn Greenwald: The following is the full show transcript, for subscribers only, of a recent episode of our System Update program, broadcast live on Rumble on Tuesday, February 14, 2023. Watch System Update Episode #41 here on Rumble.

In this episode, we take a look at Senator Josh Hawley, the Missouri Republican, who has long supported the conservative view on culture war issues, that parental rights are sacrosanct and that it should be parents, not the state or school bureaucrats, who decide what American children learn about social, cultural and religious debates and how they learn about them. Yet this week, Senator Hawley has introduced a new law that would deprive America's parents of the right to decide for their own children when and how those children can start using social media and replace that parental decision-making power with a blanket rule from the state that bans social media from allowing any children under the age of 16 to use social media, even if their own parents believe they are ready to use it. We'll examine the values in conflict as a result of Senator Hawley's bill and whether it can be reconciled with the banner of parental rights, which the American right has been waving as part of the culture wars. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now. 

Monologue:

Many of the most inflammatory culture war issues over the last several years have involved fights over what children should and should not be taught in public schools about highly contested questions regarding history, race and gender ideology. But a related dispute is whether communities and parents are acting recklessly – or even endangering children – by allowing them to attend so-called drag shows or read books about LGBT history and how to understand their own gender. 

When these controversies began receiving significant public attention a few years ago, conservatives – often led by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – waved the banner of parental rights. They objected to children being taught – or indoctrinated with – highly disputed beliefs about social issues. Aside from arguing that schools should focus on teaching students the traditional subjects they need to advance in their education and prepare themselves for the adult world – English, mathematics, science, geography, chemistry, algebra and the rest – opposition to much of the curriculum centered on the view that the responsibility to decide what children learn about political and social issues – and how they learn it – should rest with parents and not with school bureaucrats or elected officials using the force of law. 

In March of last year, Governor DeSantis published an announcement on his official website under this title: “Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Historic Bill to Protect Parental Rights in Education.” The announcement emphasized that value over and over – parental rights - in announcing, in the governor's words, that he had signed

House Bill (HB) 1557, Parental Rights Education, which reinforces parent's fundamental right to make decisions regarding the upbringing of their children”. 

The bill prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through 3rd grade and prohibits instruction that is not age appropriate for students and requires school districts to adopt procedures for notifying parents if there is a change in services from the school regarding a child's mental, emotional or physical health or well-being. 

The Bill builds on the Parents’ Bill of Rights, which was signed into law in Florida last year, and as part of Governor DeSantis’ Year of the Parent focus on protecting parental rights in education. 

As that passage demonstrates, the banner of parental rights has been the one most frequently waved by conservatives in these culture war debates. It is the parent's right to decide what social, cultural, and religious influences their kids are exposed to – or not exposed to – and not the role of the state and its educational bureaucracy to decide that for the parents. 

Yet, now, Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, who has been an outspoken advocate of the right's views in many of these culture war issues, often waving the banner of parental responsibility and parental rights himself, has introduced a bill this week that seems to me to do the opposite. That bill would deny parents the right to decide when and how their children can use social media and instead transfer the responsibility to make that decision away from the parents and onto the state. 

As Fox Business reports today about this bill, 

He went out of his way to create this acronym: MATURE Act

Hawley’s other measure, titled The Federal Social Media Research Act, would commission a government report on the harm of social media for kids. That study, according to the senator's office, would examine and “track social media's effects on children over 10 years old.”

I don't think anybody objects to a study to understand how this technology that is still quite new in our lives and continuously evolving – social media – is impacting the nation's children. I don't think many people would object to that; I know I wouldn't. The question of the other bill, however, I find much more difficult to grapple with, which is the idea that there should be a minimum age that applies nationally, to every community, to every state, and to every family, that prohibits any children under the age of 16 from using social media – even if you, as the parent of your children, conclude that your children are ready and able to use social media at the age of 13 or 14 or 15 with whatever guidelines and limits you decide are necessary for them to do that. 

Under this bill, Josh Hawley is taking away the power for you to decide for your own children at what age they are able to use social media and replacing your decision-making power with that uniform minimum law from the federal government that says that it shall be illegal in essence, for social media companies to remit children under the age of 16, to use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the rest. 

Before delving into what I think are some interesting and difficult questions raised by this law, let's listen to Sen. Hawley himself at a hearing today in the Senate in which he defends his own bill and has an exchange with the witness he believes illustrates the need for it. 

(Video 12:44)

I'm really confused by that last part where he said, “let's put the power in the hands of parents,” because what he's doing is clearly the opposite. He's taking away the power of parents to decide when their own children can go on social media or not. 

The reason why I find this an important issue to talk about is I remember when I began hearing about the attempts in schools by teachers and school boards and other bureaucrats to begin indoctrinating children, especially young children, with very controversial ideas about gender ideology, encouraging them to think about what their gender is, what their pronouns are, or to teach them about doctrines of race that I may or may not agree with.

My reaction was pretty clear, as a parent, which is I don't think it should be up to teachers to tell my children when and how they should start thinking about their own gender, when and how they should be deciding what their pronouns are, when and how they should be thinking about race, that these are questions that are best left to the parents to decide, especially, when these issues are controversial, especially when you're talking about young children, as children get older – 16, 17, 18 – I think there's more of a space to have in public schools that discussion about hotly contested historical and social and political issues. Kids start having a greater capability at older ages to decide that. But, certainly, for younger children, I remember being angry at the idea that when I send my kids to school, they may come back indoctrinated with views that I don't want them to even begin thinking about, let alone have shoved into their brain or required to accept. 

It made me angry as a parent to realize that the state has taken away my power to make those decisions. And that's why parental rights is such a potent value. Most people want the right to make those decisions for themselves. Senator Hawley said in that clip that there are parents who are asking him to please help them. Take control of their children's social media use by banning social media until the age of 16. If there are parents that really don't want their kids using social media until the age of 16, there are ways parents can prevent that from happening. There's no rule that you have to give your children phones or if they need phones for specific purposes, you can program the phone so that it only is for phone calls and not for social media. You give your kids rules that they can't use social media, and if you find that they're doing it, then you punish them. That's the role of parents, not to call senators and to say, “impose a rule on my children because I can't control my own children and I need the State to do it”. 

Beyond that, what if you are somebody who, unlike Josh Hawley, thinks your kid is ready at the age of 13, 14, or 15 to use social media and that they can benefit that way? Part of why I think there's anger over the idea of having your rights as a parent removed from you and given to school bureaucrats is because you feel – as a parent – that it is your right to make those decisions for your children. And the reason it's an important thing for parents to do is because the people who know your children best are you –.not political officials or bureaucrats at the school. They don't know your children very well. They don't know how to assess when your children are ready to learn certain things or how they should be learning them. And so, when I would hear about school bureaucrats taking away my right to decide when my kid will hear about things like gender, ideology and pronouns and race and how race should be divided up and how different races should be thought of or talked about, the reason I was angry is because it surprised me – if something that's mine to do, which is make decisions for my own children. 

This is how I reacted when I heard Sen. Hawley's bill – that he wants to ban all children from going on social media until they're 16 because he thinks that's the appropriate age. He has every right, in my view, to ban his own children from using social media until they're 16. That's absolutely within his purview to do so. I would never want to override his decision for what's best for his kids. I don't know his children. I'm not capable of making that decision for them. But I also think he's not capable of making that decision for me. I know that raising kids, we spend a lot of time thinking about the best way for them to navigate social media.

One of our kids may be more ready than the other at a younger age. Some of them may need different controls. These are all things a parent decides, and there are positive aspects to using the Internet and using social media, in my view, before a child turns 16 years old. There are things that they can learn, there are ways they can keep up with their peers, and I don't want the government making that choice for me, even if I ultimately conclude that 16 is a good age, maybe I want it to be 17 or 18 or 13 or 14. 

Sen. Hawley claimed that most parents support the idea that the State should decide rather at what age their kids can use social media but if you look at actual polling data, the reasons why so many Republican politicians are waving the banner of parental rights is because of Republican voters have told pollsters they really believe in it. 

Here is a poll published by The Washington Examiner, on February 14, 2023. So, I believe it's just today, in fact. I saw this poll today. It's a new poll just released of Republican primary voters. 

Here you see the headline, “Primary Voters Want GOP Contenders to Lean into Culture Wars: Poll”.  The article reads,

Which makes sense. But that's not social media in general. 

I do want to acknowledge the other side – we already do have laws that take away parental rights in many ways. If, for example, you decide that alcohol is something that your child is capable of consuming in a responsible way at the age of 15, or you want to start teaching them about the fine or his various wines and vineyards and have them start sampling wine and developing their palate for wine at the age of 16, you don't have the right to make that decision for your children. Under the law. It is a crime for you as an adult to give alcohol to any underage child, including your own children. So that's an example where the State has said, we don't care how old you think your kids should be when they first taste alcohol.

We're going to take away that choice for you and impose on you a law that says you can't give alcohol to your kids until they're 21, even if you think they're ready for it beforehand. The same is true for certain films. You cannot take your kids to an X-rated film even if you think they're capable of handling it. There are a lot of different laws that govern when kids can do things that are decided not by the parents, but by the State. But that is the point is if you're now marching under the banner of saying it's the parents that are best suited to make choices for their own children about what their children should and shouldn’t learn and not the State, then you have to start grappling with how Sen. Hawley's or – which he somehow justified on the grounds of parental rights, even though it clearly does the opposite – can be reconciled with this attempt to take away the rights of parents to make that decision. 

Last year, I sat down for an hour-long interview with Christopher Rufo, the activist, who has been very effective in engaging in all kinds of activism around, for example, what children can and can't be taught in public schools. He had a lot of success in banning critical race theory and then gender ideology from the public schools and he did so waving the banner of parental rights, saying, as governor DeSantis did, “I don't want my kids being taught these things. That's my decision, as a parent, to decide when my kids hear about these things and not the State.” And I understood that point of view and empathized with it a lot, as a parent. 

But then I heard people like Chris Rufo and others aligned with him turning around and starting to say things that seemed at odds with that. For example, if other communities in the United States, that are more progressive, say, in Brooklyn or in San Francisco, want their kids’ schools to teach them about gender ideology or about LGBT history because they think it's important for their kids to know, should those parents and those communities have that right to make that decision for themselves? Or let's say that a parent of a 12-year-old thinks that their child will benefit from attending a drag show. I don't mean a sexually explicit one. I mean just a wholesome entertainment of the kind like Milton Berle dressing up as a woman like he often did, or Robin Williams dressing up as a woman in Mrs. Doubtfire, or Dustin Hoffman doing so in Tootsie, or the show that launched Tom Hanks’ career, Bosom Buddies, where they pretended to be women to live in an all-women dorm. That kind of a show. Shouldn't parents have the right to take their own kids to those kinds of shows Even if Chris Rufo or Ron DeSantis finds it the wrong decision? Isn't that what parental rights means? And I raised that issue with them. I said, you're waving the banner of parental rights, but how does that get reconciled with communities and parents with different values than their own who want to expose their kids to different things and listen to this exchange? 

(Video 25:59)

So, I think the question becomes – and I'm not trying to suggest that it's a clear answer here when it comes to Senator Hawley's bill – is social media like, say, alcohol or cigarettes so harmful to children, they'll begin to deny parents the right to allow them to use it, even if the parent wants them to use it and believes they're ready to do so?  

Let's look at just a couple of studies that shed light on that topic. 

Here, from The New York Times, is an incredibly interesting article, from 2018, on how parents in Silicon Valley, the people who design these products like social media, are refusing to allow their own kids to use them because they have intimate knowledge about how damaging social media and these other products are. They're designed to be addictive, much like cigarettes were. The headline was “A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley. ‘I am convinced the devil lies on our phones’ “. That's a quote from a Silicon Valley parent. The article reads, 

That would lend, I think, support for Sen. Hawley to say that social media is more like cigarettes and alcohol and that they will harm your children, although these are Silicon Valley parents deciding at what age their children can and can't access certain technologies. And the question is that they have that right to decide for their own children, why shouldn't you have the right to decide that for yours? Why should Josh Hawley and his fellow Republicans or Democrats – that he is able to gather and form a majority in Congress – why should they be allowed to take that right away from you to decide when your own children can safely and profitably use social media? 

There are harms for sure that come from social media. The Wall Street Journal wrote an article, in 2021, entitled “How TikTok Serves Up Sex and Drug Videos to Minors” and it talked about how the algorithms of TikTok are shoving in front of young users, as young as 13 and 15, sexually explicit material or other material clearly inappropriate for minors, although the question there becomes there probably are way short of banning everybody under the age of 16 from using social media like requiring safety mechanisms and other devices that should be on these devices to allow parents to ensure that anyone under 16 or anyone under 15 can't access sexually explicit material. That seems clear. We, for example, allow children to buy magazines like Time Magazine or The New Yorker – I personally wouldn't allow my children to buy those magazines because I know they're full of disinformation and propaganda – but it is legal for children to buy news magazines, but it's not legal for them to buy sexually explicit magazines – and you could make that same distinction here. 

But having a bill that, for every community, decrees that you no longer have the right to decide for your own children when and how they can use social media, that instead, Josh Hawley and politicians in Congress are going to decide that for you – I'm open to the idea that there's some justification there but, at the very least, it's extremely difficult to reconcile that with the values of parental rights that have become the Conservatives’ number one value, as they conduct themselves in culture wars. 

To me, the only consistent way to grapple with these issues is what Christopher Rufo told me, which is, though he has very strong ideas about what is and is not appropriate for other people's kids, he doesn't think he should have the power to impose that on those people's kids. That is for their parents to decide. He just wants the right, as I want the right, to decide for my own kids when and how they're going to learn. So, we will certainly follow this legislation and see if it progresses. But I think it's a very important question for everybody to start grappling with what parental rights mean and in what context do we allow it or do we limit it?

The Interview: David Sirota

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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