Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/18/23 FULL PARTNER ROUNDUP: Biden Anti Trust Enforcement, Big Pharma Corruption and The Ohio Rail Disaster

Episode Date: February 18, 2023

All the best recent segments from our amazing partners on Breaking Points including Biden breaking from the neoliberal status quo, Big Pharma controlling massive aspects of our lives, and more updates on the aftermath of the Ohio Rail Disaster!Time Stamps:Matt Stoller (Anti-Trust): (0:00 - 15:05)James Li (Big Pharma): (15:06 - 25:24)Max Alvarez (Ohio Disaster): (25:25 - 1:11:05)Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Hi, I'm Matt Stoller, author of Monopoly-focused newsletter, Big, and an antitrust policy analyst. I have a great segment for you today on this big breakdown. Okay, so this one is a bit more political than normal because I'm looking at monopolies and how they were discussed in last week's State of the Union address. Joe Biden, the president, mentioned antitrust, and it's the first time it's been brought up in a State of the Union speech since 1979. So I'm going to discuss

what happened at the speech, why it matters, and how Joe Biden basically said last week that Ticketmaster sucks. Okay, so let's get to it. We're all sort of aware that the Democrats used to be considered vaguely, in some sense, the party of working people. But why? Why did they have this impression? Well, here's a campaign flyer that a Southern Democrat, a guy named Wright Patman, used in the 1950s to describe to his rural constituents why they should vote for him and for Democrats in general. Here is what our Democratic Party has given us, it said. The idea was Democrats deliver for you. Roads, electricity, telephone service, unemployment assurance, old age benefits. Didn't have it, then you elected

Democrats, then you did. So that's what politics used to be about. Stuff normal people understood. And it was true. In 1940, 35% of Americans did not have flush toilets. Includes 80% of residents of Mississippi. They didn't have flush toilets. By 1970, nearly all of them did. That is what politics meant. And this wasn't just a Democratic Party frame. Everyone bought into it. The basic notion was that we can come together and choose how we organize our society through politics. And politicians fight for votes over how best to do that.

Now, of course, it wasn't perfect. There were lots of corruption and so on and so forth. But that was the gist of how people thought about politics. And for 40 years, from the 1930s until the 1970s, this is how voters understood the Democratic Party. But then Ronald Reagan broke for this frame and said, and more broadly said government and more broadly politics, isn't the solution, it's the problem. And a subtle unsaid part of that frame was that corporations and Wall Street were the solution. Reagan won two elections and dominated politics in the 1980s. So how did

the Democratic Party respond? They didn't respond by fighting back and say Reagan is wrong. They fought back by agreeing with Ronald Reagan. So Bill Clinton, the first Democratic president to take office after 12 years of Republican rule, eight years of Reagan and four years of George H.W. Bush, George Bush Sr., what he did, Bill Clinton removed antitrust from the Democratic platform, which had been in there. It had been in the Democratic Party platform since the 1880s, and Bill Clinton took it out in 1992. And it was in the State of the Union speeches in the 1990s that Bill Clinton made it clear that Democrats were no longer the party of government, no longer the party of getting things and doing things through politics. He talked about not what the government can

do for you or what politics can do for you or how we govern ourselves as a society. No, no, he talked about things like welfare reform, globalization, violence and sex on TV, cultural stuff like that. He actually bragged about how he had cut the government so it was smaller than it was under the Kennedy administration. And this here, which I'm going to show you, is the most, probably the most famous clip or one of the most famous clips of the Clinton administration in the State of the Union. The era of big government is over. Boom. Right there. The era of big government is over. Listen to all that applause. Now, Reagan went after government and unleashed Wall Street, but it took Bill Clinton to make that

frame bipartisan. Now, Barack Obama in 2008 was elected in many ways as a repudiation of Clinton. He beat Bill Clinton's wife, Hillary Clinton, in the primary in Iowa and elsewhere. And he recognized what Clintonism had wrought. That's how he actually won. He promised to renegotiate NAFTA on the campaign trail. And in Iowa, he walked around and he talked about resurrecting antitrust to go after Monsanto and meatpackers and so on and so forth. And he continued to talk this way in many ways during his presidency. So here he is in 2011 talking about the pain and devastation of offshoring, essentially the Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton legacy. And for many, the change has been painful. I've seen it in the shuttered windows of once booming factories,

in the vacant storefronts on once busy main streets. I've heard it in the vacant storefronts on once-busy Main Streets. I've heard it in the frustrations of Americans who've seen their paychecks dwindle or their jobs disappear. Proud men and women who feel like the rules have been changed in the middle of the game. They're right. The rules have changed. In a single generation, revolutions in technology have transformed the way we live, work, and do business. Steel mills that once needed 1,000 workers can now do the same work with 100. Today, just about any company can set up shop, hire workers, and sell their products wherever there's an Internet connection.

The rules have changed, right? That's what he said. Obama understood the pain, as you can see right there. But despite his understanding of how much pain Clinton, Reagan had caused, and Bush as well, he actually adhered to the same philosophy as Clinton. So here's what Obama put forward as his agenda to address this in the same speech where he talked about that offshoring. We have to make America the best place on earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit and reform our government. That's how our people will prosper. That's how we'll win the future. More cutting of deficits. More pro corporate speak, more cuts to government. Now, neither Clinton nor Obama or Reagan, anyone like

that said they wanted factories to go offshore. They just argued, and you could see that in Obama's clip, that despite 200 years of domestic manufacturing in America, it was inevitable that all of our chemicals would be made in China. It was not NAFTA or the entrance to the World Trade Organization or choosing lax antitrust enforcement that changed how we live. As Obama said, the rules have changed, not we just made different decisions. Globalization and technology. These are giant, uncontrollable forces instead of a set of policy choices made by human beings. Don't ask me to deal with big corporations, with offshore factories. I'm just the president. Now of course, such a philosophy was cover for private financiers and monopolists gaining power over markets.

And voters are not stupid. So eventually the Democratic Party, which had been the party of working people, became known as a group of smarmy bullshit artists, because that's what they acted like. Now today, there's a general view in America, and this is backed up by polling, that all politicians are too friendly to big corporations. When Joe Biden got elected,

and I was not expecting him to break from this tradition, the guy first took office as a senator in 1972. But of all people, it's Biden, the weird 80-year-old who has been in D.C. longer than most Americans have been alive, who seems to be trying to turn the ship around. Or at least saying he is. And in doing so, he is breaking with the legacy of both Bill Clinton and the man he served under as vice president, Barack Obama, and turning the Democrats towards a more populist anti-corporate path, in many ways following a little bit what Trump did. Now, I'll start with a clip of Biden's State of the Union from last week, in which he talked about

how he's going to make sure we build things in America again, and contrast this with what Bill Clinton and Barack Obama said. Every community, every community in America has access to affordable high-speed internet. No parent should have to drive by McDonald's parking lot to help them do their phone work online with their kids, which many thousands were doing across the country. And when we do these projects, and again, I get criticized for this, but I make no excuses for it. We're going to buy American. We're going to buy American. Buy American has been the law since 1933. But for too long, past administrations, Democrat and Republican, have fought to get around it. Not anymore.

Tonight, I'm announcing new standards require all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects to be made in America. Lumber, glass, drywall, fiber optic cable. And on my watch, American roads, bridges, and American highways are going to be made with American products as well. That right there is a huge difference, believe him or not, is what he's saying. You don't have any of the sort of rules have changed garbage. There's no powerlessness. There's nothing inevitable about anything he's saying. He's just saying we're going to make stuff here. The government is going to mandate that that happens. Now, I'm not saying you have to trust Joe Biden. Maybe he's lying. Maybe he won't follow through. I'm just saying that the president is talking different than his

predecessors did, and in an important speech, the State of the Union. Now, there are consequences. A few days later, the government announced that all broadband grants that were, you know, as a result of infrastructure bills that passed last Congress would require American construction materials. And this made telecom lobbyists very unhappy. So there is actual follow-through. And lots of neoliberal Democrats are mad as well. So Larry Summers, who was Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, ran economic policy under Barack Obama, was upset at buy American policies. So was Jason Furman, who was Obama's chief advisor on the economy. You see, you know, Peter Coy in the New York Times essentially writing that up. But the thing is, Biden talked a lot more, talked about a lot more than just making things here.

He went after, quote unquote, Big Pharma by name. He actually used that term, Big Pharma. It's unusual for the State of the Union. I can't think of the last time it happened. He bragged about capping insulin prices to $35 a month for seniors. He proposed eliminating so-called junk fees. These are fees by banks, credit card companies, airlines, companies like Ticketmaster to sort of nickel and dime you. Take a listen.

Those fees can cost up to $90 a night at hotels that aren't even resorts. Now, if you stayed in a hotel or Airbnb, you know what I mean. These are really annoying. They're essentially cheating you. Now, the attack on junk fees isn't fake either. Unfair bank overdraft fees have dropped by 40% because of bank regulators. That's about $5 billion over the last couple of years. So there's actual follow through there as well. Now, another thing that got a mention is banning non-compete agreements that prohibit people from leaving their jobs to work for rivals. That's something that Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission implemented and or is trying to implement. And let's take a listen about how Joe Biden talked

about this. 30 million workers have to sign non-compete agreements for the jobs they take. 30 million. So a cashier at a burger place can't walk across town and take the same job at another burger place and make a few bucks more. It just changed. But they just changed it because we exposed it. That was part of the deal, guys. Look it up. But not anymore. We're banning those agreements so companies have to compete for workers and pay them what they're worth. I did not expect Joe Biden to be the guy doing that. But he is. That's the president of the United States talking to Congress and the country saying, we're going to ban non-compete agreements. He also talked about competition and hearing aids, which are now cheaper because of his policies. He's talked about unionization laws, suggested a quadrupling of tax on stock buybacks. He called for stronger rules against big tech.

What didn't he say, though? There was no apology for government. And the villain was big business and monopoly from nearly start to finish. There's no Clinton or Obama talk here. You can tell what happened with the speech because of who got angry afterwards. Who got angry? Lobbyists, airline lobbyists, bank lobbyists, Wall Street financiers, and so on and so forth. They don't want to have to buy American or stop charging junk fees, and they want to engage in stock buybacks. There's hilarious clips of the head of the Consumer Bankers Association talking about hardworking Americans who want their overdraft fees. It's just, this is who was upset. Now, again, I'm not

saying you should trust Joe Biden or the Democrats. He may fail. He may not mean it. He may change his mind. There are plenty of people in Congress who are Democrats who may not go along. He has some terrible cabinet members like Pete Buttigieg. Tom Vilsack is not following through at the USDA. And there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that go way beyond that. But what I'm saying is that what Joe Biden introduced with that State of the Union was a different form of politics. He changed the way that a Democratic president talks about political economy. And in fact, his speech kind of looked like this. Here is what our Democratic Party has given us.

Now, if this flyer existed today, it might say Ticketmaster sucks. And it would certainly not sound like this clip. The era of big government is over. Now, it's a little too early to tell what Biden's State of the Union really means. He has a track record. There is a bunch, like, mergers have dropped by 76% this year alone.

But he also did the railroad strike problem. So, we're not totally sure how far he's going to take this. But at least what he says comes off very different than any Democratic leader that I've ever heard. And that is something to notice. Thanks for watching this big breakdown on the Breaking Points channel. If you'd like to know more about big business and how our economy really works, you can sign up below for my market power focus newsletter, Big, in the description. Thanks, and have a good one. Hey there, my name is James Lee. Welcome to another segment of 5149 on breaking points.

And today I've got a great segment for you about how big pharma worldwide stands nearly unchallenged in their ability to dictate government health policies to ensure that their own financial interests always supersede all other considerations. I say nearly unchallenged for a reason. Here's an update on the vaccine front. India's confirmed that we will not be buying Pfizer or Moderna COVID shots. Why? Because India's confirmed that our domestic output of more affordable and easiest to store vaccines has jumped. It's increased. This essentially means that the two globally popular vaccines, which the makers have pledged not to sell to private parties during the pandemic, will not be available in India.

The story isn't new. I think it kind of flew under the radar for the most part. But it is 100 percent worth diving into, in my opinion, because don't you find it at least just a little bit odd that the second most populous country in the world did not approve the sale of either the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines? Both vaccines work on the same technology. India wants them too, but on its own terms. We are currently discussing with the Indian government an expedited approval pathway to make our Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine

available for use in the country. But look at their demands. Pfizer wants indemnity, a legal exemption from future lawsuits over their vaccines. Countries like the United States and Britain have signed such clauses. It basically means that if the vaccine maker is sued in India, it will be the government's problem, not the company's. India has not given such indemnity to any vaccine producer. Why should Pfizer be the exception? Great question. Why should they be the exception? Why should they be afforded

a hundred percent of the financial upside of selling billions of doses of their product, but take none of the risk? I guess that's what I would do if I was a multinational biopharma manufacturer, but I can't exactly just say that out loud though. I think it's best if we conjure something else up. This is from a CNBC article back in 2020. Quote, the legal immunity granted to pharmaceutical companies doesn't just guard them against lawsuits. It helps lower the cost of the immunizations. The government doesn't want people suing the companies making the COVID vaccine because then the manufacturers would probably charge the government a higher price

per person per dose. Anybody buy that rationale? Oh, it's for us. According to the New York Times, the U.S. did not pay less for the COVID-19 vaccine. In fact, it was reported that we paid more than many other countries. All right, whatever. They charge what they charge because at the time we needed the vaccines and they also, you know, I guess it was somewhat reasonable that they didn't want to be liable if anything went wrong because the times were so unprecedented, quote unquote. This next part is from Reuters. Quote, unlike other companies conducting small studies in India for foreign developed vaccines, Pfizer had sought an exception citing approvals it had received elsewhere based on trials done in countries such as the United States and Germany. Indian health officials say they generally ask

for so-called bridging trials to determine if a vaccine is safe and generates an immune response in its citizens. I don't know what I was thinking at the time, but looking back, I think this is kind of incredible. Now, the hubris, Pfizer, Moderna, they demanded not only indemnity, meaning they assume no legal responsibility or risk for their product, but they also refuse to do local clinical trials to ensure the safety and efficacy

of their product. Is it not a little bit too transparent that all they care about is selling the product, making money, and everything else is kind of secondary? Kudos to India, I guess, for making such reasonable requests. But it does kind of leave me wondering, how in the world did they get everybody else on board with this? Once again, hindsight, deadly pandemic. They had the so-called antidote, I guess. So whatever they say goes. I want to ask you also about a very important issue of vaccine hesitancy. Even folks who get most of their vaccines normally might be hesitant about these vaccines because they were developed so quickly. What do you tell those folks who might be saying,

well, I'm going to wait a few months before I get this one. This is a vaccine that was developed without cutting corners from a company with 171 years of credentials. This is a vaccine that was developed in the spotlight, in the daylight, with all the data being put in servers. And this is a vaccine that is getting approved by all authorities in the world. So that should say something to them. What does it say?

171 years of credentials with plenty of scandals throughout. Left out that part. And not all the data was made available to the public. And also a little bit of circular logic there. Why are these vaccines safe and effective? Well, because they've been approved by all the authorities in the world. How are they approved? Well, they were approved because we said that they were safe and effective? Well, because they've been approved by all the authorities in the world. How are they approved? Well, they were approved because we said that they were safe and effective. I'll tell you, that kind of logic only checks out because more than two-thirds of Congress

cashed a pharma campaign check in 2020. I've reported that statistic numerous times, but it still astounds me to this day the kind of grip Big Pharma has over U.S. lawmakers. On top of that, the pharmaceutical industry also finances about 75% of the FDA's drug division. They own the lawmakers. They own the regulators. You tell me if there can be any other outcome other than carte blanche for big pharma in the U.S. In Europe, the political and regulatory landscape is a bit more challenging for big pharma to navigate. So perhaps not all too surprising that it was revealed by the New York Times that the

$1.8 billion deal between Pfizer and the EU was sealed with private texts and calls between the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. If the democratic landscape is too cumbersome, then let's just not do democracy. It's two years later, and still nobody knows what was said or the details of how the deal got done. Quote, the European Court of Auditors wants to know how the bloc clinched its biggest COVID-19 vaccine contract and whether there was anything untoward in text messages between European Commission President

Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer Chief Albert Bourla. So far, however, the EU budget watchdog's probe has been met with silence. Pfizer, they keep saying, why don't you trust us? Why don't you trust science? Well, maybe it's got something to do with all these backroom deals, the lack of accountability, the refusal to take any responsibility for the product, and also not taking any questions from elected representatives or the media. Things of that nature is maybe why we don't trust Big Pharma.

Maybe if you do some of those things, the public will trust you more. Now, countries with less bargaining power than the EU or the US, even more egregious exchanges took place. This headline tells it all. Held to ransom, Pfizer plays hardball in COVID-19 vaccine negotiations

with Latin American countries. Quote, Pfizer has been accused of bullying Latin American governments during negotiations to acquire its COVID-19 vaccine, and the company has asked some countries to put up sovereign assets, such as embassy buildings and military bases, as a guarantee against the cost of any future legal cases, according to an investigation by the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. For the sake of fair reporting, I must also add that Pfizer declined to comment on the allegations about its demands in the negotiations, citing, quote, privacy and confidentiality. Mob-like behavior demanding embassies and military bases. That's a mighty fun country you got there.

Be a real shame if something were to happen to it. Richer and more powerful than ever, underpinned by its influence networks, the pharmaceutical industry stands unchallenged in its ability to dictate government health policies. The industry's power is comparable to that of a state. The pharmaceutical industry is so rich and so powerful, its lobbying affects Congress.

Unchallenged in its ability to dictate government health policies. So rich that their power is comparable to that of a sovereign state. They have too much power. In the U.S., they own Congress, they own the media, and they want to own you. If this is something that you don't want, it's time to prioritize this issue. One common critique that I get all the time is that I spend too much time identifying the problem, but not enough on the solution. Well, I think here's the first step to solving this problem. No more voting for people who take

big pharma money. Automatic disqualification. I mean, how could they possibly do a good job representing you and I if their boss is big pharma? Not possible. These companies, they're designed to maximize profit. And the people who work within that ecosystem will ensure that it happens. So we can wax poetic all day long about taking on the greed of big pharma, as many presidents and members of Congress have done over the years, but all of that will remain mostly immoral posturing, purely theoretical, until we act to remove the blatant conflict of interest that pervades our government and big business. That is all for me this time. I hope you

found today's segment about just how powerful big pharma is to be helpful. I make a ton more videos like this breaking down these kinds of topics on my YouTube channel, 5149 with James Lee. I would encourage you to check it out and subscribe. Link will be in the description below. Of course, keep on tuning into Breaking Points and thank you so much for your time today. Hi, I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor-in-chief of The Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, and this is the art of class war on Breaking Points.

It's been nearly two weeks since the catastrophic derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in Northeast Ohio thrust the residents of East Palestine and the surrounding area into a non-stop waking nightmare. As we all know by now, and as Breaking Points has reported, the freight locomotive derailed on February 3rd, prompting an emergency response that involved the immediate evacuation of the town and the controlled release and burning of the toxic substance vinyl chloride, which was being carried in five of the vinyl chloride may have been necessary to prevent the cars containing the substance from exploding, the fallout appears to be something straight out of a horror movie. With the controlled burning spewing hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the air,

a massive black death cloud covering the region, home-recorded videos of dead animals and fish throughout the area, and the Environmental Protection Agency reporting that more toxic chemicals on the derailed train have leaked out and been detected in the soil and surrounding waterways. It's going to take weeks, months, if not years to fully appraise the damage of this train derailment on the population, on the rail workers and on the first responders and on the surrounding environment. But I suspect, and I think we are all right to suspect that we are watching in real time the unfolding of a disaster that our generation and future generations will know by name. But while corporate spokespeople and many in the media try to paint this tragedy as some freak accident, we know better. We know better because we have been listening to railroad workers. For over a year now on Breaking Points, on The Real News Network,

for my podcast, Working People, I have spoken in depth with railroad worker after railroad worker who have all been warning that Wall Street's takeover of the rail industry has been destroying the supply chain for the sake of record profits, driving record numbers of workers out of the industry and driving the workers who remain into the ground, cutting corners and cutting operating costs every chance they get year after year, while stock buybacks, executive salaries, and shareholder dividends continue to skyrocket. Workers have been saying to anyone who will listen that all of these systemic issues, the same issues that rail companies, President Joe Biden, and Congress

refused to address during the high-stakes contract negotiations that came to a head last year, have put all of us at risk of more accidents, more derailments, more disasters. In fact, we're going to play a clip for you now from an interview that I published on my podcast, Working People, back in July of last year, where I spoke with Jay, a longtime train dispatcher and a qualified conductor who was train carrying toxic substances derails near a populous town. And the parallels between what he described to me back in July and what we are watching unfold in East Palestine now are like X-Files level creepy. Take a listen. Let me put together a scenario for everybody who's listening. Let's talk about these train tracks that run through your town. There's people that are running that train, people that have families just like you do, people that have kids, people that have wives and husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, aunts and uncles, so on and so forth.

And we're going to go to the local ball field in town we're going to take our little league game out there we got you know parents everywhere everybody's cheering and clapping yelling and hollering go go go you know do it you know run run the whole nine yards this is this is america right and here comes the train all right and it's just good you just expect expected to pass through town like it normally does. You hear the clang of the crossing bells, all of that. And then all of a sudden, you hear this catastrophic metal twisting sound, just this horrible sound of wreckage that you've never heard before. And the train has derailed.

We've piled up 50 or 60 cars. And unbeknownst to anybody, we've punched a hole in a chlorine car. We don't know it yet, but we've punched a hole in a chlorine car. So as a train dispatcher, I'm the guy in the office. I'm going to be one of your first responders if something like that happens. I'm the guy that's going to orchestrate the evacuation. I'm the guy that's going to do all of the hazmat stuff. I'm the one that's going to orchestrate the evacuation. I'm the guy that's going to do all of the hazmat stuff. You know, I'm the one that's going to be the people that's going to mobilize the response to get you out of there. But there's one thing I need. I'm 700 miles away in an office in another state. I can't tell that that train's derailed. All I know is PTC puts up a thing on my screen

and says, undesired emergency breakout location. I'm like, all right, okay, that happens all the time. More often than not, there's not a derailment. But guess what? Today there is. Now, I don't know that. So the crew calls me and says, hey, dispatcher, we've got the trains in emergency, and we didn't like what we felt back there. We think something's wrong.

I say, okay, put the conductor underground and send him for a walk. So he gets underground, and within a few minutes, he calls me on the radio and says, Dispatcher, we got a hell of a mess back here, and I smell chlorine. And I'm like, okay, we're going to mobilize the response. Now, we got this little league game just a mile from the track to this field, and he tells me he smells chlorine. So I'm like, tell me on your wheel report on the paperwork that you have in front of you what is the last car that you can see that you think is

upright and on the track he gives me a number and i start looking at the file on my end and i said oh my god we've got 10 chlorine cars in there anhydrous ammonia car four loads of propane and something else now the railroads come in and they say, we're going to put single man crews in because, you know, PTC is going to prevent that. Well, guess what? That derailment was a result of a broken rail, which PTC won't prevent, or a broken wheel that disintegrated because the railroads have abolished all of the mechanical inspectors that used to check train car wheels before they were permitted to leave the terminal. And we're going to frame

this as what could happen. And people, if you're listening, listen to what I'm saying to you. This is your home. This is your town. These are your kids, your people, your friends, your family, people you care about. You have a vested interest in this, whether you realize it or not. If you haven't already, I highly, highly recommend that you listen to the multiple full podcast episodes that I got to record with Jay on Working People, along with all the other interviews with rail workers that I recorded and published on my podcast at The Real News and here on Breaking Points. Because you will hear for yourself from people who actually know this industry inside and out how and why the nightmare in East Palestine was so depressingly predictable. To say nothing of the absurd number of trains that are derailing around

the country practically every week. I was regrettably unable to make it down to the Breaking Point studio this week to record this interview, but for our latest installment, let me start that again. I was regrettably unable to make it down to the Breaking Point studio this week, but for our latest installment of The Art of Class War, I recorded the following interview with Jay on Monday, February 13th, to get an insider's perspective on the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, the fallout from this catastrophic derailment, and the larger Wall Street-led changes to the industry that have put all of us at risk and made catastrophes like this more and more likely. Well, Jay, thank you so much for joining us today on Breaking Points, man. I really, really appreciate it. Obviously, I wish that we were reconnecting under less horrifying circumstances, but this is the situation that we're in, and I'm very grateful to you for taking

the time to chat with us today. I really appreciate it, man. Absolutely, Max. It's good to be back. And I'm honored to be, of course, with you and then to be on Breaking Points on top of it. I'm hopeful that we're able to put some perspective on this for some people and, you know, give them the industry insider view of what we see versus what they see, what the news media says versus what, you know, the boots on the ground are seeing every day. And we have quite a bit to talk about, actually. So I'm excited for that. Yeah. So we got a lot to unpack.

And I know normally you and I, when we record podcasts, we got one, two, even three hours to dig into that. So we're going to try to condense this for the great Breaking Points viewers and listeners listeners, as much as we can squeeze as much as we can in the next 20 or 25 minutes. But as you said, you know, like we, we recorded, um, you know, multiple podcasts over the course of the past year, while all the drama was unfolding during the high stakes contract negotiations between the Class 1 freight rail carriers, i.e. the companies, and the 12 unions representing over 115,000 workers on the nation's freight rail system. And we talked a lot, you know, about the sort of systemic issues that workers were really

kind of taking issue with during the contract negotiations, the things that the rail companies have been doing to turn a once good job into a miserable experience, to increase, in fact, the likelihood of derailments and even catastrophic derailments like the ones that we're seeing right now. And so I wanted to kind of pick up on what you said, because I agree with you, like, you know, there has been, you know, sustained coverage on this, including here on Breaking Points and great reporting partners like The Lever. But I do feel like there has been, you know, overall a lack of worker voices like yours with all your accrued years of experience and expertise. And as you mentioned in the clip that I played during the intro, you know, you're the guy in

the dispatch office who's like responding to these calls that I know you hope you never get. But if and when a disaster, an emergency like this happens, you know, you're the guy on the horn talking to the folks on the train coordinating the emergency response. You know, and I know that it's just a nightmare scenario. But, yeah, I wanted to give people access to your perspective and your expertise and ask if you just if you could just sort of walk us through this, you know this horrific situation in East Palestine with the Norfolk Southern Trail train derailment. What are you seeing when you review the facts that we know as of yet about what led to this catastrophe, what it looks like, and what this kind of thing looks like on the ground for the people like yourself,

like the first responders who are involved. And the last thing I'll say, just because I want to give a very clear disclaimer up front, I'm not going to ask Jay to, you know, speculate on things that we don't currently know. There's a lot of information that's going to trickle out about this situation, what caused it, how bad the fallout is. There's going to be stuff we don't know for weeks, months, or even years right now. So I don't want to ask you to, you know, I don't want to put you in an awkward position or talk about anything that's going to get you in trouble. But just with all of that knowledge and experience that you have,

tell us what you're seeing when you look at the situation in East Palestine. Well, one thing I think about, Max, when I look at the situation in East Palestine? Well, one thing I think about, Max, when I look at a situation like this is first and foremost, my thoughts and my heart goes out to the people that are involved. Sometimes it's easy to lose track of the fact that there's a train crew on that train. There's an engineer and a conductor, at least currently. We know in this particular case that it was a conductor trainee was also aboard. We know the townsfolk, you know, that lived there all their lives. I mean, some of these people, they've built their homes there, they've raised their families there. And for something like this to happen in your backyard is just terrifying. It would be, I mean, I can't even liken it to anything because I hope and pray I never experience it. But for them, I feel badly

that they've been through this. And as they return home, you know, their homes are smelling like it to anything because I hope and pray I never experience it. But for them, I feel badly that they've been through this. And as they return home, you know, their homes are smelling like smoke. I mean, nasty things. It's gross. And you're wondering how you're going to pay for that. Who's going to address it? But when we say, you know, what does this look like on the ground to an employee? I have to think to myself, what about the last year? So if we go back over the past year, we saw the union issues with the potential strike looming. We saw on April 26th and April 27th, we saw a STB hearing that was held where the Surface Transportation Board grilled railroad executives relentlessly about their cuts to the workforce, their reductions in staff by 30-some percent.

And we have to consider where those reductions have been made. They've been made in maintenance of way. They've been made to the car department. They've been made to critical staff that make sure that stuff like this doesn't happen. And keep in mind, the goal of any situation, any industry you're in, it doesn't matter what it is, you want to move the product, you want to move it safely, and you want to move it quickly. That's the case where you make the most money, right? So every business is a business to make money. But when I think about this,

I think about the historic cuts that the railroads have been presently and previously making. And what's the goal there? It's to appease Wall Street. Wall Street are the ones pulling the strings. And if we look back over the last, say, roughly 10 years across the rail industry as a whole, you may actually remember Matt Burkhart gave testimony in front of the Surface Transportation Board on April 26th. He's a former manager, a high-level manager for BNSF, currently a yardmaster and general chairman for the local union. He talked about cars falling off of a bridge onto a well-known hiking trail. He talked about train lengths. They're too big.

They don't fit anywhere. So when we think about this, over the past 10 years, let's rewind back to, say, 2010 to 2014, it was nearly unprecedented to hear of the number of mainline derailments that we're hearing of now. We had them. We had Castleton, North Dakota with the oil trains. There were a few of those. We had Lock McGantic, excuse me, which was catastrophic. I mean, you want to talk about hell coming to earth. It did in Lock McGantic. And we have to consider, as we've continued down that path, we didn't see this kind of stuff happen very often.

Trains stayed on the tracks. Everything was fine. And then Hunter Harrison comes around. So 2018, and all of a sudden we see psr well psr is all about cut cut cut profits first you know shareholder value is and i'm air quoting you can't see me but i'm air quoting i can i can i can hear the air quotes right that's like and this is this is precision scheduled railroading. Like this is the industry name like for all these kinds of changes that Jay is describing. Yes. And you have to look at that and look at it very objectively.

Be very careful about what you think of it. But let's be honest. Barnum and Bailey ran a better circus with fewer clowns. They should have left it up to them. But when we think about those STB hearings, we hear the railroader, the railroads being scolded and scorned by the STB. And why were they scolded and scorned? You know, car inspectors serve as a preventative control. That's the position that they take. We used to have people all over the company that were railroad employees. They weren't contract workers. They were employed by the railroad directly. They were at every yard. And they would be on top of, underneath, in between, inside, to the left, to the right. I mean, they'd crawl all over these cars. And they would look for defects, bad bearings, safety appliances that were loose or broken, sharp wheel flanges, broken wheels, all of these types of things which could cause a derailment.

And back in the day, when workers felt valued by their corporations, that played a major role in discretionary effort. So we know that that's a critical factor in anything is discretionary effort. Employers need it. They can't require it, and they have no way to measure it. So in recent years, from 2018 on, when this PSR thing came about, what did we do? We started attacking our workforce as an industry. The railroad companies started attacking them.

We don't need you. We have record profits. We're going to cut this. We're going to cut that. Your job's going with it. Oh, by the way, yeah, Friday, you don't need to show up to work. We don't need you. We have record profits. We're going to cut this. We're going to cut that. Your job's going with it. Oh, by the way, yeah. Friday, you don't need to show up to work because you don't have a job anymore. And they've abolished this in the mechanical department, diesel shops, all of it. So let's think about this train that's racing along the track, right?

There are wayside detectors out there. Every railroad has them. The spacing between them varies property to property, but a wayside detector is a detective control. So a car inspector is preventative, i.e. you go to the dentist to get your teeth cleaned twice a year as a preventative measure to prevent cavities, gingivitis, et cetera, right? Well, that's the role of the car inspector to prevent the accident from happening in the first place. He or she looks at the bearing and says, I don't like the way that bearing looks. I'm going to shop this car. I don't like the way that wheel looks. I think we've got an issue here. We're going to shop this car. We're going to put everything, we're going to send them to the shop for inspection for further scrutiny to see if they're safe for the rails. And if they're not, we're going to go ahead and repair them. Now, when we look at the difference on detective control, so we're going to kind of move over from what does it look like on the ground. We talked about the cuts. We talked about what the railroads are doing.

We referred to the STB hearings. I would encourage you, if you've not seen it, guys, go watch them. There's some pretty heated testimony in there that will really give you a lot of perspective. So I would encourage you to do that. And just to add one more footnote there, I remember screaming about this, I think on a previous Breaking Points segment, that Surface Transportation Board, Martin Oberman said that the estimated that the rail carriers have spent, if I recall correctly, it's around $40 billion more on stock buybacks than on rail maintenance in like the past 10 years, right? So like the money to maintain these tracks and these cars and to ensure all that kind of quality and safety, the quality

assurance and safety measures that need to be put in place so that we don't see horrific, catastrophic derailments like the one we're watching in East Palestine. Those are like an afterthought compared to stuffing the pockets of Wall Street investors and rail executives. Absolutely. I mean, look at what we've seen. Look at the derailments that didn't happen versus the ones that are happening, primarily in the last four years. I mean, they've been piled up on a horseshoe curve multiple times. That's a national landmark. It's recorded 24-7 and streamed to the internet by virtual railfan. You can watch trains all day long. We watched them pile them up. Oops. good that's a bad thing we don't like that right

so the podcast that we did back in july was eerily similar i mean i i laid out an event very similar to this in this particular case it was a single man crew and it was chlorine now vinyl chloride which is what we know was spilled in this accident, if it happens to ignite, is probably the best case scenario. The best case of the worst cases. And why do I say that? One, you can't see it if it doesn't burn. So you're going to have a hard time detecting if there's anything wrong until you're exposed. And that's where the danger really comes in, because you have limited time to be exposed to it before it does serious damage.

So looking at the situation, the train derailed just outside of town. Thankfully, had it been in town and burst into flames like that, there would have likely been collateral damage in the form of other homes and buildings being set ablaze by the radiant heat from that fire. Then we have to look at the fact, okay, it was close enough to a populated area that the police are going to notify the railroad right away. There's infrastructure to get there. So fire departments from three states responded. That's all well and good. Now we get out there and it's four degrees and the pump trucks freeze up. Uh-oh. Now we have an even bigger problem. So we literally had a perfect disaster here.

Thankfully, there was no loss of life. But if we move on to the mainstream media question, you know, like the narrative is that there's a technical failure. And, you know, why were railroaders like myself and others predicting this? Well, the technical failure, the NTSB made note of some video that they had received of what they believe was this particular train passing through New Watertown, Ohio, about 13 miles before the derailment is my understanding. With an obvious situation developing, there's fire surrounding what appears to be the bearing in the car. It's not the best video quality and it's dark, so you can't really zoom in and see that. But based on my experience, it looks to me like we have a bearing issue that's going on there. So a real car bearing

is a roller bearing. Now it's, it's no longer a pile of breezy rag stuffed in the end of an axle. It's actually a roller bearing and that's a sealed bearing with grease and stuff in it. And periodically they go bad. And when they do, this is where your wayside detectors come in. So you fire all your car inspectors, you hire contractors in, right? And we have to think about knowledge versus wisdom. So you get rid of all your experienced people. You're losing 20 year men and women walking out the door saying, I'm done. I can't do this anymore. And you bring these new people in. Well, knowledge versus wisdom is what? Knowledge means you possess knowledge about a subject. Wisdom means you have perspective

on a subject. So the 20-year person walking out the door takes the perspective with them. The new person coming in, sure, they're, quote, qualified, end air quote, but they lack the perspective. So when you think about what the detector does, you know, you bring these new car inspectors and they look at something and I don't think anything's wrong with it. Send it out on the railroad, the trains whizzing by the detector and it says, okay, you know, all the bearings on the train primarily are within say 20 degrees of ambient air temperature, whatever that is. And then boom, one bearing goes over top and that one's 103 degrees above. That's going to initiate a flag. At least it should. Now, what are we going to do with that

information? We take this information then, which is now intelligible information, and we present it to a human being. All right. What does the human being do? We now look at this from a intelligent perspective and we say, what do we think we have here? Is this something that requires action? In this case, the answer would be yes. All the other buildings are within 40 degrees of each other. We have one here that's popping a flag on us for 103 degrees above ambient. So we're going to stop the train and inspect it. Well, that's all well and good, but we've cut everybody. So all of these detectors all across the railroad could potentially be sending data into one person. And you have to

wait for one person to read that. Well, if the train's traveling at 60 miles an hour, they're doing a mile a minute. If it takes them 18 minutes to get to that particular message, that train's going 18 miles. So when you think about detective controls, let's think of some examples in history where detective controls were used. So let's go back to 1912. We're going to think about the Titanic. Who doesn't know the story of the Titanic, right? Like there's nobody that doesn't know that. So Captain Smith was interviewed prior to the maiden voyage of the Titanic. And he was asked what he thought about an unsinkable ship and why they didn't have enough lifeboats for everybody. And his answer was something to the effect of maritime technology had advanced to the point where they didn't see any accident being possible that could result in a ship foundering prior to the arrival of another ship to take everybody off. So we don't have radar at the time. We don't have 24-hour

man radios at the time. All of the stuff we know today, much of it came as a result of what happened there. So we have two men in a crow's nest, way above the deck, looking out in front of the ship, right? That's their job. They are now serving as a detective control. So here goes the Titanic careening across the ocean, all right? We're at almost full steam. The engines are down there pounding away. The furnaces are blazing hot, black smoke pouring out of the stacks. And Titanic sails farther south than she normally would. Well, unfortunately, in 1912, we have an ocean that's as still as a mill pond, as they say. We have an unusually cold Lab like what happened in Graniteville and Poulsboro, New Jersey. The ship sails into this cold water, and what does it do? The cold water chills the atmosphere for tens, if not several hundred feet above the surface

of the ocean. So in so doing, we create a temperature inversion. The temperature inversion pulls the horizon up and cloaks the iceberg in blackness. There's no stars. There's nothing. You can't see it. There's no silhouette anymore because your horizon is curled up due to that temperature. So the crow's nest, these two guys are up there looking. They can't see anything. Something that should be visible for 10 miles is now not visible except for a few thousand yards potentially. And out of the blackness as the ship steams forward comes this black mass of ice. They're horrified. They ring the bell three times. They pick up the phone and they call the bridge. What are they doing? They have no steering wheel and they have no engine telegraph. They are going to provide intelligible information to the crew on

the bridge, which will then be acted upon. We know how the story ended. They tried to turn, they tried to reverse, it didn't happen. Titanic hit the iceberg and 1500 plus lives were lost. So we think about detective controls across the railroad. We think about the crow's nest example I just gave. If you look at what you do in this respect, it takes a human to relay information, which goes to another human that then ideally results in an action that hopefully prevents what we saw. So it's been said by the NTSB that moments before the derailment, another wayside detector alerted for a critical alarm. So again, our detective control says, hey, I see something critical, stop the train. And it sounds like they didn't have time. This will all come out in the investigation. It'll be weeks for the preliminary report and

months for the final report. Excuse me. But when you think about it, communication is both the root cause and the solution to most of our problems. So if you look at the industry as a whole, as we reduce people and we reduce interactions of people who possess wisdom versus knowledge, what do we do to ourselves? We're breaking down the preventative control measures and we're trying to rely on detective control measures to prevent what should have otherwise been found by human being um what does that say i mean where are we as a country when we're allowing corporations to dictate to the regulatory bodies what they will and won't do you know the surface transport what what happens well apparently this is what fucking happens right so pardon my french everybody but like you guys know like that

i my colleague mel buehr at the real news like we've been covering the crisis the long brewing crisis on the nation's railroad system for over a year now, right? And I've been talking endlessly and publishing, you know, hours and hours of interviews with rail workers like Jay, like Matt Parker, like Marilee Taylor, like Michael Paul Lindsay, right? I mean, like all these folks with so much knowledge that I am begging you to listen to because we're going to keep ending up in situations like this, which is what workers like Jay and others have been telling me, right? Because I think like that, that's the part where I'm really losing my mind here, man. And I know I've got to let you go in a second. So just to kind of like round this thought out, you know, because I

think there's a real like, you know, there's a really sad metaphor here in the way that we're talking about East Palestine and the Norfolk Southern derailment that we're watching unfold and the larger kind of crisis that we were reporting on all last year while the contract negotiations between the rail carriers and the unions representing rail workers were unfolding. Biden's presidential emergency board got involved, yada, yada, yada. When I watch the mainstream media coverage of the derailment in East Palestine and the fallout of it, like you said, they tend to focus on a technical failure.

Of course, there are more facets to that story that we will know in the weeks and months that come after this. I know that Breaking Points and The Lever have both reported that they have linked this back to, say, the fact that Norfolk Southern and other rail carriers successfully lobbied the Trump government and successfully like pushed the Obama government to back down. But they essentially like, you know, got, you know, safety regulations wiped off the ledger when they were the government was pushing for these companies to implement electric braking systems. The current speculation is that if those braking systems were installed, maybe this derailment wouldn't have been as bad as it was. Again, we don't necessarily know that right now, but it is an important part of this story.

But what I'm pointing to is what Jay just really described, right, is that when we talk about the derailment in East Palestine right now, we talk about the fact that this train carrying like these incredibly hazardous substances, mainly vinyl chloride, that as you mentioned is very flammable, they punctured, the emergency response team punctured those rail cars. They emptied that toxic or hazardous substance into like a trench. They lit it on fire, hence the massive fireball that we've all seen videos and pictures of. Hence, you know, like all the crap spewing into the air from that, yada, yada, yada. And obviously that's a horrifying image. And so when folks see that, like myself, they think, well, like that's not good. But the governor in Ohio, the mainstream media, you know, the rail carriers themselves are saying, yeah, but this was necessary. This was like the best of the worst scenarios, because if we didn't release that, you know, vinyl chloride, if we didn't burn it off, then those cars could have exploded. That would have been a worse option.

There would have been shrapnel going all over the place. Like, I get Congress, you know, just forcing rail workers like yourself to accept a contract near the end of last year, instead of allowing workers to go on strike, instead of allowing the negotiations to continue. And so the media was celebrating this as like, oh, we averted a catastrophe, right? If a rail strike or a lockout happened, Christmas would have been canceled. It would have been total chaos, would have cost the U.S. economy $2 billion a day, yada, yada, yada. So we talk about and we pat ourselves on the back

for averting like the immediate catastrophe. And then we do nothing to address the underlying issues that are making catastrophes like this more likely. And that, in fact, they are happening all around us. Like Norfolk Southern itself, this particular company, had like two train derailments like the very week that Biden and Congress forced workers to accept a contract back in November, early December. Right. I mean, like these derailments, as Jay described in that first podcast to me, like they're happening all over the place. Like, thankfully, we haven't had one that's this catastrophic like of late. But here it is. And yet, you know, what are these companies going to learn? What are they going to do? What incentive is there for them to do anything different after scab Joe Biden and Congress just gave them everything that they want and crushed workers back into subservience? What did we see? We saw these companies giving themselves more stock buybacks, paying out more shareholder dividends, making more profits. You know, like they're going to like again, I feel like I'm losing my mind here, Jay.

Max, you're 100% right. It's maddening. It's sickening. If you work in the industry, one thing I think about when I work with all of my men and women in the field is my success is a direct result of the relationships that I have with these people, whether they're in maintenance of way, whether they're training engine crews, they trust me. There's a degree of emotional intelligence there that I possess when I speak to those guys. They know when I'm happy, when I'm upset. I mean, I wear my emotions on my sleeve. They can sense it. They can feel it. It's palpable,

you know? So if you, why have other railroaders been talking about this? Well, we're in it every day. When I walk in the office, I don't expect this to happen. I don't want it to happen. I don't want to deal with it. I don't hit a vehicle at a crossing that has the potential to involve casualties or fatalities. Or two, we have a derailment. It's generally the only two times I'm going to get a 911 tone or maybe a medical emergency, which could happen. So we've been talking about this stuff in the industry for quite some time. And people are looking at these cars saying they don't belong out here. How did this damn thing get here? Look at this. Like it doesn't, the wheels are in bad shape. The brakes are, the brake pads are worn, brake shoes are worn down, you know, beyond specification. We've got torn metal and broken safety appliances on these super trains. You have to consider the forces in the train. Think about the power a locomotive can put down damn near 200 000 pounds of tractive effort and your train is 15 000 feet long

i mean you're in one town with the engines and your ascenders in the next town over and here you go 50 some miles an hour and you're trying to keep track of all of this you've got these slow orders and these speed restrictions and you've got the ptc screen screaming in your face and trip optimizer screaming in your face and then you have a new conductor that has no idea what's going on um because the training is so bad and all of this is culminating to literally create the perfect storm and you have to consider other chemicals. Not every chemical that's dangerous is in liquid form. There's chemicals out there, for example, that are hauled in covered hoppers.

And this is where the conductor is so critical because he or she possesses that paperwork to give to first responders. There's certain chemicals, for example, like sodium hydride, which reacts explosively with water. There's potassium metals, which forms hydrogen gas. Well, hydrogen gas is explosive. So if you have a situation where a real accident happens and you end up with a fire and you have cars close by that contain some of these chemicals like potassium hydride, which also releases hydrogen gas, you could end up with a real situation if you take fire hoses out there and start

spraying. I mean, now you get a really big fire. Not only do you have the existing fire, but you spray this powdered substance with water and kaboom, it goes up. You got a really big problem. So as these cuts continue to happen, as record profits continue to be the focus, what do you do to people's mentality when you tell them they're no longer valued? We don't need you. Technology is going to replace you. We don't need your job. You're not important.

Nothing you do is of value. You don't contribute to company profits, blah, blah, blah. What does that do to somebody? At what point? I mean, that's like a mind warp. You can't make you do it and they can't measure it. But if you're going down there and you feel valued, you're going to be a lot more diligent. You're going to look at things with a much more focused eye and you're going to say, I don't like that. I'm going to do something about it. But if you don't feel valued, you're just, okay, good enough. Down she goes, sign off the paper good yep okay it'll make it blah blah and this is human nature this is psychology 101 i mean if we talk to a psychologist and we were to dive into that they would tell you how the human psyche works when people tell you

this stuff this is why i say management possesses a total lack of emotional intelligence you can't tell people that they're not valued abolish their their jobs, and then ask them to help you. Because you know what you're going to get. It's a big old fat middle finger. And unfortunately, look where we are. This is the saddest part about the whole thing. I hope it changes. The STB hasn't done anything.

The FRA hasn't done anything. Now, we haven't heard about the two-man crew ruling yet. So maybe this will change their opinion a little bit. Keep in mind, most of the time, the only time you're going to hear from this, it's number one, it's political posturing. So it looks good and it feels good. It's all touchy-feely. Okay, they're doing something because we saw them talk. But are you actually going to do something? Are you going to put your money where your mouth is and say, that's enough? That's enough. This jeopardy is going to stop. You make plenty of damn money. We're real in the end right here. We're going to slap some regulations on you and you're going to stop this madness. You're going to start running more reasonable trains. You're going to inspect

them properly. I had a contract car inspector come out and put a portable derail in the middle of a mainline interlocking. And I didn't know it was there. It could have derailed a train purposefully because that's the job of that device. But you can't do that. You cannot come out and put that kind of stuff there. And this is where you go back to knowledge versus wisdom. I know what the derail is for, but I don't know where to put it.

God bless. I digress. Yeah. Well, I mean, again, I could talk to you for hours, man. And I hope that, you know, in some, you know, that we've been able to enlighten folks a little bit more on how we got to this situation in East Palestine, Ohio, right? Again, there's going to be a lot about this derailment. There's going to be a lot about the emergency response, the evacuation. There's going to be a lot about the residual health and environmental effects of that response that, sadly, we're not going to know for, you know, a while. But obviously, we have to stay vigilant. We have to keep paying attention to this. We have to read those reports, you know, like from the, you know, Surface Transportation Board, from the National Transportation Safety

Board. You know, like we need to follow up on this and not just let companies like Norfolk Southern, you know, say, oh, our bad. Sorry, you know, won't happen again. While they literally do nothing to address the root causes that are putting all of us at hazard. Right. And that's what I just really want to drive home for folks. I know this segment went long. I hope it was useful for you. But I really hope that what Jay said resonates because we need to understand that all the stuff we were screaming about last year, you know, all the stuff that Biden's presidential

emergency board and that the forced contract that Congress made workers accept at the end of last year, none of that addressed these core issues that Jay and other railroad workers have been talking about. It does not address the fact that the rail companies have been slashing their workforce year after year after year, piling more work onto fewer workers, making the trains longer and heavier, more unwieldy, while reducing the crew sizes down to two. And they want to get it down to one person on those trains. Imagine how much worse this catastrophe in East Palestine would have been if the railroads had their way and had just one person on that train when it

derailed, right? And you can't just have a situation like that. You can't just have a situation where Wall Street is literally sucking all of the resources out of this industry instead of investing in its workforce, instead of investing in preventative safety measures industry instead of investing in its workforce, instead of investing in preventative safety measures, instead of investing in track maintenance, let alone, you know, like track electrification and other things like that. You can't just keep going in this direction where the only thing we are doing is destroying one of the nation's like vital supply chains for the sake of Wall Street profits, and driving workers into the ground, making them feel unappreciated, treating them like crap, causing them to flee the industry in record numbers,

you are going to end up with more situations like this. So we have to do something. We have to listen to workers like Jay. I beg of you guys. I know you know I'm frustrated because I spent all year doing this. Now imagine if you've been working on the rails for decades like Jay, I beg of you guys. I know you know I'm frustrated because I spent all year doing this. Now imagine if you've been working on the rails for decades like Jay has, how frustrating this must be. So please stay vigilant, listen to workers, lift up voices of workers like Jay. And thank you so much for watching this segment with Breaking Points. And Jay,

longtime trained dispatcher, trained as a locomotive engineer. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today, man. I really appreciate it. Absolutely, Max. It's great to be with you. And thank you everybody for listening. I hope this, I hope this really sinks in and hits home with you. You know, get out there, get behind this cause and do something. It's your life. It's your town. It's your home. You decide. Thank you for watching this segment with Breaking Points. And be sure to subscribe to my news outlet, The Real News, with links in the show description. See you soon for the next edition of The Art of Class War. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each husband.

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