Chapo Trap House - BONUS: Ohio Toxic Train Disaster feat. David Sirota

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

Will talks to David Sirota of The Lever about the disastrous train derailment and toxic event in East Palestine, Ohio. They discuss national train policy, corporate responsibility, erosion of railway labor and safety protections, and of course, Pete Buttigieg’s Transportation department. Follow David's work at The Lever: https://www.levernews.com/

All right. Joining me now for a bonus chapeau interview is David Sarota of The Lever. David, I wanted to have you on to obviously talk about the disastrous train derailment in an ongoing airborne toxic event in East Palestine, Ohio. But it just so as it happens, there was another train derailment yesterday in Houston, also of a train transporting hazardous chemicals. This one killed the worker, the driver of this train. So I guess now I'm having you want to talk about the ongoing state of train derailments in America. Going back to the East Palestine, Ohio one, because it really does seem to be dropped out of the news or at least not receiving the coverage that this warrants. David, what do we know so far about what

happened and the scale of this disaster? And I'm thinking particularly to like the watershed of the entire Ohio Valley. Well, what we know is that chemicals, various chemicals that are toxic leaked into various cricks and streams around this watershed. It's still unclear what the implications of that will be in terms of whether those chemicals will wash out into the larger Ohio River and into the Mississippi River or whether they will kind of get permanently into the groundwater. We know that there are some areas that are under, there have been some boil water advisories and the like, but I think a lot is unknown. Certainly what we know is that vinyl chloride, which is one of the main chemicals at the center of this is a highly toxic chemical that

can cause, it's a carcinogen, a very kind of a very serious carcinogen. And we also know there have been widespread reports of animals and the like getting sick in the area. But I think we don't really know. And I think the EPA, we do know that the EPA has told the company Norfolk Southern that it should prepare to face some kind of liability for this disaster. But of course, I think that goes back to a question of, well, how did this disaster, what were the conditions created for the disaster like this to happen? I think Norfolk Southern is a rail giant that's used to not really having to be held liable in any kind of material way, in any kind of serious way when these things happen, serious enough to deter it from engaging in the kinds of

decisions, business decisions that it made, whether it's understaffing the railway, whether it's not investing in the kinds of braking systems that experts have said are necessary, that they're essentially banking on the idea that they can blow up a town, pollute a whole area, and not really have to have to pay very much. And they know that they rely on the idea that their shareholders are going to reward them for making the kinds of cuts that they've made. And you brought up Norfolk Southern. And in addition to the, as you said, as yet unknown scale of this disaster, this is doubly infuriating because Norfolk Southern is one of the main rail companies that the Biden administration broke the rail workers strike for just the other month.

And I would encourage people to go back and listen to the interview I did just a little while ago with Ross Gruders and Devin Mance of Railroad Workers United and BMW ED Teamsters, because they were talking about, this is an issue about safety, not just for the people who work on rail roads, but for basically any town that doesn't want several thousand tons of hydrogen chloride dumped into their water supply. How would you connect this to what the railroad workers were asking for a couple months ago and a disaster like this, which comes directly from these rail companies being allowed to skirt safety regulations and operate trains that are dangerously understaffed? So I think it's all part of one larger story. And the story is what the rail companies want,

the rail companies have been given by the government. And I think it's both a regulatory story and it's a story about the workers. So on the regulatory side, the story of the conditions that existed in the lead up to this disaster are as such. In 2014-2015, the Obama administration after a series of rail disasters, one by the way, including the same chemical at issue, vinyl chloride at issue in Ohio, the Obama administration felt the need, felt the pressure to propose a rail safety rule. It was primarily focused on oil trains, crude oil trains. There had also been some oil spills from transporting crude. And the Obama administration put out a call when they were making the rule. They said, you know, give us comments, the public, give us

comments about what kind of rule that you want. And one of the commenters was the National Transportation Safety Board, which is the government agency that independently investigates accidents. And that agency said to the Obama administration, whatever rule you come up with over hazardous material trains should be broad enough to cover a broad scope of toxic chemicals, including what's known as class two chemicals like vinyl chloride. In other words, it shouldn't just be oil trains. It should be trains that carry all sorts of toxic chemicals. And ultimately, the chemical lobby lobbied against that broadening and the Obama administration sided with that lobby and limited the definition of what is a high hazard flammable train to the point where

this train that you saw, if you've seen video of this giant fireball, a mushroom cloud and like hundred foot flames, that train was not classified as a high hazard flammable train and subjected to the tougher rules. So that's one part of the regulatory story. Subsequent to that, the one thing that did, one of the things that did survive in the Obama rule was a mandate that at least the oil trains use what's known as ECP brakes, these more tech and better technological brakes, an upgrade from the Civil War era braking system. One regulator, one former regulator told us that ECP brakes would have made a difference in this Ohio disaster. That part of the rule did survive, although it was only applied to oil trains. But the point of that was to try to get the

industry to embrace these brakes industry wide. And Donald Trump, when he came into office, he almost immediately repealed that. So you had the regulatory situation where this train wasn't classified as a high hazard flammable train, did not have these brakes on them. And then additionally, you had the government moving in to force a contract on workers, workers who were striking in part because of the working conditions that they said were not only not economically fair, but we're not creating the conditions to make effective maintenance and safety safety situations on the rails. So again, I think the through line is that the rail companies have gone to the government repeatedly and said, give us regulatory environments that do not mean that

we have to invest adequately in safety and help us even break a strike that is in part about workers saying that they don't have the working conditions to keep the railways safe. So the rail lobby has won over and over again. And I want to make one more point on this because I think it's so important. You know, in an industry, in another industry where consumers could choose a different choice, you could make the argument that, okay, look, regulators aren't making the right decisions, you know, the government's not helping the workers. But you know, the customers can at least punish the company if you don't want to eat an unsafe product or an unsafe food or use an unsafe product. At least the deterrent is that the customers, the public can deter the company with some

sort of accountability and punishment. But when it comes to a monopoly, like a rail company, the customers, a.k.a. the shippers, they don't have a choice either, right? Like if you want to move vinyl chloride from one part of the country to the other, you're only going to do it on rail tracks that are owned by Norfolk Southern. You can't just build another set of railroad right next to it and just go, oh, we're going to use the other company to move freight through this part of the country because they own all the railroads. Exactly. So essentially, the extra problem here is that when a monopoly is not regulated properly, when it gets the government to actually crush workers and shut down worker demands, especially when it's a monopoly and the public,

the customers also don't have any recourse, you've created a kind of system of, it's an all-powerful situation where there's no accountability at all. And then moving forward, we're going to see, will the company be able to rely on the fact that the government then won't even force them to pay for the cleanup in a way that deters them from engaging in the same behavior in the future? That's the other part of this that could happen where the company gets to walk away with a financial slap on its wrist, and therefore there's just no deterrent. I would ask the question, what deterrent would there be to Norfolk Southern or any other railroad giant to engaging in the same kind of behavior moving forward? There would be no deterrent.

I want to go back to something you said a little earlier, and this was something that I read in Levers' coverage of this that was sort of dumbfounding to me. I mean, you mentioned it just in your last comments, but the issue of the fact that trains in this country are being run on a braking system that was invented, that was in use during the Civil War, and that there's an electronic break. Is this the case in Europe and Asia? Are they still running freight trains on Civil War-era braking systems? And by the way, and also transporting incredibly hazardous chemicals using brakes that existed during the Civil War? I'll plead ignorance here. I do not know what they use in other countries, but I can say this. Here's one interesting part of this.

The train, the rail industry itself, and in specific Norfolk Southern, had boasted about these pneumatic brakes, these electronic pneumatic braking systems. It had boasted about them in the late 2000s saying these were revolutionary. They were bragging about, we reported on Norfolk Southern newsletters saying these kinds of brakes are designed to improve safety. They're great. They can deter and mitigate derailments and the like. And then the company shifted its posture the moment the government started considering a rule to require them. And we've tried to figure out what is this reversal about, because the company is bragging about these brakes, and then all of a sudden it's opposing mandates for these brakes. And I think

part of it has to do with the fact that the company was bragging about it as a way to say, hey, if we put these brakes in place, we can be exempted from other safety rules. If we put these brakes in place, the trains will become more safe, and then we don't have to follow these other safety rules. And then the moment the government said, well, okay, well, great, we're going to call your bluff. Great. Let's make you require you to have them. I think what ended up happening was they said, look, we want to be the arbiters of when we use them, when we make the expenditure to use them. We do not want them a higher mandate for slightly higher costs to be put on us. And they fought off the rule. And the same thing is, they were

specifically not using them for the transport of hazardous chemicals. Because you think like, if these exist, and you're proud of them, and they increase safety, like, okay, maybe if you're transporting a lumber or something, you could use the old pneumatic, the old, the civil war braking system. But when you're transporting vinyl chloride, maybe you should throw on the electric pneumatic brakes. That's right. And I think, again, to go back to them bragging and then reversing, I just think what it shows you is is that whenever these companies face the potential requirement of having to spend any money, they do not like it. And here's a crazy stat. Their estimate, the rail industry's estimate for how much it would cost to put these brakes in

was about $3 billion. That is, in a typical year, about two weeks of operating revenue of the rail industry. In just one year. In other words, putting these brakes in writ large would cost the equivalent of just two weeks of one year's worth of operating revenue. So we're talking about pushing against a rule that would have required a very small expenditure, comparatively speaking, a very small expenditure from the industry. Well, okay, I'm glad you brought that up. Because as long as you're talking about things that they're not spending money on, I think we should talk about some things that they are spending money on. And this is like, you discussed how this is a bipartisan thing. This

crosses three administrations who have basically coutowed to industry lobbying on the issue of railroad safety. But another thing that's like a thread that runs through this story, and indeed, much of American capitalism and the decay of this country going on right now, is the issue of stock buybacks. Because this is what these companies are spending money on, is stock buybacks. Could you just talk a little bit about what are stock buybacks, how they work, and then when you're done explaining them, could you explain how they are anything other than a legalized form of theft from workers and the public? It's a great question. I mean, okay, so a stock buyback is basically the company, I mean, as the name implies, it's the company buying back its own stock. So the

company, you know, company goes out and says, here's a million shares of our stock to the public. The public buys it, that's money that the company gets in order to make investments. That's a public offering. The company can go and then later buy back its own stock to reduce the amount of stock that's out there, which in theory, raises the price of the remaining shares of stock out there. So then you ask the question, okay, well, who does that benefit? Who do buybacks benefit? Well, buybacks benefit then the remaining shareholders of the company. So if you're a CEO who's getting stock options, if you're an institutional shareholder or a wealthy shareholder or a Warren Buffett who owns, who's owned the parts of the railroads in the past,

the stock price going up means that your asset value goes up, which means the thing that you have, the asset that you own is worth more, which means ultimately you can transfer that or exchange it for more money. So it benefits the sharehold. That is what it's for. It is to specifically benefit the shareholders, the owners of the company. And here's the stat. The rail companies have spent about $200 billion on stock buybacks and dividends over the last dozen years. They've also, as we reported previously, the major rail companies have paid their executive teams $200 million over just the last few years. At the same time, they've denied sick pay to their workers. At the same time, they have not made investments in, as I mentioned, ECP breaks.

I mean, think about that, $200 billion in stock buybacks, but not spending $3 billion on better breaking systems. That's where the priority is. It's to serve stockholders. Now, I want to add one other thing. For those who listen to your show, for you and I, it's not surprising that companies kind of have a Gordon Gekko mindset. We exist just to make money for our shareholders. At one level, it's not that I'm justifying them spending on those buybacks and not spending on safety measures. It's only to say that the point is that that's why you need rules put in place to say, you can't do this. I mean, there have been proposals to ban stock buybacks. There have been the regulatory proposals we're talking about with safety. The point is, is that those

decisions to spend on buybacks and CEO salaries, as opposed to on breaking systems, those are responses to a regulatory environment and a legal environment, which allows those decisions to be made. If you want to think about who to hold accountable for this dystopia, first and foremost, yes, it's the companies are making sort of terrifying decisions, but they're making those decisions in a situation where, for instance, the chief regulator of the rail companies, Pete Buttigieg, is not putting in place rules that make it impossible for them to make those decisions. Well, we finally got to our secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg. To lead into the stock buyback thing just as a seamless transition into secretary Buttigieg here,

I mean, what was Buttigieg doing before he was a politician? He was a McKinsey consultant. What does McKinsey do? They advise companies on how to do things like stock buybacks. They advise companies on how to bust out their corporation like good fellas, essentially, because I think the point about stock buybacks is they're great for the shareholders, but they're not exactly great for the ongoing viability and future of the company. I mean, it is about maximizing shareholder value in the shortest term possible, but then leading to things spilling thousands of tons of vinyl chloride on East Palestine, Ohio, which is not exactly great for the future viability of a company. But let's get to Buttigieg here, because he's racking up an impressive record

in his short tenure as secretary of transportation. I just want to read you. This is Pete just today. He writes, this is on Twitter. He says, I continue to be concerned about the impacts of the February 3rd train derailment near East Palestine, Ohio, and the effects on families in the 10 days since their lives are upended through no fault of their own. It's important that families have access to useful and accurate information. U.S. Department of Transportation has been supporting the investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. Our federal rail administration and pipelines and hazardous materials teams are on site within hours of the initial accident and continue to be actively engaged. We will look to these investigation

results and, based on them, use all relevant authorities to ensure accountability and to continue to support safety. I mean, it goes on like that. It's a wonderful exercise in the use of the passive voice, but like, could you speak to our secretary of transportation and just like whether it's Norfolk Southern or Southwest Airlines, just like the complete abdication of any regulatory authority on behalf of the transportation administration? Let me start this response by saying, first and foremost, some context here. I mean, the Department of Transportation as a whole for many administrations has been basically a captured agency by the transportation industries, whether the airlines or the rail companies.

So, the Pete situation is a systemic situation, but I also think the Pete situation is additionally a very Pete specific situation as well in this way. If you want a transportation department that is, to use the phrase, a cop on the beat against effectively corporate crime and corporate abuse of millions of people, you would put somebody into that job who was serious about ending the capture of the Department of Transportation. Instead, as you say, the Biden administration put in a former McKinsey consultant, somebody with really no qualifications in running a transportation system, much less regulating one. And so, what you've seen when it comes to the airlines as an example is, as we reported, attorney generals from all over the country writing to him and to

congressional leaders repeatedly asking the Department of Transportation to use its existing rule-making authority to prohibit the kinds of abusive practices that culminated in the, for instance, the Southwest Airlines meltdown, the scheduling of flights without adequate staffing in the like and canceling flights without effective remuneration in the like, that the Secretary of Transportation is the sole regulator under the law of the airlines and the current Secretary of Transportation has not used that authority, which makes the airlines and the airline donors that give a lot of money to politicians, makes them very happy. It's the same thing when it comes to the railroad system. You had the Obama-era break rule that we discussed,

that got repealed. You had the Obama administration's decision to limit the definition of high-hazard, flammable trains. The Secretary of Transportation has the authority to make rules and to begin the rule-making process to create different safety parameters that the rail industry is operating under. He has not used that power. In fact, as we recently reported this week, that the Department of Transportation is quite literally right now, as we speak, considering a rule to weaken train break safety rules. You cannot make this up. That is what is going on right now. Then the question becomes, well, why? Why isn't Pete doing what I think lots and lots of people think he should be doing? There's a lot of answers to that question.

I'm putting on my speculation hat here. One answer is, listen, you hire a McKinsey consultant to run an agency. You're going to get a McKinsey consultant running an agency. The kind of person who becomes a McKinsey consultant is not somebody who's used to, who has been rewarded for, who wants to push powerful people around. Instead, that kind of person is somebody who has gotten ahead, whose entire formula for advancement is to make powerful people happy. That person is not going to put in place rules, probably not going to be inclined to put in place rules, that make powerful people unhappy. I also think there's like, if we're being totally frank about it, clearly, Pete Buttigieg is thinking about running for some sort of office again.

When you look at who gives money to people running for office, who gets rewarded financially for running their next campaign, people who get blown up in a train derailment and rail workers are not able to give as much money as the rail barons of the world or the Warren Buffets or the airline companies and their lobbyists. I want to be clear. I'm not saying that I necessarily think Pete is like, there's a one-to-one relationship. Hey, if I go easy on the railroad companies, they're going to give me money later. It's more like politicians operating in that sphere. It goes back to that, what do I get out of really pissing off powerful people other than those powerful people running Super PAC ads against me? What do I get from appeasing them and making

them happy? Well, potentially, Super PAC ads for me and campaign contributions for me. I think Pete is like the human personification. These decisions are like the human personification of how the system really works when you put someone like him in that position. Yeah. And thinking about this, obviously, Pete Buttigieg is just the latest avatar of this phenomenon that you're talking about. But to read his defenders on this, I think it's interesting that a lot of people like their reaction to why doesn't the Secretary of Transportation do something is like, oh, I suppose you just want him to do something. Well, guess what? He doesn't really have the power to do so, which is funny because that's really easy to believe if you live in this

country that the people in charge of regulating industries actually don't have any power to do anything. I don't think that's the case, but it's easy to imagine that people in the government don't have any authority to stop trains from falling off the tracks because they don't seem to exercise it. One must conclude that they simply can't because who wants trains to derail? Well, but I think the weird hypocrisy here, especially among liberals when it comes to Democrats, what's so vexing about why they would think this way, is the same liberals who say Donald Trump and Donald Trump's apparatchiks have unilateral power to do anything and everything they want whenever they want, and that's a danger to America. We'll turn around and say

a Democratic president and their apparatchiks have no power to do anything at all that the public might want anytime ever. It's either one or the other. Either you're running the government in an executive agency and you can do whatever you want whenever you want for anybody, or you have no power at all. But among liberals vis-a-vis the Democratic party, the definition changes. It swings back and forth depending on who's in power. And I would say this, look, is it not true that Pete Buttigieg could unilaterally fix rail safety with the stroke of a pen? Correct. That is not true. The secretary of transportation cannot unilaterally fix this problem all in one day with one stroke of a pen. I completely agree with that, which is why I say

this is not singularly Pete Buttigieg's fault, but it is also to say that clearly if Donald Trump's secretary of transportation can repeal unilaterally the Obama-enacted rail break safety rule and do it through a process of, frankly, manipulating a cost-benefit analysis, then an equally aggressive secretary of transportation can delve back into that issue, back into the decisions about the cost-benefit analysis, issue new cost-benefit analyses, issue new rules, at least run a public campaign for those new rules to reinstate the Obama-era break rule. But saying that gets you accused of, you're just attacking Pete Buttigieg because of the Iowa caucus three years ago. It's ridiculous. This is the thing

with social media has ruined so many people's brains. There are people online. Maybe they're bots, I don't know. But there are people online. We put out our story about Buttigieg and what he has done and what he hasn't done. And it's like, you're just pissed off about the, because I worked on Bernie's campaign through three years ago, oh, you just pissed off about, you can't get over the fact that Pete Buttigieg won Iowa, etc. It's like, how sociopathic do you have to be to see a mushroom cloud of vinyl chloride detonate over the American heartland and see people demanding the secretary of transportation, the chief regulator of the rail industry, people demanding that that person take action? How sociopathic do you have to be to then say, oh, well, you're just mad about an Iowa caucus

three years ago. I mean, this is insane. And the thing that bothers me so much is, how do we expect to get regulators to make better, more responsible decisions? If those regulators can rely on the fact that something in their responsibility happens goes badly, and they never face accountability at all. I've said this before, I'll say it again. The crazy thing is, is to look back on the Halcyon days, I'm kidding, of course, the Halcyon days of the George W. Bush administration, when a person who was running the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who did not have qualifications to run that agency, sort of very publicly dropped the ball in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And there was public demands about what, why was this person appointed? What are they doing? They're

not doing the right job. That person felt the need, the public pressure to resign. And, and, but we don't live in that world anymore. We live in a world now where you can be the Michael Brown of the rail or the airline systems, infrastructure, and rely on the fact that your own parties, voters are just going to see a disaster and reflexively defend you. And the problem with that, whether it's the Democrats or the Republicans is, people like Pete Buttigieg can rely on that. They don't feel like they have to do anything because there's a, there's kind of a defense system, a political defense system baked in for them. Yeah. And like, and thinking about this, whether it's Pete Buttigieg, whether it's Southwest Airlines or Norfolk Southern, I mean, the thing that I'm struck by with this

is that like, if it wasn't Southwest or Norfolk, it would just be another railroad company or airline company. Because like, I think the, the situation that exists is that like these companies are allowed to operate as essentially as monopolies or as cartels in the form of the airline industry. And like, of course, they're allowed to run these companies in a way that maximizes profit and shows the littlest regard for human life, safety, or just like the consumer possible. Right? So like, of course, Southwest Airlines, like their system is going to shit the bed and it's going to cause a disaster during the Christmas holiday. But like, if it was a couple of years ago, it was Delta or Spirit and like Norfolk, like I'm sure like another company is going to, one of their trains is going

to go off the tracks. And if it wasn't Secretary Buttigieg, it'd be some other stews in his place. It's just like they each, like in exchange for a compliant regulatory apparatus, they each have to like occasionally sit in the musical chair of having the public be mad at them. But essentially, like it's not just, it's just the entire system. It's like, it's an entire like apparatus that allows these companies to exist as monopolies and cartels and run their run their business in a way that like is incredibly unsafe and is only for the value of the shareholder. So like, of course, there's going to be disasters like this. And it's just going to keep happening. And we're going to be mad at a different company or airline or secretary of transportation in a month or two or a year or

two. I mean, that's totally right. And that's why I go back to, for instance, the work that we do at the lever, which is there's a presumption or at least a theory. And the theory is that you can't start fixing this stuff until the people in offices accountable to the public, that they have to assume that if they fuck up, they will face real public accountability. And part of that is there needs to be a media that is holding them accountable, or at least raising, surfacing the facts that allow the public to hold them accountable, that if your reaction to a disaster inside of a regulatory context, a deregulatory context, if your reaction is I'm going to defend the regulator, you are part of helping create the regulatory conditions for future disasters. If you want better regulations,

I don't care if it's on the rail stuff or the airline stuff or anything else, if you want better regulations to prevent future disasters in all of these realms, when a disaster happens, part of what the response needs to be is public accountability for the regulator, shame, surfacing facts about decisions that were made, that were bad, congressional hearings, all the things that create pressure on a regulator to act. Now, I will say, I was very happy to see that Congresswoman Rashida Thalib, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar both said, I think it was yesterday or two days ago, that Pete Buttigieg needs to act to make sure these kinds of things don't happen again. Now, that's only two Democratic Congress people. But the point is, is that that should be the

reaction writ large to this, so that ultimately it's not about, as you suggest, it's not about Pete Buttigieg specifically, it's how do we say, whoever in that transportation department position knows they have to do their job? And I want to add one other thing, and this is specifically about Pete. If Pete wanted to just be on TV, doing the pundit shows to defend the Biden administration, he was on the Sunday shows, this is incredible, while this disaster was unfolding, he was on the Sunday shows last week, and he didn't even get asked about this. He was just talking about Biden's State of the Union. It's unbelievable, right? But I said a week ago, if in lieu of the State of the Union, if Biden wanted to present what is the State of the

Union, it would have just been like a live feed of that fucking mushroom cloud in East Palestine. Exactly, it's terrible. But I think the point is, I think there are a lot of folks out there who think, oh, Pete's good on TV, he's great at his job. It's like, that's not the job, right? If Pete's good at that job, and wants that job, he should go be the White House press secretary. Great, go be the White House press secretary. The Department of Transportation job is like a real job with real responsibilities. And again, responsibilities that other government officials don't have and can't use their power for. I mean, I go back to the airline thing. This is why just as much pressure on him about the airline stuff should be a focus. In that situation,

attorneys general, the United States attorneys general, they're literally preempted from regulating the airlines. The only person who can regulate the airlines under the current law is the Secretary of Transportation. So if the Secretary of Transportation doesn't want to do that job, they shouldn't be Secretary of Transportation because that's a real job. So we've been talking about what might a functioning society, one with a vested interest in not crashing thousands of tons of hydrochloric acid into the air and water. How would they react like a functioning society to something like that? And we've been talking about what would sensible regulation on these companies or fines look like. But I'd like to expand the horizon

a little bit more because we're talking about a situation where like 40, 50 years now, every law that's been passed has been written to prevent regulation of industries. And when I talked to Devin Mantz and Ross Gruder, particularly about the railroads, but this is equally applicable to airlines, the banking industry, industries that represent like a critical nexus of like public and economic infrastructure, that when they fuck up, they should just be nationalized straight up. If you want to talk about something that would put some fear into the owners of these companies, then guess what? You're not owners of these companies anymore. The United States Treasury is. And like they should be run not for profit, but as a public

utility because they're too important to be left to like McKinsey consultants fucking things up this badly. Look, I completely agree. I mean, I think we live in an accountability free society. And I think, you know, if you believe, if you believe, and I'm putting this in quotes, you know, law and order, the there's law, there's quote unquote law and order for most of us. And there's almost no, there's there's lawlessness and disorder at the very top. And I do think there are obvious ways you can deter you can deter all of this kind of behavior. I mean, we've been talking about rail safety rules as an example. But it's something much deeper is yes, consequences for the decision makers, the people, the literal individuals making these decisions

are key that we know from the financial crisis. That's a good example. There were consequences for the companies in terms of fines, financial consequences that were essentially, you know, are essentially write offs, the cost of doing business. But there were not consequences for the individual executives that made those decisions. And the problem with that is that every future executive who then goes into those jobs can can essentially assume that there wouldn't be consequences, individual consequences for them if they make the same decisions. So whether it is nationalizing these companies, removing management, subjecting management to criminal investigation for decisions that kill people,

all of those things are the things that almost never happen in this society anymore. And I was talking to a friend recently, I think I've got this right. I'm trying to think of the last time any top executives at any major company that harmed kind of systemically harmed the country, when the last time was any of those folks were held accountable. Now, the one I came up with was there was Enron and Arthur Anderson under in the early Bush administration that that happened. But I actually can't think of other examples. I mean, the example that I'm coming to mind from my childhood was like the big tobacco, the big settlements of that. But I mean, that was still just like a settlement and these companies are still around. But I mean, I was just an event

with Steven Donzinger and we were talking about this. And like, if you consider that like, okay, yeah, tobacco companies knew that cigarettes caused cancer, they knew nicotine was addictive, and they like essentially just covered it up for years and profit it off of it. If you compare that level of corporate malfeasance to the fact that like every petroleum company knew exactly what global warming was in the 70s and did the exact same thing as tobacco companies did. The scale of that is like as bad as lung cancer is the scale of that is even more staggering. Like it's and they haven't even come close to being held accountable for that. Totally. And I think companies ever really, really were held accountable.

Totally. And I think that the reason I bring up the Enron Arthur Anderson stuff was, I mean, that was 20 years ago, right? Like it's been 20 years since there's and don't give me the idea that, oh, well, you know, companies have decided to be to follow the law more and right. I mean, obviously that didn't happen. I mean, the financial crisis as an example, right? That was just a complete kind of orgy of lawlessness. So what happened was that we we various decisions were made at the government level. And frankly, it was normalized among the public at large that folks at the top of companies that harm lots and lots of people, they don't get held accountable for anything. And so we're now living in that world. And the crazy thing is

it's not to like give credit to Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, but like Ronald Reagan went after the the SNL folks. George W. Bush's administration went after the Enron and Arthur Anderson, not because they're great crusaders, but because because that was like the minimum of what was expected to be done. Like that was the norm. That was what that's what happens. Now that never happens, right? I guess the example that people I guess can hold up now is, oh, well, you know, Sam Bankman Fried. And look, Sam Bankman Fried was a was a was a huckster, was a was a scammer. But like that's not at the level of the of the rail companies or the oil companies at the airlines of of Enron and and and the specula the financial speculator industry back on Wall Street in the

in the 80s, right? Like, I think what's gone on is people hold up. Oh, they well, they went after Bernie Madoff or they went off after Sam Bankman Fried. These are like small examples to pretend like you're doing something. And it's not to say that they made off and Sam Bankman Fried shouldn't have been prosecuted and like, but it's like you're holding up this like little emblematic kind of kind of spectacle trophy example while you're not going after the real problems. And so yeah, like, I'm sure the guys at Norfolk Southern are like, yeah, you know, like, we're like, we don't give a shit about what just happened. Like, like what you think we're going to change now? But like, no one's going to come after us like no one's going to come after our company. And if

that's the case, if that's what happens after you detonate a mushroom cloud of vinyl chloride over the heartland of America, then we should expect the same thing to happen over and over again. David, I want to get you out of there on this question. I'd like to go back to like just East Palestine, Ohio. Can you tell us anything about like what's being done for the people of East Palestine right now? Because I did see a story about how Norfolk Southern has essentially offered them a $25 check to help with relocation while the acid gets cleared out of the air in their town. But like, have you talked to anyone from East Palestine? Like, what is being done for the people of East Palestine, Ohio, right now? I mean, I think the answer is not very much

at all. And yes, that story about how Norfolk Southern offered the town $25,000. And I think it was a $25,000. Yeah, not like $25 million billion, $25,000 to the whole town. And I think I think I read it was $1,000. I mean, this is the worst phrasing ever. A $1,000 convenience check for your convenience. Like, I mean, not only is it a small amount of money, but like convenience, like you've just like Chernobyl'd our town

and I get like a thousand bucks. I mean, it really does harken back, frankly, to the financial crisis, you know, the mortgage settlement, people getting thrown out of their homes, whatever, and like the settlement was like, here's $600, right? I mean, it kind of reminds me of that goodfellas line. You invoke goodfellas, you know, what was it like? He gave me $600, what was it, $600 or $2,000

and like, you know, to set me on my way, right? It's like, this is a joke. This is like, it's almost, it's honestly like, I mean, I don't want to speak for the people of Ohio, but it's almost more insulting to give that little money than to give no money, right? If like, you're not going to admit any, you did anything wrong

and you're just going to insist everything is fine and you're not going to give anybody any money, at least that's sort of a position you're taking, but like, yeah, we blew up your town, here's like $1,000, in some ways it's even more insulting and I go back to this point. It's more of an illustration of how much the company presumes,

they don't have to do anything, they will not be forced to do anything at all. Well, leave it on that sherry note, but David, I want to thank you for all the work that you and the lever have done, trying to get some coverage on this story. You've done a great work covering this. If people want more of the lever in their lives

and similar news and journalism of this variety, what should they do? Where should they go? They can go to levernews.com, become a subscriber, and I should say the fans of Pete Buttigieg hate us. They've tried to convince people to unsubscribe from us and defund our work. So I would love it if folks checked out our work,

became subscribers, it would help us do this kind of reporting. And I should say, we have another big story coming out very, very soon that you will see on the front of our website. All right, I'll be able to look out for that. Once again, thank you for your time. David Cerrodo. Thank you, thanks for having me.

No problem, cheers. MUSIC