Pirate's Cove

As the saying went during the Bush years “who’s president NOW?” When a Democrat is president, it’s always the Other Guy’s fault, never their own. And, despite the Daily Beast headline, you have to go more than halfway into the article before they gently chide the Biden admin

Trump Admin Is to Blame in Ohio Disaster—but So Is Biden

The Trumpoids are blaming President Joe Biden for the train derailment in Ohio even though former President Trump scuttled a safety measure that would have minimized, even prevented the disaster.

And Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is blaming Trump even though he has had two years to do something about it.

No, not really. Only beyond partisan loons are blaming Biden or Mayor Pete. They are being blamed for their lackluster response, and the Credentialed Media should be blamed for not caring all that much.

Meanwhile, the people of East Palestine were left with the result, their all-American town turned to nightmare. Are they already poisoned with something that may take years to kill them? Can they breathe the air? Can they drink the water? Will they ever be able to? Are their homes contaminated?

They were not likely comforted by what Buttigieg tweeted. “We’re constrained by law on some areas of rail regulation (like the braking rule withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2018 because of a law passed by Congress in 2015), but we are using the powers we do have to keep people safe,” he tweeted, as if the Biden administration had no ability to rectify what Trump has undone.

Did they even know about the rule? Was it on the radar? Did the bureaucrats charged with this stuff know and where they saying that something should be done? If they did, well, Pete has mostly been either MIA or uninterested in doing the job. Just failing upwards. Anyhow, if they want to sort of blame someone, they can blame the GOP congress which passed the law which forced the Trump admin to kill off the rule, but, really, trains still derail well over 1,000 times a year. We’re actually lucky that so few dangerous ones derail.

Here’s where it gets stupid

On June 3, 2016, a train with 96 cars carrying 3 million gallons of oil derailed in Mosier, Oregon, narrowly missing a school and bursting into flames that raged for 14 hours. Computer modeling by the FRA determined that ECP brakes could have prevented the disaster, along with numerous other derailments since 2014. Mosier Mayor Arlene Burns was joined by Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, Tacoma Mayor Ryan Mello, and other elected leaders in signing a declaration that rescinding the ECP brakes rule was “a clear case of the powerful railroad lobby and the Trump administration sacrificing the safety of local communities in favor of corporate profit.”

“The railroad industry and the Trump administration should stop placing profits ahead of safety,” it said.

Can anyone let the Daily Beast know who was president on that date? This is peak Trump Derangement Syndrome

In the aftermath, Buttigieg spoke of the measures the current administration has taken to improve passenger train lines such as Biden used to commute during his time in the Senate. The Biden people did not even try to explain why they have done nothing to revive the ECP brakes program after two years in office.

If this was so important, perhaps Joe could have take fewer weekends off. And Pete can get to work.