BLOG EDITOR: WE NOTE THAT WALL STREET JOE BIDEN HAS LONG BEEN IN BED WITH THE RAIL MONOPLIES. THE BIGGEST INVESTOR IN THIS PROFIT DRIVEN DISASTER IS BIDEN'S BIGGEST PAYMASTER BLACKROCK.
BLACKROCK OPERATES OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE UNDER GAMER LAWYER BRIAN DEESE. IT WAS DEESE WHO OBAMA - BIDEN USED TO PERPETRATE THE GENERAL MOTORS SETTLEMENT WHEREBY G.M.s MGMT WOULD BET RAISES AND NO PAY CUTS AND WORKERS GOT WAGES CUT DRAMATICALLY
Two Days After Buttigieg Visit, Biden Admin Halts Removal of Toxic Waste From East Palestine
The Biden administration on Saturday halted the removal of toxic materials from East Palestine, Ohio, to ensure waste is transported to Environmental Protection Agency-certified facilities.
The EPA on Friday took control of the cleanup process from Norfolk Southern, whose train derailed in the devastating crash, and paused the company's waste shipments over the weekend, CBS News reported. The company oversaw the removal of 15 truckloads of waste to a hazardous waste treatment facility, but five trucks were returned to East Palestine after the Biden administration's order.
Excluding the returned trucks, more than 100,000 gallons of liquid waste and 4,000 cubic yards of solid waste remain in East Palestine, Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine's office told CBS.
Debra Shore, the EPA's Region 5 administrator, said removal should continue "very soon."
"Everyone wants this contamination gone from the community," Shore said. "EPA will ensure that all waste is disposed of in a safe and lawful manner at EPA-certified facilities to prevent further release of hazardous substances and impacts to communities."
Shore said she had received complaints about the transport of waste to other states, saying the EPA needs to find "the appropriate permitted and certified sites to take the waste."
Large swaths of the area near the Pennsylvania border are contaminated with toxic chemicals after 38 train cars derailed on Feb. 3. Officials, fearing an explosion, released and burned toxic chemicals on Feb. 6, producing a massive plume cloud over the town.
"We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open," Sil Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist, told a local news outlet.
The Biden administration's slow response to the crisis has received blowback from both sides of the aisle. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took nearly two weeks to issue his first statement on the disaster, opting instead to lecture on construction workers' whiteness. When he finally began discussing the derailment, he attacked his Republican critics.
Buttigieg finally arrived in East Palestine on Thursday, nearly three weeks after the crash and one day after former president Donald Trump visited. Buttigieg blamed rail lobbyists, the Trump administration, and Norfolk Southern for the crash.
The secretary then called on people to avoid politicizing the crisis.
"The country should be wrapping their arms around the people of East Palestine, not as a political football, not as an ideological flashpoint, not as a gotcha moment," Buttigieg said.
He explained his delay away by blaming the National Transportation Safety Board.
"What I tried to do is balance two things—my desire to be involved and engaged and on the ground, which is how I am generally wired to act, and my desire to follow the norm of transportation secretaries, allowing NTSB to really lead the initial stages of the public-facing work," Buttigieg said.
Published under: Biden Administration , EPA , Ohio , Pennsylvania , Pete Buttigieg , Railroads
East Palestine Train Disaster Killed More than 43,000 Aquatic Animals, Ohio Agency Says
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) estimates more than 43,000 fish and other aquatic animals have died as a result of the train disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, earlier this month.
ODNR director Mary Mertz announced Thursday that roughly 38,222 minnows and about 5,550 other aquatic animals — such as small fish, crayfish, amphibians, and macroinvertebrates — were killed in the 5-mile span of waterway from the derailment site.
“Although dead aquatic species still remain in the impacted waterways, the entirety of the impact to the aquatic life is believed to have occurred in the first 24-hours after the derailment,” the ODNR stated.
Mertz added that “these small fish are all believed to have been killed immediately after the derailment.”
The agency also said that there is “no immediate threat” to aquatic life in East Palestine’s Leslie Run creek, and that live fish have actually returned to the waterways.
Mertz explained that the ODNR collected their samples over the course of two days — February 6 and 7 — and that “following collection, EnviroScience counted, identified, measured, and arranged disposal of the aquatic species to limit impact to other wildlife that might feed on affected aquatic species.”
The ODNR director added that investigators applied a science-based calculation, based on observations of a sample of 2,938 aquatic animals.
“Since then, additional work has been completed to remove more dead fish from the water, although that removal is not part of the survey,” Mertz noted.
“The investigation has thus far concluded that of the 7-and-a-half-mile impacted area, the species were killed over a 5-mile span,” the ODNR director added.
Mertz also noted that officers searched for additional dead aquatic wildlife “beyond the impacted waterways” in the days that followed — such as the Ohio River down through Jefferson County and at the Cumberland lock and dam — and did not find any dead aquatic animals.
The ODNR director added that the agency is currently waiting for test results on non-aquatic animals, which include birds and opossums.
“We do not believe any of these animals were made sick by the train derailment, but we have submitted those specimens to the Ohio Department of Agriculture and will wait for those test results before making that judgement,” Mertz said.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
Biden Administration Lands on Strategy for Train Fiasco: Finger Pointing
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the White House are pointing fingers at everyone but themselves as they defend the Biden administration's handling of the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
Buttigieg visited East Palestine on Thursday amid blistering criticism of his absenteeism in the three weeks since a train derailed and "basically nuked" the town with toxic chemicals. Speaking to reporters near the crash site, Buttigieg blamed Congress, the Trump administration, rail industry lobbyists, and the train's operator, Norfolk Southern, for the crash. Buttigieg also blamed his partners at the National Transportation Safety Board for his delayed response in publicly addressing the crisis.
He then closed the press conference with an impassioned plea to his critics to stop playing politics with the disaster.
"The country should be wrapping their arms around the people of East Palestine, not as a political football, not as an ideological flashpoint, not as a gotcha moment," said Buttigieg, who didn't mention the crisis during 23 media interviews he conducted in the 10 days after the derailment, according to Politico.
The East Palestine train derailment is the latest disaster to unfold on Buttigieg's watch. The beleaguered transportation secretary was on paid child leave and "mostly offline" during the 2021 supply chain crisis. He also presided over the airline industry as tens of thousands of flights were canceled, stranding passengers during the 2022 holidays. Buttigieg's track record has led critics to question whether it was prudent of Biden to appoint the small-town mayor with presidential aspirations to lead the transportation department.
READ MORE: Is the Trump Administration To Blame for the Ohio Train Derailment?
Buttigieg conceded Thursday that he should have spoken sooner about the crisis in East Palestine, but he said he was just following the norm set by his predecessors by letting the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the independent federal agency responsible for investigating civil transportation accidents, take the lead on the matter.
"What I tried to do is balance two things—my desire to be involved and engaged and on the ground, which is how I am generally wired to act, and my desire to follow the norm of transportation secretaries, allowing NTSB to really lead the initial stages of the public-facing work," Buttigieg said.
The NTSB on Thursday issued a preliminary report that found an overheated wheel bearing caused the derailment. NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy, a Biden appointee, said the train was already in the process of braking when it derailed.
Still, Buttigieg insisted on blaming the Trump administration and rail lobbyists for scrapping rules that would have required new electric braking technology on trains carrying large quantities of hazardous materials.
"This is their entire business model," Buttigieg said at Thursday's press conference. "In the last few years, they have gone into a business model that is about cutting and cutting and cutting and cutting. And what has happened is it's a concern from a safety perspective."
The rule in question, which the Biden administration has thus far failed to reinstate, would not have applied to the derailed train. Homendy warned on Feb. 16 that anyone seeking to connect the derailment to the regulation is guilty of "spreading misinformation."
The White House has taken Buttigieg's argument a step further and demanded that Republicans apologize to East Palestine residents for "selling them out to rail industry lobbyists" by scrapping the braking rule.
Buttigieg has also mischaracterized an October 2021 letter signed by Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) that questioned why the Federal Railroad Administration was allowing automated track inspection procedures to expire. Rubio called for Buttigieg to be fired for wrongfully characterizing the letter, which called for more track inspections, as a call for deregulation.
"He is an incompetent who is focused solely on his fantasies about his political future & needs to be fired," Rubio said Tuesday.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended Buttigieg on Thursday, saying the attacks against the transportation secretary are "pure politics."
In private, some Democrats say that Environmental Protection Agency administrator Michael Regan should be the one facing the music in the aftermath of the chemical spill.
"There's a plume, and there's a chemical spill. If anyone should have been there right away, it's Regan," an unnamed senior Democrat told Politico. "But he's not a political target. And so what's happened here is they've picked a political target. And they've just beaten that drum as often as they can, despite facts."
Pete Buttigieg Is Not Ready for Primetime
Column: The East Palestine trainwreck exposes a weak Democratic bench
Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg went to East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 23 in a major concession to the Make America Great Again movement. Buttigieg’s trip came three weeks after a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in the town of fewer than 5,000 residents, releasing hazardous materials and forcing a brief evacuation on both sides of the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.
No one died, people are back home, the Environmental Protection Agency says the air and water are safe, and it’s unusual for a transportation secretary to visit the site of a trainwreck. Yet a savvy MAGA pressure campaign, including an onsite inspection by former president Donald Trump earlier in the week, left Buttigieg no choice. Reluctantly, he traveled to Columbiana County, Ohio, where Trump won in 2020 by 45 points. He donned a hard hat and goggles. And he tried to convey sympathy toward the East Palestinians.
The episode highlighted a dilemma for Buttigieg’s party: The Democrats are led by an 80-year-old president with no clear successor. And while Joe Biden plans to run for reelection, a twist of fate could upend the 2024 race and send Democrats scrambling to enter a primary. The outcome would be unpredictable and potentially unbearable.
Biden is the one person who’s defeated Trump. The rising stars in his party, such as Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, Maryland governor Wes Moore, Senator Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.), and Representative Abigail Spanberger (D., Va.), aren’t ready for national campaigns. The Democratic bench is filled with retreads—Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—and duds.
Like Buttigieg. He’s immensely overrated. His glib, know-it-all style may impress some in the media, but his crisis management skills are awful. In 2021 he went on paternity leave despite supply chain bottlenecks and negotiations over the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. In the summer of 2022 he went on vacation to Portugal as rail workers threatened to strike. He was out of his depth last December when Southwest Airlines canceled thousands of flights and scrambled holiday travel plans. In January the Federal Aviation Administration halted air traffic due to a computer glitch. Buttigieg was caught unawares.
His handling of the East Palestine train disaster was just as sloppy and ineffectual. For more than a week, Buttigieg said nothing on the crash, while complaining about the demographics of construction workers. Then he blamed the Trump administration for lessening regulations on rail carriers. Next, he said train derailments happen often, but East Palestine has been getting the attention. Finally, he took a hard line on Norfolk Southern and relented to demands that he go to Ohio.
His shifting responses played right into the hands of Trump, Senator J.D. Vance (R., Ohio), and television host Tucker Carlson. They turned East Palestine into a conservative version of Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi—impoverished and neglected communities whose populations suffer from environmental contamination.
Buttigieg’s aloof sensibility became evidence that the Biden administration is more interested in the goings-on in Ukraine than in what’s happening at home. And his eventual capitulation to MAGA's demands strengthened the perception that his critics were right. Buttigieg might have been the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. But East Palestine mayor Trent Conaway has much better political instincts.
If you compare him with Kamala Harris, though, Buttigieg is another FDR. The vice president hasn’t recovered from a devastating Feb. 6 New York Times story on the "painful reality" that she has squandered her political future. "Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her," reported Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Katie Rogers, and Peter Baker. Indeed, Democrats are so fearful that Harris will lose the 2024 or 2028 election that they are trying to figure out how to "sideline her without inflaming key Democratic constituencies that would take offense."
Best of luck.
Clumsy Kamala, pedantic Pete—without Biden the Democrats have few good options. Of the senators who have run before, Amy Klobuchar has potential, I guess, but is anyone really excited for her candidacy? The veteran governors are a mixed bag: Gavin Newsom and Jared Polis have strengths and weaknesses, and J.B. Pritzker combines the worst of progressivism and limousine liberalism (he’s a billionaire) with an absence of charm.
Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer, who won reelection last year by 12 points and gained unified control of the state legislature, probably has the brightest future. Biden must regret not selecting her as vice president in 2020. Still, Whitmer is untested.
And no, Michelle Obama is not going to descend from the rafters to save the party.
Biden remains. His approval rating has improved slightly in recent days, he’s favored to win reelection, but he is no sure bet. Trump is knocking on his door. If Biden wants to give the rising generation of Democrats more time to develop, the American standard of living needs to improve and the Ukrainian Army needs to make gains. And he and his administration need to demonstrate the proper concern for the people of East Palestine, and places like it.
Published under: Biden Administration , Feature , Joe Biden , Kamala Harris , Ohio , Pete Buttigieg
FLASHBACK: Biden Warned Us That Mayor Pete Wasn't Ready for a Big Boy Job. Then He Gave Him One.
During his tenure as transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg has overseen crisis after crisis: the grounding of all U.S. commercial flights for the first time since the September 11 terror attacks; a supply chain meltdown that kept cargo ships from entering American ports; failed union negotiations that nearly shut down rails nationwide; and most recently, a train derailment and ensuing chemical explosion that forced thousands of Ohioans to flee their homes.
Through it all, the Democratic wunderkind has focused on bigger priorities, like vacationing in Portugal and criticizing construction workers for being too white.
If you thought Buttigieg was ill-prepared when President Joe Biden tapped the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., to oversee the country's transportation system, you're not alone. Biden himself warned about Buttigieg's experience in an attack ad during the 2020 presidential primaries.
"Joe Biden helped save the auto industry, which helped revitalize the economy of the Midwest," states a February 2020 Biden campaign ad. "Pete Buttigieg revitalized the sidewalks of downtown South Bend by laying out decorative brick."
TRAIN WRECK: All the Transportation Scandals on Pete Buttigieg's Watch
Pete Buttigieg: The archetype of the Biden regime
archetype [ahr-ki-tahyp], noun: the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based; a model or first form; prototype.
If there is one thing all Americans now know about transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, it is that he is massively, moronically incompetent but thinks he is the smartest, most impressive person on the planet. As Victor Davis Hanson has noted, he is "the epitome of the empty résumé class." He had no qualifications for the job beyond the fact that he ticks a couple of identity politics boxes, he's gay and proud of it, and he's a mind-numbed leftist. He is therefore, the perfect book cover for the Biden Cabinet catalogue.
Like Biden and the rest of his Cabinet, Buttigieg was hired for all the wrong reasons and is thoroughly incompetent for the job he holds. Chosen for reasons other than expertise or competence, it explains the utter failure of the Biden regime on every issue that matters: national and border security, health and safety, military readiness, food and energy security, inflation, economic management, and dangerous involvement in a foreign war that may well lead to WWIII. Perhaps that is the goal, given this regime's failure on every front. Distraction from our $31T in debt? Distraction from the fact that the mandated vaccines are killing young people at a 40% excess mortality rate? Distraction from the open border that has ushered into the country five million unvetted migrants and tons of fentanyl that is killing 100K people a year? All of the above?
Nothing has pointed up Biden's and Buttigieg's ineptitude more than their lack of a response to the cataclysmic disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. The citizens of that town have been rendered "useless eaters," as Klaus Schwab's partner in crimes Yuval Harari has described the people he views as disposable. The folks in East Palestine probably voted for Trump, so they are not worth saving or helping. They have been left to breathe cancer-causing contaminated air and drink and shower with seriously tainted water, and they were told by their governor that all is safe. It's not. It is very likely that the soil and water will not be safe for decades to come.
But Biden is still in Europe, doling out American taxpayer cash to Ukrainians, a nation in which the U.S. has no national interest whatsoever. Biden's allegiance to Ukraine is all about payback for the millions of dollars that nation has funneled to the Biden family. Humbling himself before China is also payback for the millions the Biden family received from that country. The Trump-haters who stole the election put a Ukraine/China tool in the Oval Office, and all of America is suffering for their crime, as are the Ukrainian and Russian people. Biden and his fellow war-mongers do not care any more for those war-torn civilians than they do the American people, least of all those in East Palestine, Ohio.
Buttigieg as like an annoying, narcissistic character in literature. Uriah Heep, from Dickens's Great Expectations, comes to mind: self-aggrandizing, narcissistic, arrogant, and skilled at nothing, least of all the job he holds. He enjoys the perks of his job — months off work for "maternity" leave and free flights to sports games in Europe, for example. He's a classic hypocrite who believes that his position accords him special privileges. He drives his SUV to work, hides it, and rides his bike for a hundred yards. Perhaps the reason he has not shown up in East Palestine is because he is an abject coward; he knows that the air is toxic and is scared of it. When asked about the derailment, he quickly and stupidly blames the Trump administration. Blaming Trump is the Biden administration's fallback position on anything that goes wrong. No one is buying it. They are all like a child who, with cookie crumbs on his face, blames his sibling for eating the cookie.
Everything the Biden administration has done has been a disaster of epic proportions, beginning with his cancelation of the Keystone Pipeline and moving on to his ill fated withdrawal from Afghanistan, his fomenting the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and now the failure to address the worst environmental accident in U.S. history. The man is obviously suffering from cognitive decline, so his appearances in Europe and elsewhere are almost always an embarrassment to the U.S. His speech is generally slurred, his reading of his speeches halting, angry, and somewhat demented. The man is not mentally sound. Buttigieg is just a garden-variety narcissist who believes he is important, a man of substance, when he is neither. This president and his Cabinet of inept wokesters have been a tragedy for America.
Image: Pete Buttigieg. Credit: Flickr, public domain.
Report: Buttigieg Finally Plans To Visit East Palestine—Three Weeks After Chemical Disaster
Transportation secretary has faced criticism over Biden admin's slow response to disaster
Nearly three weeks after the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that led to the release of toxic chemicals, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is finally planning to visit the devastated town, Politico reported on Wednesday.
Buttigieg is expected to meet on Thursday with residents and members of the National Transportation Safety Board for a briefing, according to the report.
The transportation secretary's slow response to the emergency in East Palestine has sparked bipartisan criticism of the Biden administration's handling of the disaster. It took Buttigieg nearly two weeks to issue his first statement on the derailment, in which he attacked Republicans for criticizing his inaction on the issue.
The train derailed on Feb. 3, and authorities began releasing the substances from the train on Feb. 6 to avoid an explosion and get the tracks operable again. "We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open," Sil Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist, told a local news outlet.
Buttigieg previously said he would visit "when the time was right," according to Politico.
Animals as far as 20 miles away from the scene turned up dead in the days after the chemical release, and several videos have emerged of rivers and creeks in the area turning different colors.
Former president Donald Trump is visiting the town on Wednesday. East Palestine mayor Trent Conaway slammed President Joe Biden for failing to visit, saying the president "doesn't care about" the residents.
Published under: Biden Administration , Department of Transportation , Ohio , Pete Buttigieg , Railroads
Besieged Buttigieg Breaks Media Silence on Ohio Train Disaster, Lashes Out at GOP Critics
'I am very interested in getting to know the residents of East Palestine,' he told reporters. 'I don't have a date for you right now.'
What happened: Pete Buttigieg is finally speaking out about the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The scandal-plagued secretary of transportation launched a media blitz this week to lash out at Republican critics and assure friendly journalists he hasn't done anything wrong.
On a conference call with reporters on Monday, the former McKinsey consultant said his department was "accelerating and augmenting our ongoing lines of effort on rail regulation and inspection," whatever that means. Buttigieg also attacked Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and others who have criticized his slow response to the Feb. 3 train derailment and his refusal to visit East Palestine to survey the damage.
"I am very interested in getting to know the residents of East Palestine, hearing from them about how they’ve been impacted and communicating with them about the steps that we’re taking," Buttigieg said on the conference call. "When the time is right, I do plan to visit East Palestine. I don’t have a date for you right now."
Why it matters: It is further evidence that Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., is not qualified to be secretary of transportation. President Joe Biden nominated him in order to build his résumé, and because many journalists, Democratic donors, and politicians believe (without evidence) that Buttigieg is going to be the first gay president of the United States.
"Look, I was mayor of my hometown for eight years," Buttigieg told ABC News host George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday. "We dealt with a lot of disasters." It's not entirely clear what Buttigieg was talking about, unless he was referring to the time he pulled strings to get a small and perfectly adequate section of road repaved in front of his house in South Bend.
What they're saying:
• "Where’s Pete Buttigieg? Where’s he at?" — East Palestine resident during town meeting on February 16
• "I don’t know. Your guess is as good as [mine]. Yesterday was the first time I heard anything from the White House." — East Palestine mayor Trent Conaway, in response
• "That was the biggest slap in the face. That tells you right now [Joe Biden] doesn't care about us." — Conaway on Biden's surprise trip to Ukraine over the weekend
Context: The toxic train disaster is hardly the first transportation-related scandal Buttigieg has faced.
TRAIN WRECK: All the Transportation Scandals on Pete Buttigieg's Watch
Watch: Joe Biden Falls, Catches Himself Again Boarding Air Force One in Poland
President Joe Biden on Wednesday fell and caught himself before possibly tumbling down the stairs as he tried to board Air Force One in Poland.
The video shows Biden slowly ascending the stars to the taxpayer-funded jet to return home. While climbing the stairs, he fell and tried to quickly regain his footing. At the top of the stairs, he hurriedly turned around and saluted before entering the aircraft:
In March 2021, Biden fell three times as he boarded the stairs of Air Force One, for which the wind was also blamed.
“It’s pretty windy outside, it’s very windy. I almost fell coming up the steps myself. He is doing 100% fine,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
Biden was given a physical examination last week that found the president suffers from a stiff gait and neuropathy in the feet. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “neuropathy refers to any condition that affects the nerves outside your brain or spinal cord.”
“This can happen for several reasons, from trauma to infections to inherited conditions. There are also many possible symptoms. Many causes, forms or symptoms of this condition are treatable, but this can vary widely from person to person,” the clinic explained.
Biden’s physical incidents are not limited to walking up stairs. In June, Biden fell off his bike in Rehoboth, Delaware, after getting his foot stuck in the peddle:
Some observers fear that Biden’s physical state may be representative of his mental state. Thirty-eight Republican lawmakers, along with Donald Trump’s former White House physician and now-Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), issued a letter in 2022, demanding Biden take a cognitive test for fear that he may have Alzheimer’s disease.
Noting Biden’s “changes in mood and personality” and “forgetfulness,” the lawmakers said Biden’s cognitive ability has been declining and “is not just a recent trend” but has become more apparent “over the past two years.”
Biden was reportedly not issued a cognitive test during last week’s physical examination.
Despite Biden’s health concerns, Jean-Pierre told reporters that the White House desires to be transparent about his health. “We want to be transparent, want to make sure you have the information,” she claimed.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter and Gettr @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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