Forgotten Americans Suffer Amid Infrastructure Crisis

Dangerous Disconnect Between Political Class and Ordinary Americans

On Friday evening, February 3, 2023, a train derailment unleashed toxic chemicals on the village of East Palestine, Ohio. Explosions and fires ensued. Contamination of air, water, and land was extensive. Mass evacuations followed.

On Tuesday evening, February 7, 2023, official Washington engaged in its ever more self-reverential rituals surrounding the annual State of the Union address.

The disconnect between these two events is extraordinary—and unsustainable.

Top officials of the national administration did not immediately hustle to the scene and take charge of the inevitably complex challenges of coordinating federal, state, and local responses.

Absent such direct accountability, who among the local citizens can be faulted for fearing that more calamaties lay ahead—including long-term health consequences from toxic exposures? What can other communities, confronting corresponding risks, believe about their own security and safety?

The secretary of transportation subsequently, belatedly submitted a series of sympathetic tweets.

This unselfconscious absence of urgency recalls the old saw: When seconds count, law enforcement is just minutes away!

These feeble exertions represent the “thoughts and prayers” response to neglected communities across America. As with gun massacres in our schools, our infrastructure failures are not acts of God. They’re the result of interest-group-driven, paralytic politics in a nation riven by the pretenses and hubris of late-stage global hegemony.

Official Chinese pronouncements smugly condemned the disaster as an “America’s Chernobyl.” Unfortunately, they have a point. Just as the failings of the declining Soviet Union were illuminated and symbolized by that nuclear meltdown, the East Palestine derailment casts a harsh if not unforgiving light on our current circumstances.

Perhaps this is all we can expect from an American government that spends nearly a trillion dollars annually on defense and intelligence—yet cannot reckon intelligently with air balloons crossing casually into its airspace in the manner of Zeppelins over London more than a century ago.

Compromised Regulation and Enforcement

The unfolding Ohio catastrophe is remarkable for being unremarkable.

The national response should include:

—Comprehensive Oversight and Investigations by Congress. While the Republicans control the House of Representatives and the Democrats control the presidency, they should eschew partisan sniping. The problems exemplified by this tragedy are longstanding. Neither legacy party holds the moral high ground vis-a-vis the other.

—Federal Statutes and Regulations Should be Reviewed, Simplified, and Strengthened. To salve the sense that action is required in the aftermath of a crisis, contemporary politicians tend to enact new laws. They are tossed into already bloated statute books. These are followed by implementing regulations in the Federal Register.

The result: Too many laws, too many agencies, too little accountability.

Simplification should be sought as the necessary foundation for accountability going forward.

—Law Enforcement Should Be Reviewed. Statutes and regulations may be perfect on paper, yet entirely ineffective in execution. Politicians and professors share the conceit that elegant laws translate seamlessly into the results they intend.

Fact check: Wrong!

Strict law enforcement is the link between the law and the facts on the ground.

Enforcement is a key element of accountability—and not only for violators. Practically speaking, laws are reliably enforced only if they’re simple and clear rather than convoluted and muddled. Unscrupulous lawyers and other advocates ply their dishonorable craft amid the ambiguities of words and sentences and paragraphs of official documents.

—Top Public Officials Should Be On the Scene. People want to see high officials on the scene of a catastrophe of this magnitude. We are right to demand it.

Secretary Buttigieg’s absence has been profoundly disappointing.

In attempting to maintain his distance, Buttigieg has followed the conventional political playbook. Consultants routinely advise officeholders to stay away from such incidents. Better to limit photo ops to ribbon-cutting of federally funded facilities and other good news.

Such a blinkered, self-interested perspective is readily rationalized in today’s Washington. Agency secretaries tend to be front men and women for enterprises conceived, written, directed, and produced by others.

Most secretaries have little understanding of or interest in the operations of their organizations. That is left to the permanent bureaucracy.

Outside of public view or congressional oversight, White House staff direct administration appointees on a range of matters. Special interests turn to this shadowy avenue of influence when other approaches have failed.

The direct involvement of the secretary is most needed for a crisis such as East Palestine. This is what his agency exists to do. This is why it has an office of the secretary.

The train derailment and consequent fires and contamination occurred in an exceptionally highly regulated space, where transportation, chemical safety, land use, and public health intersect.

Had the secretary been on the scene, he could have directly experienced and evaluated the situation. He would not be hostage to the vagaries of mediated information flow, often from self-interested sources.

He could have sorted out the inevitable confusion attendant to the simultaneous actions of state, local, and federal government entities. This could include coordinating the contradictory communications issued from a range of public officials. This is all the more urgent in an under-resourced community such as East Palestine.

The issues implicated are far from a one-off. They are going to become ever more urgent in the coming years. Consider that our national transition toward renewable energy—combined with overdue onshoring of priority industries generally—will require safe and reliable transportation and storage of hazardous chemicals incident to mining and manufacturing.

The secretary of transportation marks the spot where these demands meet.

While Buttigieg may have missed the mark in the early innings, this story is far from complete. Even now, his direct participation could afford him first-hand understanding of where the current response and remedial procedures are working or faltering. He could strive to earn the credibility to speak with authority in after-action review and subsequent monitoring, improvement, and reform.

Connection to Russia-Ukraine War

The East Palestine tragedy has far-reaching implications.

The cocksure, condescending wolf-warrior schadenfreude issuing from the Chinese regime is a chastening reminder that the world is watching.

We can be certain that the Putin government in Moscow is taking great interest.

Following 9/11, there was overdue awareness of the vulnerability of the range of our infrastructure to terror attacks.

As reported in E&E Greenwire last year, there is growing recognition that the Russia-Ukraine war has heightened such risks:

The water sector quietly began preparing for a possible onslaught of cyberattacks from Russia more than two months ago, when rumblings of an invasion of Ukraine were being discussed at the White House.

Today water utilities across the country are girding for online attacks and misinformation campaigns that could lead to drinking water contamination, service disruptions and demands for ransom.

For various reasons, that has not yet come to pass—at least on a high level.

This could change rapidly.

A year ago, the United States applied financial sanctions against against Russia. Now, the United States is engaging in a proxy war.

As reported by theWashington Post on February 9, 2023:

Ukrainian officials said they require coordinates provided or confirmed by the United States and its allies for the vast majority of strikes using its advanced U.S.-provided rocket systems, a previously undisclosed practice that reveals a deeper and more operationally active role for the Pentagon in the war.

The disclosure, confirmed by three senior Ukrainian officials and a senior U.S. official, comes after months of Kyiv’s forces pounding Russian targets —including headquarters, ammunition depots and barracks—on Ukrainian soil with the U.S.-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, and other similar precision-guided weapons such as the M270 multiple-launch rocket system.

The full import of this may be lost on a political class that experiences wars as video games, where they manipulate the joypad and control the on-off switch.

Those on the ground in and near Ukraine—and those Americans whose families and communities are most closely connected to military service—know otherwise.

A Great Nation Serves Its Citizens

The East Palestine catastrophe is far from over. Nonetheless, it is already providing much needed reminders.

When tragedy strikes, where do citizens turn for security and protection? The nation.

When infrastructure fails, it often has disproportionate impact on lower income communities. This links the East Palestine derailment to the shocking failures to supply clean drinking water to the populations of Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi.

These communities include many of the forgotten Americans of our moment. Forgotten, that is, until a crisis shames all of us into undivided attention. Forgotten, that is, until the nation calls for troops and treasure in defense of the commonwealth.

On the fundamental matters, every American must know that the nation has their back. That is how we serve one another.

We’re not there yet.

Our ideals point the way forward.

Our history reminds us we can do it.

Our children remind us we must.

And the world is watching.

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Image Credit | National Transportation Safety Board, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons; HIMARS firing, United States Army, Public domain via Wikipedia.