U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has been repeatedly criticized for transportation problems, including the holiday pile up at our ports that slowed delivery of goods in December. He was also criticized for his response to the recent airport shutdown. I have not joined in that criticism because I am not sure that he has direct responsibility for some of these problems. However, Buttigieg recently raised a legal claim to blame the Trump Administration for the train disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. The claim was not only manifestly false but Buttigieg knew or should have known it was false. The implications are deeply disturbing. When confronted with a disaster, Buttigieg not only made a false claim but attempted to weaponize a tragedy against political opponents. That is a serious problem for a public figure and worthy of condemnation.
Buttigieg was criticized for his delay in responding publicly to the Ohio disaster and his even longer delay in going to the site. Again, while a politically tone deaf, I was not one of those critics. It is possible to respond to a tragedy without being at the scene. However, the Administration (including the President) were clearly losing ground in its response with many noting the absence of both the President and Transportation Secretary in Ohio after the wreck.
When Buttigieg finally made it to the scene, significant time had passed and many of the details were known publicly on the cause. Buttigieg presumably had even earlier and better information, including the statements of the train crew on the cause.
The crew of the freight train received a warning about an overheating wheel bearing and tried to slow the train in response. According to the report of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the wheel bearing was heating up for several miles before reaching 253 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the air temperature. The train engineer employed the brakes and the automatic braking system also activated, but fifty of the train’s 149 cars derailed with 11 carrying toxic chemicals.
Given his delay in visiting the site, Buttigieg had more information on the cause of the derailment than just the initial accounts. However, he falsely claimed that “we’re constrained by law on some areas of rail regulation,” and cited “the braking rule withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2018 because of a law passed by Congress in 2015.”
This false claim was picked up by various pundits and politicians, including figures like Joy Behar on the The View. That included Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) who went to the Senate floor and declared that, in 2017,
“the Trump administration repealed requirements for an electronic braking system because, according to them, the safety benefits were not worth the cost. I think the people of East Palestine now know that analysis was wrong and that they’re suffering the consequences of rail companies putting profits over people.”
Yet, politicians and pundits often weaponize tragedy. A Secretary of Transportation is needed to establish the facts and assure the public that safety, not politics, is driving decisionmaking during a crisis. Buttigieg clearly failed that test in spectacular fashion.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy took the opposite approach and stated the facts dispassionately and without a political spin. She stated that the rule raised by Buttigieg would have applied only to trains classified as high-hazard flammable trains: “This means even if the rule had gone into effect, this train wouldn’t have had ECP brakes.”
Homendy sounded more like a cabinet member than Buttigieg when she declared “Enough with the politics on this. I don’t understand why this has gotten so political. This is a community that is suffering. This is not about politics.” Homendy added that anyone who says otherwise is “spreading misinformation.”
Given this Administration’s long use of disinformation and misinformation as rationales for censorship, the statement was particularly poignant. Would the Biden Administration demand that Buttigieg be censored by social media in making this claim as it has done with conservative speakers or posters? After all, this was a false claim made on a current public health emergency.
Of course, I would not censor Buttigieg. It is sufficient (as shown this week) that free speech allows for good speech to counter bad speech. However, it is another example of how subjective censorship can be when you go into the business of barring views deemed disinformation.
Even The Washington Post called out the claims of Buttigieg. In a Monday column, Glenn Kessler stated
“We decided to examine every possible regulatory change made under Trump that could be related to the accident and assess whether it could have made an impact. From our analysis, none of the regulatory changes made during the Trump administration at this point can be cited as contributing to the accident.”
At a time of tragedy, presidents ideally try to rally a nation to a common cause and shared suffering. They do not always succeed. However, cabinet members are expected to show complete detachment from politics in dealing with tragedies to assure the public that public safety is not being balanced against political expediencies. That is why this false claim is so serious. One of the first major statements made by Buttigieg at the scene was to attack the former president and the expected opponent to President Biden in 2024.
Buttigieg went off the tracks with this political spin. He should apologize.
Buttigieg is an intelligence asset. He’s a compete and utter fraud which is why I’m not surprised that he sees no reason not to lie to the American people for entirely political reasons even as a cabinet member responsible for America’s transportation system. He has an almost psychopathic mentality about his role in government feeling no obligation whatsoever to actually do anything. As an intelligence asset, he thinks his responsibility is simply to occupy a position and wait for his handlers instructions.
There is no enumerated power to regulate transportation.
Why is this freak of nature assigned to an irrefutably unconstitutional department?
Oh, yeah, huh, social engineering, propagandization, indoctrination and brainwashing.
Do your brains feel squeaky clean?
___________________________
COLLINS DICTIONARY
freak of nature
in American English
noun
1. a person or animal that is born or grows with abnormal physical features
2. an unusual, unexpected natural phenomenon
tsicby, if you look at the Buttigieg Wikipedia page there is no mention of his having any experience in the transportation industry. He was appointed only because he is considered an up and comer in the Democratic Party. They say that there are no Groomers in the Democratic party.
TiT,
Recall the run up to the primaries in 2020?
Biden was doing poorly. Then suddenly all the other Democrat candidates drop out of the race and endorse Biden. I think Buttigieg dropped out in return for a cushy position in the Biden admin. One which he has no actual experience. I see no indication of leadership either.
Watching some of the videos, and the one of him taking a picture of a journalist, he is clearly out of his depth, he knows it, and does not want to be there.
Correction, I meant run up to the DNC.
It was during the primaries when all the other candidates suddenly dropped out and endorsed Biden.
Not only Buttegieg, but also one of our regular commentators, suggested that Trump’s “environmental record” was relevant to the derailment. See “Texas Professor Sues University After Being Allegedly Threatened Over His Criticism of CRT and DEI”, “Anonymous” @ February 22, 2023 at 10:27 am. It seems he was “endorsing” the statements of the Guardian newspaper.
Turning a blind eye—whether to the people enslaved by the Chinese Communist Party, the harm inflicted by COVID lockdowns, masks, and vaccines, the women and children killed by the war in Ukraine, the environmental harm from non-fossil fuel energy sources, the science regarding when life begins, or the preventable dangers in our transportation system—has become a defining feature of the Biden administration.
“When confronted with a disaster, Buttigieg not only made a false claim but attempted to weaponize a tragedy against political opponents. That is a serious problem for a public figure and worthy of condemnation.”
Unfortunately, “condemnation” is a toothless word that doesn’t get the important job done. Make the end of that last sentence “worthy of IMPEACHMENT.”
If continuing failure compounded with malicious false accusations and/or political blame-shifting and a PATTERN of incompetence combined with reckless disregard for the importance of his JOB doesn’t fit the bill for impeachment, then nothing does. There are minimum standards of success at any important job that MUST be met. Buttmunch might make a reasonable bagboy at the local supermarket, but as someone holding a vital government job overseeing one of the most important functions in a non-third-world nation, he has failed the on-the-job audition spectacularly.
If you asked 10 random people who Buttmunch is, 9 out of 10 of them could probably tell you that he’s gay — thanks to how much publicity he’s SOUGHT for being gay — whereas less than 5 out of 10 could probably tell you that’s he’s the Secretary of Transportation — and most of them would likely only know that from all of the publicity he’s received for his spectacular FAILURES. Buttmunch clearly sees himself as the Secretary of Gay Pride, NOT the Secretary of Transportation. Perhaps he WOULD make a good Secretary of Gay Pride, but for the time being there is no such office, and the country is suffering under the absence of a qualified Secretary of Transportation.
Nothing left to say about this other than any free-thinking person had better wake up and see that our modern left are hell bent on becoming dictators. Our Constitution is quite literally a trifle to them. This is EXACTLY how Rome fell, in decadence and ignorance, and 90% of democratic voters do not recognize it as such, and apparently are happy to live in a burning world rather than admit they are wrong.
James,
Exactly!!
They would rather double or even triple down on their lies than admit they were wrong.
Jonathan: You’re right. “Politicians and pundits often weaponize tragedy”. We saw this the other night on Tucker Carlson’s Fox show. He used the East Palestine crash to push his frequent theme about white grievances: “East Palestine is overwhelmingly white, and it’s politically conservative…If this had happened to the rich or the ‘favored poor’, it would be the lead story of every news channel…But it happened to the poor town of East Palestine, Ohio, whose people are forgotten, and in the view of the people who lead this country, forgettable”. In a separate Fox interview GOP Sen. JD Vance echoed Carlson’s point: “…the Secretary of Transportation talking about how we have too many white male construction workers instead of the fact that our trains are crashing”. Carlson and Vance tried to turn this rail tragedy into bait for the white grievance crowd. Now that’s “weaponization” in spades!
What Fox doesn’t want its viewers to see is the labor and business practices at railroads like Norfolk. Late last year a train strike was averted when the Biden Administration and Congress intervened. But the final agreement did not include a paid sick leave provision demanded by the unions but opposed by the railroads, including Norfolk. So at the time of the East Palestine crash Norfolk train crew members did not have paid sick leave. In addition, the train that crashed in East Palestine was not equipped with ECP brakes–fully electric brakes. Norfolk lobbied for years against ECP brakes for trains carrying hazardous materials. Too expense. But in 2022 Norfolk made $4.8 billion but managed to only scrape together $25,000 for the residents of East Palestine! Then because of furloughs the 141-car train that crashed in East Palestine carried just two crew members and one trainee. No doubt the NTSB will find the proximate causes of the East Palestine crash. And, hopefully, its recommendations will include mandatory ECP brakes for all trains carrying any form of hazardous materials. But the NTSB will probably not address the other important issues–like the failure of Norfolk to offer paid sick leave to crews that no doubt often work while sick.
Perhaps, we should also address how Trump tried to politically weaponize the tragedy. He show up in East Palestine before Buttigieg with his own version of aid. He handed out bottles of his Trump branded water. He then went to a local McDonald’s and passed out his red MAGA hats. Using this tragedy to promote his 2024 campaign is a new low, even for the Trumpster! But that’s not something you want to point out. Blaming Buttigieg for this tragedy is scapegoating. It was Carlson who “went off the tracks”, to use your words, and if anyone owes an apology it’s Tucker Carlson–for his attempt to make the crash about white people!
“Perhaps, we should also address how Trump tried to politically weaponize the tragedy.”
Perhaps we should recall what all Democrat politicians practice and preach: Never let a good tragedy go to waste.
The difference here with Trump’s visit, is that he actually cares. And the people actually care about Trump. Biden doesn’t give a shite. And the people don’t give a shite about Biden.
Trump actually cares? Now there is a delusional belief worthy of condemnation.
Trump went to East Palestine.
He brought bottled water.
He paid for food, albeit McDonalds, for people.
Biden went to the Ukraine and promised billions more of our taxpayers money to the most corrupt Eastern European country.
Yet he will not go to East Palestine OH.
Biden will not commit the same kind of money to that American community.
As I have stated on this blog before, I do not want either Trump or Biden to run in 2024. I want them both to go quietly away.
But Trump looks and acts more presidential than Biden.
Not good optics for the Democrat party or the Biden admin.
Which do you want? America First? Or America Last?
I vote America First.
And if you vote America Last, when are you, your children, or your grand children enlisting in the military, in a combat MOS, and volunteering to be on the front lines of WWIII?
“Blaming Buttigieg for this tragedy is scapegoating.”
It’s called playing politics — just like the Dems do it.
Buh bye Pete. Your political career is about to be derailed, just like all them trains.
Dems seem to forget the part of their base that ain’t all that keen on homosexuality. Ever seen Joy Reid’s homophobic rants from the past? The ones she claimed were not hers? That her computer was hacked? That’s right. The black community ain’t never gonna rally behind a Mayor Pete for president — even if he was remotely up to the job, which he is not.
OT:
“The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,” which goes on sale Tuesday, has already hit No. 1 on the Top 100 list of Amazon.com Inc.”
– Wall Street Journal
As long as Pete remains gay, he is infinitely qualified for his position
Happy to see you’re still lurking in the background. I’ve missed your logic and perspective.
“Buttigieg was criticized for his delay . . .” (JT)
While Biden parades around Ukraine for photo-ops, his Administration announces incessantly their support for Ukraine with “whatever it takes.” That “whatever,” to date, is some $200 billion.
Meanwhile, by comparison, the Administration gives the middle finger to American citizens in Ohio.
Such are the grossly misplaced priorities of an Administration that hates its own country, that detests our values, that regards us a pawns for its social engineering. It’s tempting to add that this Administration puts America *last*. But that is too mild.
To this (Obama) Administration, we are Nancy Kerrigan. They are Tonya Harding.
Well said…
Buttigieg will never be president due to the way he has handled his first national office and the way his arrogance can’t be stopped. The guy is a little boy who appears to be a teenager with a lack of gravitas that will doom any chance of being the chief executive. This isn’t a gay thing, it is a presence thing. A guy standing 5’8″ with a boyish face will never carry the guy vote and as much as I hate to tell the media, the guy vote matters too. (They always talk of the “gender gap” without realizing that any gap among genders will be by definition a double edged sword. If your vote among women is 20% higher among women and 18% lower among men then the great 20% gap is really a paltry 2% gap).
We have seen Pete mangle the supply chain as he went on PATERNITY LEAVE. Has any other executive gone on paternity leave for such a long time during a crises? We saw Pete handle the baby formula issue. We saw Pete handle the airline issue. We saw Pete handle the train strike issue. Now we have seen Pete handle the derailment issue. He will never be president.
Has the Sec of DOT ever been an issue before? Has anyone ever even known who was in the seat before? The guy is a joke.
The Biden cabinet is the worst cabinet ever. The only reason that Pete will come off of the headlines is because some other cabinet member will be awful and they will take over the news. We had Mayorkas ruining the border, Yellen giving us inflation. Granholm being a joke at energy, Blinken at state as war breaks out, Lloyd Austin watching us lose 75 BILLION dollars in arms to the Taliban, Merrick Garland being the most political and worst AG ever, Linda Thomas-Greenfield being our anti-American ambassador to the UN and of course Kamala Harris as VP. Throw in people like KJP for a laugh and you see why we are where we are.
Biden should not go anywhere near East Palestine, OH, considering his dementia and brain damage. Imagine what would happen to Biden’s brain if he sniffed the air or stood on soil contaminated by vinyl chloride, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, etc
Jill, stop pushing Joe to board a train headed to East Palestine!
😂
Something not discussed thus far: In addition to Professor Turley correctly pointing to NTSB’s Jennifer Homendy “[statement] that the rule raised by Buttigieg would have applied only to trains classified as high-hazard flammable trains: ‘This means even if the rule had gone into effect, this train wouldn’t have had ECP brakes,’” I add the following:
It was the OBAMA administration that originally questioned (in 2016) flaws in the cost/benefit analysis of implementing the rule, and questioned the use of “computer-based modeling” as justification for the rule:
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-122
From the GAO report:
“In 2016, we reported that the DOT did not appropriately account for uncertainty when estimating the costs and benefits of its 2015 rule. To support the rule, DOT conducted computer-based modeling of the potential safety benefits of ECP brakes and estimated potential costs and benefits…DOT published two reports and explanatory details in the final rule to document its modeling approach. However, we found that DOT’s modeling lacked transparency as the information published was not necessarily sufficient to enable an independent third party to replicate it. For example, DOT did not report complete details on specific inputs. Best practices identified by the Office of Management and Budget state that modeling results published by federal agencies should be supported by transparent data to facilitate third-party review. Because DOT did not provide some of the specific data and information underlying its modeling efforts [later supplemented by DOT in 2017]…..
“Our report, issued in October 2016, examined DOT’s rulemaking on ECP brakes and determined that DOT needed additional data and greater transparency in estimating potential safety benefits of ECP brakes. After conducting additional analyses, as required by the FAST Act, DOT determined that the ECP brake requirements for railroads were not economically justified, and issued a final rule in September 2018 removing these requirements. ”
So totally blaming Trump is a little bit of a stretch, notwithstanding the lack of a causal nexus between the rule and the Ohio accident….
Lin,
Thank you for bringing that to our attention.
He needs more paternity time off.
One would expect someone in the Federal Government would access scientific handbooks to ascertain the risks and consequences due to combustible chemicals like vinyl chloride. Those days are behind us. The Left have plunged our country into the Dark Ages Redux.
https://webwiser.nlm.nih.gov/substance?substanceId=43&catId=61
Vinyl chloride
CAS RN: 75-01-4
Toxic Combustion Products
Combustion may produce irritants and toxic gases, including hydrogen chloride, carbon monoxide. /Vinyl chloride, inhibited/
NFPA, IARC
National Fire Protection Association; Fire Protection Guide to Hazardous Materials. 14TH Edition, Quincy, MA 2010. 49-154.
Poisonous gases are produced in fire, including phosgene, hydrogen chloride, and carbon monoxide.
Sittig’s Handbook of Toxic and Hazardous Chemical Carcinogens 6th Edition Volume 1: A-K,Volume 2
Pohanish, R.P. (ed). Sittig’s Handbook of Toxic and Hazardous Chemical Carcinogens 6th Edition Volume 1: A-K,Volume 2: L-Z. William Andrew, Waltham, MA 2012. 2703.
If anyone still thinks that Svelaz isn’t a paid plant then you need to wake up and smell the coffee. This guy has defended every single thing the democrats have done…everything. There has not been one time that this paid operative has not supported the leftists in power to the point of defending Mayor Pete and his indefensible position on this disaster. If this had been a Republican it would have been Katrina and Chernobyl mixed in with Three Mile Island and Svelaz would have been leading the attacks.
Man am I sick of seeing this guy comment hundreds of times for every column, he has to be an operative. We now know what they did with Twitter and 80 FBI agents embedded there why would we not think this obvious poster isn’t of the same ilk?
If he isn’t an agent then he is just an oddball who has that strange need to be contrarian in every way. We all know that contrarians are odd balls but my money is still on this guy being paid. Why else would he comment so many times?
I think we all know people who exhibit the same characteristics as Sevalez, Gigi, Dennis, Fish Wings, et. al.
They do not need to be paid to do what they do. They get their jollies from irritating others, plain and simple. Truth or logic need not be used–in fact, seldom is–the objective is to irritate. I am sure the psychiatrists have a word for this behavior.
Agent.
Pete Buttigieg is a gay cabinet member so that automatically means that any criticism of him is by default racism of some sort. He is a good little Democratic foot soldier with a stunning lack of self-awareness. Buttigieg 2024 anyone ??? Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article.
This is what equality of outcome looks like.
Newsflash, he won’t. Further, other than some tutt-tutting by WaPo and maybe the NYT, not a single talking head on the big 3 networks, or CNN/MSNBC. will call him out for this (or any of the politicians that have parroted this lie).
Let us just leave it at:”That is a serious problem for a public figure and worthy of condemnation.”. Enough said about the brandon administration in total.