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America, the Land Where ‘There’s Nothing We Can Do.’

Except for one simple, devastating thing.

Lauren Elizabeth
3 min readFeb 16, 2023
Photo by Nik Shuliahin 💛💙 on Unsplash

In East Palestine, Ohio, the wildlife is dying. People are falling sick, too. They’re complaining that their pets are as well. In this little working class town, people are anxious and scared about the very air they breathe.

And they should be.

Frankly, I’m not sure we have any idea how devastating that train derailment and the ecological aftermath in East Palestine, Ohio is going to be just yet. But as locals raise the alarm, the railroad company Norfolk Southern offered a measly $1,000,000 to the people of East Palestine, and the Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg went over a week without even bothering to publicly address the disaster.

He had some jokes about balloons, though.

Of course, he’s more than happy to shift the blame to Congress even instances where it’s clear he could do more than he has. Which, as we all know, is nothing.

The Lever reports:

“…Risch added that nothing prevents Buttigieg from using his existing rulemaking authority to expand the definition of a “high-hazard flammable train” to cover trains like the one in Ohio.

Under the existing limited definition, the Ohio train — which…

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Lauren Elizabeth
Lauren Elizabeth

Written by Lauren Elizabeth

Lauren is a writer & leftist with analysis on topics related to politics & policy. She can be reached at LaurenMartinchek@gmail.com or Twitter @xlauren_mx

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