Dakota Beacon

Our government is behaving now like a grand-scale mafia.  

We need to pay close attention to the quiet part of the Ohio disaster perpetrated by the Norfolk Southern Railway - you know, Mayor Pete Buttagieg’s buddies.   The derailment and reckless “response” to the mess, which created the disaster - without any input from citizens, by the way - has left the property owners there in a world of hurt.  Now, with people, pets and livestock as well as the local wildlife becoming sick from a response they had nothing to do with these people are about to be further punished and the people of America in general are going to be injured by our federal government’s planned response to the response.  

Nixon’s EPA and its so-called “Superfund” are now mobilizing to strip these victims from whatever they have left of their life’s work and investment in our great country.  

The EPA in cooperation with the inJusttice Department are now doing the paperwork to “clean up” and then overcharge these people, putting liens on their property and then enforcing them when no one can possibly pay them off.  How is this any different from Tony ”Big Tuna” Accardo or Al Capone?  These guys were crime toddlers compared to our federal government and its unelected agencies.  The government has woven perfect webs to conspire to take real estate away from private owners - or at least the proper owners.   

A lot of this goes on in the dark, after the media turns off the lights and goes home.  It’s a quiet death of ownership and most of us never hear anything about it.  Only now, from a few outlets which have not been silenced - sites such as Bitchute, which does not censor - we are hearing the bigger story - the not-so-happily-ever-after story of the unfortunate people who have been impacted through no fault of their own by the reckless and apparently unpunished behavior of the railway company.  

This is not an issue merely for East Palestine residents, of course.  It is an issue for each and every one of us.  Remember, a month ago, these people were just like you.  They were minding their own business, going to work, going to school, taking care of their kids, feeding their chickens and livestock, running their businesses, just like you.  They did nothing to precipitate this disaster.  Well, perhaps they could have blocked the railroad from using tracks within the city limits of East Palestine, with a little leadership in their city government.   It might be a very good idea to consider this.  After all, if people’s property can be seized without any problem, any right-of-way the railroads might claim should be voided as well.  Perhaps in order for a railway company to cross the city limits they should be required to sign the kinds of agreements the innocent property owners are being forced into - this might actually result in some clean-up of the practices and condition of the railway companies.  It might be time for citizens and local governments more connected to them to take control of this in advance to protect themselves.  

Otherwise, instead of being compensated and “made whole” for the damages caused to their homes and lives, and the careless, guilty party made to pay for its negligence, they are punished and punished and punished again, while Norfolk Southern, in this case, simply says “sorry” and hides until it all blows over.  Back in Seattle, Bill Gates is scoping out more farmland to pick up at the expense and against the will of the victims.  And we know where that ends. After all, contaminated farmland is perfect for his kind of farming.   Saves him a lot of work, in all probability.  

It’s time to clean up our government, starting at the grassroots (or what’s left of them) and not stopping until we have shut down every single un-elected administrative agency.  Citizens should take some pre-emptive action and put in place some kind of protection in advance from chemical companies, railroads and other kinds of industry which pose this kind of serious risk to the people and their property.  Sure, it might discourage some companies which don’t care about the damage they do from locating in your town, but the experience of the people of East Palestine and surrounding area should stand as a grave warning.  Not every disaster is one that is just “passing through”.  After all, the window of time for this one was probably a couple of minutes.  A factory or chemical plant is a permanent, 24/7/365 threat to a community and if Norlfolk Southern gets away with this and the people take the shaft for it, it will not encourage them to provide any safety for the community, will it?  

There are several take-aways from this story as it continues to unfold:

1.  Begin today, at your local political parties’ county and district conventions, to assert the vital importance of stopping this kind of disaster and its even worse response dead in its tracks by supporting candidates for office who are willing to hold responsible those who have harmed others.   One way these companies get away with this to harm another day and another community is by making it very comfortable financially and otherwise for politicians to do their bidding (just keep in mind the friendly photo of Pete Buttagieg and the head of Norfolk Southern).  Hold them accountable personally for their campaigns and donors and then urge them to work toward shutting down the EPA and other un-elected agencies of the government, starting with defunding their legal departments.

2. Go to your city counselman and get him to support holding all companies to account for any pollution or environmental or safety hazards they might pose to the community.  Too many of these guys are so concentrated on “growing the community” and bringing in “more jobs” and competing with the town up the river from them that they simply don’t care what happens as a result.  We just saw this in Grand Forks and were spared only by the action of the Air Force in making it crystal clear that the Fufeng project could be the end of the Grand Forks Air Force Base.  Most towns don’t have that kind of balance.  It does no good to bring jobs into a city if those jobs are tied to such possibilities.

3. Call your current congressmen and senators and express your deep and personal concern about what is happening to the people of East Palestine right now.  Let them know you don’t support letting the clean-up fall on them and that no way would you support allowing them to lose their homes and land without full compensation and being held harmless in any clean-up costs.  They did not do this.  Norfolk Southern and its cronies in government did this.

4. When election time rolls around make issues like this prime ones for every candidate who asks for your vote.

5. Be prepared in advance with a list of experts to call on in the unhappy event that something does spill or explode in your town.  It seems odd, in a terrible way, that whoever ordered the so-called “controlled” burn of these dangerous chemicals did not consult with anyone of expertise and experience as to what would be the best course of action BEFORE the big burn.  At that moment, East Palestine and its people and surrounding area were all safe and well.  It would have seemed very logical to an intelligent person to have done so, and perhaps checked into the possibility of simply containing the dangerous stuff until it could be decanted, as it were, into other containers that would have been safe, got the chemicals back on the road in some alternate vehicles - perhaps tank trucks - and proceeded to get the train back on the tracks or whatever and none of this would have been more than a local news item.  How on earth did it seem like a good idea to set this on fire?  Again, there should have been - and in every community there should be - a protocol for safely handling such a spill, whether from a collision involving trucks or a railroad incident.  There are experts somewhere who could have told the fire department and whoever else was involved in this decision not to do it.

It isn’t just the EPA here.  It will also be the behavior of FEMA.  I have long said we need to shut down FEMA - this comes from personal experience of their uselessness to those they are supposed to be there to help.  Now we have even greater threats as our totalitarian government continues to encroach on our freedoms.  FEMA, weaponized,  can become a tool of further repression and punishment.  Our state governments should align with other states which have similar issues as to disaster response.  Some will have earthquakes in common, some flooding, some tornado devastation, some will have issues related to industry.  The states should cooperate at the state level to provide assistance and response to disasters.  I have outlined a rough idea of how this could work - a states’ association could set up a fund not to be touched (as the so-called Legacy Fund was in North Dakota) by any politician or for any other purpose.  It could be called upon by any legitimate need of any associated state and provide an interest-free loan with payment in full of the principal within 10 years, after which interest could kick in and the state not be eligible for another loan from the fund until it is paid in full.  

This would have several beneficial effects.  People close to the disaster would also be close to the funding of the response.  There would be some sense of control by the people rather than of the people.  The profligate waste of money we saw in Grand Forks after the 1997 flood would be avoided.  This waste is fueled by the idea that this is “free money” - always a big mistake - and that the duty of the city fathers or whomever is to grab the largest share possible and spend it in order to justify more.  We saw how this not only wasted our resources financially, but also wasted our cultural resources.  Historic buildings were deemed a better deal destroyed than salvaged.  If a furnace needed to be replaced in a school and that and cleaning would have made it functional and safe again, why tear it down and construct a new one?  True- it did make a lot of money for contractors, but at that point in our own town’s history, local contractors were burdened enough with work.  We just imported a lot of contractors from thousands of miles away (some of which took advantage and left damages of their own behind).  

Even damage prevention was subverted by this atmosphere of “cashing in” on disaster.  A system holding everyone to an ethical standard is obviously the most desirable, whether it is the perpetrator of a disaster - like Norfolk Southern Railway in East Palestine - or local political actors (elected as well as appointed) who use a local disaster to rob the federal government.  Both are bad.  

In the case of the recent Ohio disaster it is clear that these people, the residents, did nothing to bring this on.  We must not countenance their being persecuted for this disaster but rather ensure that they are made whole to the greatest possible extent and that no other person or entity can take advantage of them and their dire predicament to gain their own illicit ends.  Perhaps cities will wake up and realize that they need to take care of themselves - this should teach us that we are on our own.  Big Brother is not there to help but to kick us when we are down and hurting.  

Finally, we should have learned by now, whether we look at the imminence of nuclear holocaust brought on by the stupid cleaving onto Ukraine with all its corruption and our CIA’s investment there to the Mexican border to the little midwestern town of East Palestine, that we cannot afford ever again to put idiots and senile has-beens in charge.  In three years we have gone from a powerhouse nation in its prime to a total wreckage at home and abroad.  It’s our own fault for letting this happen.  

In the end, we need to recognize that elections have consequences and need to be protected from corruption.