Norfolk Southern-Corporatism Derailed

A tip of the hat to Norfolk Southern Railway for supplying an exemplary display of recklessness that typifies todays shareholder driven economy - one that glorifies profits above and beyond every living species on the planet and the very habitat it requires for survival. From an illustrative perspective, it doesn't get much better than this.

By now, all Americans are aware of the Norfolk Southern train derailment and subsequent explosion during the first week in February 2023. It's a story the corporate press initially ignored until they were forced to respond after images of a toxic mushroom cloud went viral on social media networks. Since then, they've done their best to stage management the situation in an effort to deflect blame and obfuscate responsibility from the perpetrators (their owners) to the enablers - Trump for his dismissal of braking regulations that could have prevented the incident and Obama for eliminating requirements restricting hazardous chemicals that ultimately caused the largest degree of damage.

However, there is an equally concerning aspect of this story focused on the immense amount of control that Norfolk Southern has been able to maintain over the event. Immediately after the explosion, the country's fourth largest railway hired a private police force to protect the area surrounding the disaster site which resulted in 'protective' reporting and the arrest of at least one independent journalist. Additionally, the company hired a private testing agency (Tetra Tech) to determine if the surrounding environment was safe for occupancy. Tetra Tech is currently fighting a lawsuit brought on by the Department of Justice for providing fraudulent soil samples to the EPA while protecting its client (the US Navy) in one of the largest cases of eco fraud in US history. And of course, Norfolk Southern and Tetra Tech are both owned by the behemoth private equity firms BlackRock and Vangaurd. In short, a publicly traded private company protecting its own interest by hiring affiliated, privately held consulting firms to oversee the information, data and ability of others to verify.

To add further fuel to the fire, (pun intended) those who claim to represent the peoples interest, the President of the United States and his Secretary of Transportation, made no effort to display solidarity with the people until public pressure became insurmountable. Even Norfolk Southern's CEO failed to appear for the first organized town hall meeting fearing danger from public angst (irony dripping).

So, while the system does its best to provide cover for a shareholder driven rail industry that recorded record profits in 2022, protection agencies, politicians and political parties continue blame one another. But all of our elected leaders know very well they are an integral component of a privatized America that's answers to no one other then their masters in lower Manhattan. And what I shame. We're not talking about rocket science folks. Simple and relatively inexpensive upgrades to the trains, infrastructure and employees along with basic regulations that limit the number of cars per route would prevent 99% of the 1000 plus derailments per year. In most rational worlds, this would have happened decades ago. But on the island of $5000 suits and 5 homes, it's simply not acceptable. In fact, if the rail industry, technically an oligopoly, can't make 50 cents on every dollar spent through Precision Scheduled Railroading, they won't carry the freight. And when disasters like East Palestine occur, they just pad their already inflated prices to cover the difference. This IS the business model and you the consumer are paying the price. Need proof, take a look NSR's stock price over the past twenty years.

Essentially, you have the shareholder class controlling the entire process by privatizing our public domain via legal bribes (lobbyists) while their corporate press dictates a favorable narrative to deflect blame away from industry and on to a government that was founded to protect and benefit 'we the people' who are supposed to be running the show. Stock buy backs are paramount and supersede all other investments designed to increase the short and long term value of a company's operations because rigged markets always produce positive shareholder returns.

As I have written in the past, the Corporatocracy is a heavily socialized system (from the populous to the 1%) that functions within a vacuum by ignoring the physical limitations within the habitat it operates. This includes the human beings it requires to purchase the goods and services it sells. Yes, it is insane, completely unsustainable and from my perspective - criminal.

"There is no greater disaster than greed."

Lao Tzu

A quick update.

Wall Street, the Grand Pupa of Socialism, is at again.

Unfortunately, their favorite Silicon Valley Investment Bank experienced a run on deposits from billionaires seeking a better return on their cash only to find out it wasn't available. So now you, the public, will need to step up and bail out Zuckerberg's buddies to ensure their lives of luxury continue to flow seamlessly while you continue to struggle with more banker inflicted inflation. At last count, the amount of money printed from thin air sits at 300 Billion - this from a Federal Reserve that claims to be fighting inflation!

And yes Joe, this is a bailout. Those banking fees you claim to be the means in which our Government will pay for the misguided decisions of SVB executives and their depositors (a highly educated, financially savvy group of people who knew the 250K limits of FDIC insurance and risky nature of the bank's charter) will be borne by the American public. In your own words, "That's how Capitalism works". Not!

Never mind the entire Valley receives billions of tax dollars annually via the bloated Pentagon budget. That's just not enough. It's never enough when it's "other peoples money". In summary, it took one weekend to resolve the Billionaire Boy's Club hiccup at multiple degrees of trend while East Palestine continues to suffer with minimal clarity, funds and prospects for the future. And people wonder why the country is fractured and on the edge!

"We have socialism for the rich, and capitalism for everyone else."

Robert Reich