Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 1: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
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Speaker 1: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Matt Stoler, author of monopoly focused newsletter Big and
Speaker 1: an anti trust policy analyst. I have a great segment
Speaker 1: for you today on this Big Breakdown. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: one is a bit more political than normal because I'm
Speaker 1: looking at monopolies and how they were discussed in last
Speaker 1: week's State of the Union addressed Joe Biden, the President
Speaker 1: mentioned anti trust and it's the first time it's been
Speaker 1: brought up in a State of the Union speech since
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. So I'm going to discuss what happened
Speaker 1: at the speech, why it matters, and how Joe Biden
Speaker 1: basically said last week that Ticketmaster sucks. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: get to it. We're all sort of aware that the
Speaker 1: Democrats used to be considered vaguely in some sense, the
Speaker 1: party of working people. But why why did they have
Speaker 1: this impression. Well, here's a campaign flyer that a Southern Democrat,
Speaker 1: a guy named right Patman, used in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: to describe to his rural constituents why they should vote
Speaker 1: for him and for Democrats in general. Here's what our
Speaker 1: Democratic party has given us, it said. The idea was
Speaker 1: Democrats deliver for you roads, electricity, telephone service, unemployment assurance,
Speaker 1: old age benefits. Didn't have it, then you elected Democrats,
Speaker 1: then you did. So that's what politics used to be about,
Speaker 1: stuff normal people understood. And it was true. In nineteen forty,
Speaker 1: thirty five percent of Americans did not have flush toilets,
Speaker 1: includes eighty percent of residents of Mississippi. They didn't have
Speaker 1: flush toilets. By nineteen seventy, nearly all of them did.
Speaker 1: That is what politics meant. And this wasn't just a
Speaker 1: Democratic party frame. Everyone bought into it. The basic notion
Speaker 1: was that we can come together and choose how we
Speaker 1: organize our society through politics, and politicians fight for votes
Speaker 1: over how best to do that. Now, of course it
Speaker 1: wasn't perfect there were lots of corruption and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth. But that was the gist of how
Speaker 1: people thought about politics. And for forty years, from the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties until the nineteen seventies, this is how voters
Speaker 1: understood the Democratic Party. But then Ronald Reagan broke for
Speaker 1: this frame and said, and more broadly said government and
Speaker 1: more broadly politics isn't the solution, it's the problem. And
Speaker 1: a subtle, unset part of that frame was that corporations
Speaker 1: and Wall Street were the solution. Reagan won two elections
Speaker 1: and dominated politics in the nineteen eighties. So how did
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party respond. They didn't respond by fighting back
Speaker 1: and say Reagan is wrong. They fought back by agreeing
Speaker 1: with Ronald Reagan. So Bill Clinton, the first Democratic president
Speaker 1: to take office after twelve years of Republican rule, eight
Speaker 1: years of Reagan, in four years of George H. W. Bush,
Speaker 1: George Bush Senior. What he did, Bill Clinton removed antitrust
Speaker 1: from the Democratic platform, which had been in there. It
Speaker 1: had been in the Democratic Party platform since the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 1: and Bill Clinton took it out in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: and it was in the State of the Union speeches
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties that Bill Clinton made it clear
Speaker 1: that Democrats were no longer the party of government, no
Speaker 1: longer the party of getting things and doing things through politics.
Speaker 1: He talked about not what the government can do for you,
Speaker 1: or what politics can do for you, or how we
Speaker 1: govern ourselves as a society. No, no, He talked about
Speaker 1: things like welfare reform, globalization, violence and sex on TV
Speaker 1: cultural stuff like that. He actually bragged about how he
Speaker 1: had cut the government so it was smaller than it
Speaker 1: was under the Kennedy administration. And this here, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to show you is the most probably the most
Speaker 1: famous clip or one of the most famous clips of
Speaker 1: the Clinton administration. In the State of the Union, the
Speaker 1: era of big government is over. Boom right there, the
Speaker 1: era of big government is over. Listened to all that applause. Now,
Speaker 1: Reagan went after government and unleashed Wall Street. But it
Speaker 1: took Bill Clinton to make that frame bipartisan. Now. Barack
Speaker 1: Obama in two thousand and eight was elected in many
Speaker 1: ways as a repudiation of Clinton. He beat Bill Clinton's wife,
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton in the primary in Iowa and elsewhere, and
Speaker 1: he recognized what Clintonism had wrought. That's how he actually won,
Speaker 1: he promised to renegotiate NAFTA on the campaign trail, and
Speaker 1: in Iowa he walked around and he taught, talked about
Speaker 1: resurrecting antitrust, to go after mensanto and meat packers and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth, and he continued to talk
Speaker 1: this way in many ways during his presidency. So here
Speaker 1: he is in twenty eleven talking about the pain and
Speaker 1: devastation of offshoring, essentially the Ronald Reagan Bill Clinton legacy,
Speaker 1: And for many of the change has been painful. I've
Speaker 1: seen it in the shuttered windows of once booming factories
Speaker 1: and the vacant storefronts on one's busy main streets. I've
Speaker 1: heard it in the frustrations of Americans who've seen their
Speaker 1: paychecks dwindle or their jobs disappear. Proud men and women
Speaker 1: who feel like the rules have been changed in the
Speaker 1: middle of the game, They're right. The rules have changed
Speaker 1: in a single generation. Revolutions in technology have transformed the
Speaker 1: way we live, work, and do business. Steel mills that
Speaker 1: once needed a thousand workers can now do the same
Speaker 1: work with one hundred. Today, just about any company can
Speaker 1: set up shop, hire workers, and sell their products wherever
Speaker 1: there's an Internet connection. The rules have changed, right, That's
Speaker 1: what he said. Obama understood the pain, as you can
Speaker 1: see right there. But despite his understanding of how much
Speaker 1: pain Clinton Reagan had caused, Bush as well, he actually
Speaker 1: adhered to this same philosophy as Clinton. So here's what
Speaker 1: Obama put forward as his agenda to address this. In
Speaker 1: the same speech where he talked about that offshore, we
Speaker 1: have to make America the best place on earth to
Speaker 1: do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit
Speaker 1: and reform our government. That's how our people will prosper.
Speaker 1: That's how we'll win the future. More cutting of deficits,
Speaker 1: more pro corporate speak, more cuts to government. Now, neither
Speaker 1: Clinton nor Obama, Reagan, anyone like that said they wanted
Speaker 1: factories to go offshore. They just argued, and you could
Speaker 1: see that in Obama's clip that despite two hundred years
Speaker 1: of domestic manufacturing in America, it was inevitable that all
Speaker 1: of our chemicals would be made in China. It was
Speaker 1: not NAFTA or the entrance to the World Trade Organization,
Speaker 1: or choosing lacks anti trust enforcement that changed how we live.
Speaker 1: As Obama said, the rules have changed, not we just
Speaker 1: made different decisions globalization and technology. These are giant, uncontrollable
Speaker 1: forces instead of a set of policy choices made by
Speaker 1: human beings. Don't ask me to deal with big corporations
Speaker 1: with offshot factories. I'm just the president now. Of course,
Speaker 1: such a philosophy was cover for private financiers and monopolists
Speaker 1: gaining power over markets. And voters are not stupid. So
Speaker 1: eventually the Democratic Party, had been the party of working
Speaker 1: people became known as a group of smarmi bullshit artists
Speaker 1: because that's what they acted like. Now today, there's a
Speaker 1: general view in America, and this is backed up by
Speaker 1: polling that all politicians are too friendly to big corporations.
Speaker 1: When Joe Biden got elected, and I was not expecting
Speaker 1: him to break from this tradition the guy first took
Speaker 1: office as a Senator in nineteen seventy two. But of
Speaker 1: all people, it's Biden, the weird eighty year old who
Speaker 1: has been in DC longer than most Americans have been alive,
Speaker 1: who seems to be trying to turn the ship around,
Speaker 1: or at least saying he is, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: he is breaking with the legacy of both Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: and the man he served under as Vice President Barack
Speaker 1: Obama and turning the Democrats towards a more populist, anti
Speaker 1: corporate path in many ways. Following a little bit what
Speaker 1: Trump did, now, I'll start with a clip of Biden's
Speaker 1: State of the Union from last week, in which he
Speaker 1: talked about how he's going to make sure we build
Speaker 1: things in America again, and contrast this with what Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton and Barack Obama said every community, every community in
Speaker 1: America has access to affordable high speed internet. No parents
Speaker 1: should have to drive by McDonald's parking lot to help
Speaker 1: for do their foamwork online or their kids, which many
Speaker 1: thousands were doing across the country. And when we do
Speaker 1: these projects, and again I get criticized this, I make
Speaker 1: no excuses for it. We're going to buy American. We're
Speaker 1: going to buy America. Buy America has been the loss
Speaker 1: since nineteen thirty three, but for too long past administration
Speaker 1: is Democratic and Republican have fought to get around it.
Speaker 1: Not anymore. Tonight, I'm announcing new standards require all construction
Speaker 1: materials using federalist infrastructure projects to be made in America.
Speaker 1: Number grass, drywall, fire rocked to cable and on might
Speaker 1: watch American roads bridges, American highways are going to be
Speaker 1: made with American products as well. That right, there is
Speaker 1: a huge difference. Believe him or not, is what he's saying.
Speaker 1: You know, any of the sort of rules have changed. Garbage.
Speaker 1: There's no powerlessness, there's nothing inevitable about anything he's saying.
Speaker 1: He is just saying, we're going to make stuff here.
Speaker 1: The government is going to mandate that. That happened. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you have to trust Joe Biden. Maybe
Speaker 1: he's lying, maybe he won't follow through. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that the president is talking different than his predecessors did
Speaker 1: and in an important speech, the State of the Union.
Speaker 1: Now there are consequences. A few days later, the government
Speaker 1: announced that all broadband grants that were, you know, as
Speaker 1: a result of infrastructure bills that passed last Congress, would
Speaker 1: require American construction materials, and this made telecom lobbyists very unhappy.
Speaker 1: So there is actual follow through, and lots of neoliberal
Speaker 1: Democrats are mad as well. So Larry Summers, who was
Speaker 1: Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, ran economic policy uder Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: was upset at by American policies. So is Jason Furman,
Speaker 1: who is Obama's chief advisor on the economy. You see,
Speaker 1: you know, Peter Coy in the New York Times essentially
Speaker 1: writing that up. But the thing is is Biden talked
Speaker 1: a lot more, talked about a lot more more than
Speaker 1: just making things here. He went after quote unquote big
Speaker 1: Pharma by name. He actually used that term big Pharma.
Speaker 1: It's unusual for the state of the Union. I can't
Speaker 1: think of the last time it happened. He bragged about
Speaker 1: capping insulin prices to thirty five dollars a month for seniors.
Speaker 1: He proposed eliminating so called junk fees. These are fees
Speaker 1: by banks, credit card companies, airlines companies like Ticketmaster to
Speaker 1: sort of nickel and dime. You take a listen. Those
Speaker 1: fees can cost you up to ninety dollars a night
Speaker 1: at hotels that aren't even resorts. Now, if you've stayed
Speaker 1: in a hotel or airbnb, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: These are really annoying. They're essentially cheating you. Now, the
Speaker 1: attack on junk fees isn't fake either. Unfair. Bank overdraft
Speaker 1: fees have dropped by forty percent because of bank regulators.
Speaker 1: That's about five billion dollars over the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: so there's actual file through there as well. Now, another
Speaker 1: thing that got to mention is banning non compete agreements
Speaker 1: that prohibit people from leaving their jobs to work for rivals.
Speaker 1: That's something that Lena kannat the Federal Trade Commission implemented
Speaker 1: or is trying to implement. And let's take a listen
Speaker 1: about how Joe Biden talked about this. Thirty million workers
Speaker 1: have to sign non compete agreements for the jobs they take.
Speaker 1: Thirty million, so a cashier at a burger place can't
Speaker 1: walk across town and take the same job at another
Speaker 1: burger place and make a few bucks more. It just changed,
Speaker 1: But they just changed it because we exposed it. That
Speaker 1: was part of the deal. Guys, look it up, but
Speaker 1: not anymore for banning knows agreements, so companies have to
Speaker 1: compete for workers and pay them what they're worth. I
Speaker 1: did not expect Joe Biden to be the guy doing that,
Speaker 1: but he is. That's the President of the United States
Speaker 1: talking to Congress and the country saying we're going to
Speaker 1: ban non compete agreements. He also talked about competition and
Speaker 1: hearing aids, which are now cheaper because of his policies.
Speaker 1: He's talked about unionization laws, suggested a grouping a stock
Speaker 1: attacks on stock buybacks. He called for stronger rules against
Speaker 1: big tech. What didn't he say though? There was no
Speaker 1: apology for government, and the villain was big business and
Speaker 1: monopoly from nearly start to finish. There's no Clinton or
Speaker 1: Obama talk here. Now you can tell what happened with
Speaker 1: the speech because of who got angry afterwards. Who got
Speaker 1: angry lobbyists, airline lobbyists, bank lobbyists, Wall Street financiers, and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. They don't want to have
Speaker 1: to buy American or stop charging junk fees, and they
Speaker 1: want to engage in stock buybacks. There's a hilarious clips
Speaker 1: of the head of the Consumer Bankers Association talking about
Speaker 1: hard working Americans who want their overdraft fees. It's just
Speaker 1: this is who was upset. Now again, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: you should trust Joe Biden or the Democrats. He may fail,
Speaker 1: he may not mean it, he may change his mind.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of people in Congress who are Democrats
Speaker 1: who may not go along. He has some terrible cabinet
Speaker 1: members like Pete Budajetge, Tom vilseek is not falling through
Speaker 1: at the USTA, and there are plenty of reasons to
Speaker 1: be skeptical that go way beyond that. But what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is that what Joe Biden introduced with that State
Speaker 1: of the Union was a different form of politics. He
Speaker 1: changed the way that a Democratic president talks about political economy,
Speaker 1: and in fact, his speech kind of looked like this,
Speaker 1: here is what our Democratic party has given us. Now,
Speaker 1: if this flyer existed today, it might say ticketmaster sucks,
Speaker 1: and it would certainly not sound like this clip. The
Speaker 1: era of big government is over. Now. It's a little
Speaker 1: too early to tell what Biden's State of the Union
Speaker 1: really means. He has a track record. There is a
Speaker 1: bunch like mergers have dropped by seventy six percent this
Speaker 1: year alone, but he also did the railroad strike problem.
Speaker 1: It's we're not totally sure how far he's gonna take this,
Speaker 1: but at least what he says comes off very different
Speaker 1: than any Democratic leader that I've ever heard, and that
Speaker 1: is something to notice. Thanks for watching this big breakdown
Speaker 1: on the Breaking Points channel. If you'd like to know
Speaker 1: more about big business and how our economy really works,
Speaker 1: you can sign up below for my Market power focused
Speaker 1: newsletter Big in the description, thanks and have a good one.
Speaker 1: Hey there, Miams James Lee, Welcome to another segment of
Speaker 1: fifty one to forty nine on Breaking Points, and today
Speaker 1: I've got a great segment for you about how Big
Speaker 1: Pharma Worldwide stands nearly unchallenged in their ability to dictate
Speaker 1: government health policies to ensure that their own financial interests
Speaker 1: always supersede all other considerations. I say nearly unchallenged for
Speaker 1: a reason. He has it upted on the vaccine front
Speaker 1: and disconfirmed that we will not be a buying peiser
Speaker 1: or modernal COVID shots. Why because India's confirmed that our
Speaker 1: domestic output of more affordable and easiers to store vaccines
Speaker 1: has jumped, it's increased. This essentially means that the two
Speaker 1: globally popular vaccines which they make us a pledge not
Speaker 1: to sell to private parties during the pandemic will not
Speaker 1: be available in India. The story isn't new. I think
Speaker 1: it kind of flew under the radar for the most part,
Speaker 1: but it is one hundred percent worth diving into in
Speaker 1: my opinion, because don't you find it at least just
Speaker 1: a little bit odd that the second most populous country
Speaker 1: in the world did not approve the sale of either
Speaker 1: the Peiser or moderna mRNA COVID nineteen vaccines. Both vaccines
Speaker 1: work on the same technology. India wants them two, but
Speaker 1: on its own terms. We are currently discussing with Indian
Speaker 1: government and expeding to the approval pathway to make our
Speaker 1: piser buyotech vaccine available for use in the country. But
Speaker 1: look at their demands. FISA once indemnity, a legal exemption
Speaker 1: from future lawsuits over their vaccines. Countries like the United
Speaker 1: States and Britain have signed such clauses. It basically means
Speaker 1: that if the vaccine make is sued in India, it
Speaker 1: will be the government's problem, not the companies. India has
Speaker 1: not given such indemnity to any vaccine producer. Why should
Speaker 1: FIZ it be the exception? Great question? Why should they
Speaker 1: be the exception? Why should they be afforded one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of the financial upside of selling billions of doses
Speaker 1: of their product but take none of the risk. I
Speaker 1: guess that's what I would do if I was a
Speaker 1: multinational biopharma manufacturer. But I can't exactly just say that
Speaker 1: out loud, though I think it's best if we conjure
Speaker 1: something else up. This is from a CNBC article back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. Quote. The legal immunity granted to pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: companies doesn't just guard them against lawsuits. It helps lower
Speaker 1: the cost of the immunizations. The government doesn't want people
Speaker 1: suing the companies making the COVID vaccine because then the
Speaker 1: manufacturers would probably charge the government a higher price per
Speaker 1: person per dose. Anybody by that rationale, Oh, it's for us. Well,
Speaker 1: According to the New York Times, the US did not
Speaker 1: pay less for the COVID nineteen vaccine. In fact, it
Speaker 1: was reported that we paid more than many other countries.
Speaker 1: All right, whatever they charged, what they charged, because at
Speaker 1: the time we needed the vaccines, and they also, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess it was somewhat reasonable that they didn't want
Speaker 1: to be liable if anything went wrong because the times
Speaker 1: were so unprecedented quote unquote. This next part is from
Speaker 1: Reuter's quote. Unlike other companies conducting small studies in India
Speaker 1: for foreign developed vaccines, Pfizer had sought an exception, citing
Speaker 1: approvals it had received elsewhere based on trials done in
Speaker 1: countries such as the United States and Germany. Indian health
Speaker 1: officials say they generally asked for so called bridging trials
Speaker 1: to determine if a vaccine is safe and generates an
Speaker 1: immune response in its citizens. I don't know what I
Speaker 1: was thinking at the time, but looking back, I think
Speaker 1: this is kind of incredible. No, the hubris pvisor Moderna.
Speaker 1: They demanded not only indemnity, meaning they assume no legal
Speaker 1: responsibility or risk for their product, but they also refuse
Speaker 1: to do local clinical trials to ensure the safety and
Speaker 1: efficacy of their product. Is it not a little bit
Speaker 1: too transparent that all they care about is selling the product,
Speaker 1: making money, and everything else is kind of secondary. Kudos
Speaker 1: to India, I guess, for making such reasonable requests, but
Speaker 1: it does kind of leave me wondering how in the
Speaker 1: world did they get everybody else on board with this,
Speaker 1: once again hindsight deadly pandemic. They had the so called antidote,
Speaker 1: I guess, so whatever they say goes. I want to
Speaker 1: ask you also about a very important issue of vaccine hesitancy.
Speaker 1: Even folks who get most of their vaccines normally might
Speaker 1: be hesitating about these vaccines because they were developed so quickly.
Speaker 1: What do you tell those folks who might be saying, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wait a few months before I get this one.
Speaker 1: This is a vaccine that was developed without cutting corners
Speaker 1: from a company with one hundred and seventy one years
Speaker 1: of credentials. This is a vaccine that was developed in
Speaker 1: the spotlight and the daylight, with all the data being
Speaker 1: put in servers. And this is a vaccine that is
Speaker 1: getting approved by all authorities in the world. So that
Speaker 1: should say something to them. What doesn't say one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy one years of credentials with plenty of scandals
Speaker 1: throughout left out that part and not all the data
Speaker 1: was made available to the public. And also a little
Speaker 1: bit of circular logic there, why are these vaccines safe
Speaker 1: and effective? Well, because they've been approved by all the
Speaker 1: authorities in the world. How are they approved, Well, they
Speaker 1: were approved because we said that they were safe and effective.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that kind of logic only checks out
Speaker 1: because more than two thirds of Congress cashed a pharma
Speaker 1: campaign check in twenty twenty. I've reported that statistic numerous times,
Speaker 1: but it still astounds me to this day the kind
Speaker 1: of grip big pharma has over US lawmakers. On top
Speaker 1: of that, the pharmaceutical industry also finances about seventy five
Speaker 1: percent of the FDA's Drug division. They own the lawmakers,
Speaker 1: they own the regulators. You tell me if there can
Speaker 1: be any other outcome other than carte blanche for big
Speaker 1: pharma in the US. In Europe, the political and regulatory
Speaker 1: landscape is a bit more challenging for big pharma to navigate.
Speaker 1: So perhaps not all too surprising that it was revealed
Speaker 1: by The New York Times that the one point eight
Speaker 1: billion dollar deal between Peiser and the EU was sealed
Speaker 1: with private texts and calls between the President of the
Speaker 1: European Commission Ursula vonder Lehan and Peiser CEO Albert Borla.
Speaker 1: If the democratic landscape is two Cumber seven, then let's
Speaker 1: just not due to Mocker. It's two years later and
Speaker 1: still nobody knows what was said or the details of
Speaker 1: how the deal got done. Quote the European Court of
Speaker 1: Auditors wants to know how the block clinched its biggest
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen vaccine contract and whether there was anything untoward
Speaker 1: in text messages between European Commission President Ursula vonder Lehan
Speaker 1: and Pfiser chief Albert Borla. So far, However, the EU
Speaker 1: Budget Watchdog's probe has been met with silence Pfizer. They
Speaker 1: keep saying, why don't you trust us, Why don't you
Speaker 1: trust science? Well, maybe it's got something to do with
Speaker 1: all of these backroom deals, the lack of accountability, the
Speaker 1: refusal to take any responsibility for the product, and also
Speaker 1: not taking any questions from elective representatives or the media.
Speaker 1: Things of that nature. Is maybe why we don't trust
Speaker 1: big pharma. Maybe if you do some of those things,
Speaker 1: the public will trust you more. Now, countries with less
Speaker 1: bargaining power than the EU or the US, even more
Speaker 1: egregious exchange just took place. This headline tells it all
Speaker 1: held to ransom. Peiser plays hardball in COVID nineteen vaccine
Speaker 1: negotiations with Latin American countries. Quote. Pfiser has been accused
Speaker 1: of bullying Latin American governments during negotiations to acquire its
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen vaccine, and the company has asked some countries
Speaker 1: to put up sovereign assets such as embassy buildings and
Speaker 1: military bases, as a guarantee against the cost of any
Speaker 1: future legal cases. According to an investigation by the UK
Speaker 1: based Bureau of investigative journalism. For the sake of fair reporting.
Speaker 1: I must also add that Pfeiser declined to comment on
Speaker 1: the allegations about its demands and negotiations, citing quote, privacy
Speaker 1: and confidentiality, mob like behavior, demanding embassies and military bases.
Speaker 1: That's a MANI fund country he got. There be a
Speaker 1: real shame if something were to happen to it. Richer
Speaker 1: and more powerful than ever, underpinned by its influence networks,
Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical industry stands unchallenged in its ability to dictate
Speaker 1: government health policies. The industry's power is comparable to that
Speaker 1: of a state. The pharmaceutical industry so rich and so
Speaker 1: powerful its lobbying affects Congress unchallenged in its ability to
Speaker 1: dictate government health policies, so rich that their power is
Speaker 1: comparable to that of a sovereign state. They have too
Speaker 1: much power in the US. They own Congress, they own
Speaker 1: the media, and they want to own you. If this
Speaker 1: is something that you don't want, it's time to prioritize
Speaker 1: this issue. One common critique that I get all the
Speaker 1: time is that I spent too much time identifying the
Speaker 1: problem but not enough on the solution. Well, I think
Speaker 1: here's the first step to solving this problem. No more
Speaker 1: voting for people who take big pharma money. Automatic disqualification.
Speaker 1: I mean, how could they possibly do a good job
Speaker 1: representing you and I if their boss is Big Pharma.
Speaker 1: Not possible. These companies, they're designed to maximize profit, and
Speaker 1: the people who work within that ecosystem will ensure that
Speaker 1: it happens. So we can wax poetic all day long
Speaker 1: about taking on the greed of big pharma, as many
Speaker 1: presidents and members of Congress have done over the years,
Speaker 1: but all of that will remain mostly and moral posturing,
Speaker 1: purely theoretical until we act to remove the blatant conflict
Speaker 1: of interest that pervades our government and big business. That
Speaker 1: is all for me this time. I hope you found
Speaker 1: today's segment about just how powerful big pharma is to
Speaker 1: be helpful, I make a ton more videos like this
Speaker 1: breaking down these kinds of topics on my YouTube channel
Speaker 1: fifty one to forty nine with James Lee. I would
Speaker 1: encourage you to check it out and subscribe. Link will
Speaker 1: be in the description below. Of course, keep on tuning
Speaker 1: into breaking points, and thank you so much for your
Speaker 1: time today. Hi, I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor in
Speaker 1: chief of the Real News Network and host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Working People and This is the Art of Class War.
Speaker 1: On Breaking Points, it's been nearly two weeks since the
Speaker 1: catastrophic derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in northeast Ohio
Speaker 1: thrust the residence of East Palestine in the surrounding area
Speaker 1: into a NonStop, waking nightmare. As we all know by now,
Speaker 1: and as Breaking Points has reported, the freight locomotive derailed
Speaker 1: on February third, prompting an emergency response that involved the
Speaker 1: immediate evacuation of the town and the controlled release and
Speaker 1: burning of the toxic substance vinyl chloride, which was being
Speaker 1: carried in five of the train's one hundred and fifty cars.
Speaker 1: While the controlled release of the vinyl chloride may have
Speaker 1: been necessary to prevent the cars containing the substance from exploding,
Speaker 1: the fallout appears to be something straight out of a
Speaker 1: horror movie, with the controlled burning sie spewing hydrogen chloride
Speaker 1: and phoster gene into the air, a massive black death
Speaker 1: cloud covering the region, home recorded videos of dead animals
Speaker 1: and fish throughout the area, and the Environmental Protection agency
Speaker 1: reporting that more toxic chemicals on the derailed train have
Speaker 1: leaked out and been detected in the soil and surrounding waterways.
Speaker 1: It's going to take weeks, months, if not years, to
Speaker 1: fully appraise the damage of this train derailment on the population,
Speaker 1: on the rail workers, and on the first responders, and
Speaker 1: on the surrounding environment. But I suspect, and I think
Speaker 1: we are all right to suspect, that we are watching
Speaker 1: in real time the unfolding of a disaster that our
Speaker 1: generation and future generations will know by name. But while
Speaker 1: where it spokespeople and many in the media try to
Speaker 1: paint this tragedy as some freak accident, we know better.
Speaker 1: We know better because we have been listening to railroad
Speaker 1: workers for over a year now on Breaking Points on
Speaker 1: the Real News Network for my podcast Working People, I
Speaker 1: have spoken in depth with railroad worker after railroad worker
Speaker 1: who have all been warning that Wall Street's takeover of
Speaker 1: the rail industry has been destroying the supply chain for
Speaker 1: the sake of record profits, driving record numbers of workers
Speaker 1: out of the industry, and driving the workers who remain
Speaker 1: into the ground, cutting corners and cutting operating costs every
Speaker 1: chance they get year after year, while stock buybacks, executive salaries,
Speaker 1: and shareholder dividends continue to skyrocket. Workers have been saying
Speaker 1: to anyone who will listen, that all of these systemic issues,
Speaker 1: the same issues that rail companies, President Joe Biden and
Speaker 1: Congress refused to address during the high stakes contract negotiations
Speaker 1: that came to a head last year, have put all
Speaker 1: of us at risk of more accidents, more derailments, more disasters.
Speaker 1: In fact, we're going to play a clip for you
Speaker 1: now from an interview that I published on my podcast
Speaker 1: Working People back in July of last year, where I
Speaker 1: spoke with Jay, a long time trained dispatcher and a
Speaker 1: qualified conductor who was licensed to operate locomotives at just
Speaker 1: nineteen years old. In this interview, Jade describes a hypothetical
Speaker 1: situation where a train carrying toxic substances derails near a
Speaker 1: populous town, and the parallels between what he described to
Speaker 1: me back in July and what we are watching unfold
Speaker 1: in East Palestine now are like X files level creepy.
Speaker 1: Take a listen, let me put together a scenario for
Speaker 1: everybody who's listening. Let's let's talk about these train tracks
Speaker 1: that run through your town. There's people that are running
Speaker 1: that train, people that have families just like you do. You,
Speaker 1: people that have kids, people that have wives and husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends,
Speaker 1: aunts and uncles, so on and so forth, you know.
Speaker 1: And we're going to go to the local ball field
Speaker 1: in town. We're going to take our little league game
Speaker 1: out there. And we got you know, parents everywhere. Everybody's
Speaker 1: cheering and clapping, yelling and holler and go, go, go,
Speaker 1: you know, do it, you know, run, run the whole
Speaker 1: nine yards. This is this is America, right, and here
Speaker 1: comes the train, all right, and it's just you just
Speaker 1: expected to pass through town like it normally. Does you
Speaker 1: hear the kliang in of the crossing bells, all of that,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you hear this catastraphic metal twisting,
Speaker 1: the sound and just this horrible sound wreckage that you've
Speaker 1: never heard before. And the train has derailed. We've piled
Speaker 1: up fifty or sixty cars, and unbeknounced to anybody, we've
Speaker 1: punched a hole in a chlorine car. We don't know
Speaker 1: it yet, but we've punched a hole in a chlorine car.
Speaker 1: So as a train dispatcher, I'm the guy in the
Speaker 1: office I'm going to be one of your first responders
Speaker 1: if something like that happens. I'm the guy that's going
Speaker 1: to orchestrate the evacuation. I'm the guy that's going to
Speaker 1: do all of the hazmat stuff, you know. I'm the
Speaker 1: one that's going to be the people that's going to
Speaker 1: mobilize the response to get you out of there. But
Speaker 1: there's one thing I need. I'm seven hundred miles away
Speaker 1: in an office in another state. I can't tell that
Speaker 1: that trains derailed. All I know is PTC puts up
Speaker 1: a thing on my screen and says undesired emergency brake application.
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, okay, that happens all the time.
Speaker 1: More often than not there's not a derailment. But guess
Speaker 1: what today there is now I don't know that. So
Speaker 1: the crew calls me and says, hey, Dispact, we've got
Speaker 1: the trains in emergency and we didn't like what we
Speaker 1: felt back there that we think something's wrong. I say, okay,
Speaker 1: put to the conductor underground and send him for a walk.
Speaker 1: So he gets underground and within a few minutes he
Speaker 1: calls me on the radio and says, Dispactor, we got
Speaker 1: a hell of a mess back here and I smell chlorine,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, we're going to mobilize the response.
Speaker 1: Now we got this little league game just a mile
Speaker 1: from the tracks to this field. And he tells me
Speaker 1: he smells chlorine. So I'm like, tell me on your
Speaker 1: wheel report, on the paperwork that you have in front
Speaker 1: of you, what is the last car that you can
Speaker 1: see that you think is upright and on the track.
Speaker 1: He gives me a number, and I start looking at
Speaker 1: the fall on my end and I say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: we've got ten chlorine cars in there, Anne Hyder's Semonia car,
Speaker 1: four loads of propane and something else. Now the railroads
Speaker 1: come in and they say we're going to put single
Speaker 1: single man cruise in because you know PTC is going
Speaker 1: to prevent that. Well, guess what that drealment as a
Speaker 1: result of a broken rail which PTC won't prevent, or
Speaker 1: a broken wheel that disintegrated because the railroads have abolished
Speaker 1: all of the mechanical inspectors that used to check train
Speaker 1: car wheels before they were permitted to leave the terminal.
Speaker 1: And we're going to frame this as what could happen,
Speaker 1: and people, if you're listening, listen to what I'm saying
Speaker 1: to you. This is your home, this is your town,
Speaker 1: These are your kids, your people or your friends, your family,
Speaker 1: people you care about. You have a vested interest in this,
Speaker 1: whether you realize it or not. If you haven't already,
Speaker 1: I highly highly recommend that you listen to the multiple
Speaker 1: full podcast episodes that I got to record with Jay
Speaker 1: on working people, along with all the other interviews with
Speaker 1: rail workers that I recorded and published on my podcast
Speaker 1: at the Real News, and hear on Breaking Points, because
Speaker 1: you will hear for yourself from people who actually know
Speaker 1: this industry inside and out, how and why the nightmare
Speaker 1: and East Palestine was so depressingly predictable, to say nothing
Speaker 1: of the absurd number of trains that are derailing around
Speaker 1: the country practically every week. I was regrettably unable to
Speaker 1: make it down to the Breaking Points studio this week
Speaker 1: to record this interview, but for our latest installment let
Speaker 1: Me start that again, I was regrettably unable to make
Speaker 1: it down to the Breaking Points studio this week, but
Speaker 1: for our latest installment of the Art of Class War,
Speaker 1: I recorded the following interview with Jay on Monday, February
Speaker 1: thirteenth to get an insider's perspective on the Norfolk Southern
Speaker 1: train derailment in East Palestine. The fallout from this catastrophic
Speaker 1: derailment and the larger Wall Street led changes to the
Speaker 1: industry that have put all of us at risk and
Speaker 1: made catastrophes like this more and more likely. Well, Jay,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us today on Breaking Points, Man,
Speaker 1: I really really appreciate it. Obviously, I wish that we
Speaker 1: were reconnecting under less horrifying circumstances, but you know, this
Speaker 1: is the situation that we're in and I'm very grateful
Speaker 1: to you for taking the time to chat with us today.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it, man, absolutely, Max. It's good to
Speaker 1: be back, and I'm honored to be and of course
Speaker 1: with you, and then to be on breaking Points on
Speaker 1: top of it. I'm hopeful that we're able to put
Speaker 1: some perspective on this for some people, and you know,
Speaker 1: give them the industry insider view of what we see
Speaker 1: versus what they see, what the news media says, versus
Speaker 1: what you know. The the bootstone the ground are seeing
Speaker 1: you every day, and we have quite a bit to
Speaker 1: talk about, actually, so I'm excited for that. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: we got we got a lot to unpack. And I
Speaker 1: know normally you and I when we record podcasts, we
Speaker 1: got one, two even three hours to dig into that.
Speaker 1: So we're going to try to condense this for the
Speaker 1: great breaking points viewers and listeners as much as we
Speaker 1: can squeeze as much as we can in the next
Speaker 1: twenty or twenty five minutes. But as you said, you know,
Speaker 1: like we recorded multiple podcasts over the course of the
Speaker 1: past year while all the drama was unfolding during the
Speaker 1: high stakes contract negotiations between the Class one freight rail
Speaker 1: carriers i e. The companies and the twelve unions representing
Speaker 1: over one hundred and fifteen thousand workers on the nation's
Speaker 1: freight rail system. And we talked a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: about the sort of systemic issues that workers were really
Speaker 1: kind of taking issue with during the contract negotiations, the
Speaker 1: things that the rail companies have been doing to turn
Speaker 1: a once good job into a miserable experience, to increase,
Speaker 1: in fact, the likelihod of derailments and even catastrophic derailments
Speaker 1: like the ones that we're seeing right now. And so
Speaker 1: I wanted to kind of pick up on what you
Speaker 1: said because I agree with you, like you know there
Speaker 1: has been you know, sustained coverage on this, including here
Speaker 1: on Breaking Points and great reporting partners like the Lever,
Speaker 1: but I do feel like there there has been, you know, overall,
Speaker 1: a lack of worker voices like yours, with all your
Speaker 1: recrued years of experience and expertise. And as you mentioned
Speaker 1: in the clip that I played during the intro, you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're the guy in the dispatch office who's like
Speaker 1: responding to these calls that I know you hope you
Speaker 1: never get. But if and when a disaster and emergency
Speaker 1: like this happens, you know, you're the guy on the
Speaker 1: horn talking to the folks on the train, coordinating the
Speaker 1: emergency response. You know, and I know that it's just
Speaker 1: a nightmare scenario, but yeah, I wanted to give people
Speaker 1: access to your perspective and your expertise and ask if
Speaker 1: you just if you could just sort of walk us
Speaker 1: through this, you know, horrific situation in East Palestine with
Speaker 1: the Norfolk Southern Trail train derailment, Like what are you
Speaker 1: seeing like when you review the facts that we know
Speaker 1: as of yet, you know about what led to this catastrophe,
Speaker 1: what it looks like and what this kind of thing
Speaker 1: looks like on the ground for the people like yourself,
Speaker 1: like the first responders who are involved. And the last
Speaker 1: thing I'll say, just because I want to give a
Speaker 1: very clear disclaimer up front, I'm not going to ask
Speaker 1: Jay to, you know, speculate on things that we don't
Speaker 1: currently know. There's a lot of information that's going to
Speaker 1: trickle out about this situation, what caused it, how bad
Speaker 1: the fallout is. There's gonna be stuff we don't know
Speaker 1: for weeks, months, or even years right now. So I
Speaker 1: don't want to ask you to, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to put you in a in an awkward position
Speaker 1: or talk about anything that's going to get you in trouble.
Speaker 1: But just with all of that knowledge and experience that
Speaker 1: you have, tell us what you're seeing when you look
Speaker 1: at the situation in East Palestine. Well, one thing I
Speaker 1: think about, Max, when I look at a situation like
Speaker 1: this is the first and foremost my thoughts and my
Speaker 1: heart goes out to the people that are involved. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's easy to lose track of the fact that there's
Speaker 1: a train crew on that train. There are there's an
Speaker 1: engineer and a conductor at least currently we know in
Speaker 1: this particular case that it was a conductor trainee was
Speaker 1: also board. We know the townsfolk, you know, they live
Speaker 1: there all their lives. I mean some of these people,
Speaker 1: they've built their homes there, they've raised their families there,
Speaker 1: and for something like this to happen in your backyard
Speaker 1: is just terrifying. It would be. I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: even liken it to anything because I hope and pray
Speaker 1: I never experienced it. But for them, I feel badly
Speaker 1: that they've been through this and as they return home,
Speaker 1: you know, their homes are smelling like smoke, I mean,
Speaker 1: nasty things. It's gross, and you're wondering how you're going
Speaker 1: to pay for that. Who's going to address it? But
Speaker 1: when we say, you know, what does this look like
Speaker 1: on the ground to an employee, I have to think
Speaker 1: to myself, what about the last year? So if we
Speaker 1: go back over the past year, we saw the union
Speaker 1: issues with the potential strike looming. We saw on April
Speaker 1: twenty sixth and April twenty seventh, we saw a STB
Speaker 1: hearing that was held where the Surface Transportation Board grilled
Speaker 1: railroad executives relentlessly about their cuts to the workforce, their
Speaker 1: reductions in staff by thirty percent. And we have to
Speaker 1: consider where those reductions have been made. They've been made
Speaker 1: in maintenance of way, They've been made to the car department,
Speaker 1: They've been made to critical staff that make sure that
Speaker 1: stuff like this doesn't happen. And keep in mind the
Speaker 1: goal of any situation, any industry you're in, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what it is. You want to move the product.
Speaker 1: You want to move it safely, and you want to
Speaker 1: move it quickly. That's the case where you make the
Speaker 1: most money. Right, So every business is a business to
Speaker 1: make money. But when I think about this, I think
Speaker 1: about this. You know the historic cuts that the railroads
Speaker 1: have been presently and previously making. What's the goal there?
Speaker 1: It's to appease Wall Street. Wall Street are the ones
Speaker 1: pulling the strings. Now, if we look back over the
Speaker 1: last say roughly ten years across the rail industry as
Speaker 1: a whole, you may actually remember Matt Burkhardt gave testimony
Speaker 1: in front of the Surface Transportation boarder April twenty sixth.
Speaker 1: He's a former manager as a high level manager for BNSF,
Speaker 1: currently a yard master and general chairman for the local union.
Speaker 1: He talked about cars falling off of a bridge onto
Speaker 1: a well known hiking trail. He talked about train lengths.
Speaker 1: They're too big, they don't fit anywhere. So when we
Speaker 1: think about this over the past ten years, let's rewind
Speaker 1: back to say, twenty ten to twenty fourteen, it was
Speaker 1: really unprecedented to hear of the number of mainline aroundments
Speaker 1: that we're hearing of now. We had them. You know,
Speaker 1: we had Castleton, North Dakota with the oil trains. There
Speaker 1: were a few of those. We had Locke Megantic, excuse me,
Speaker 1: which was catastrophic. I mean, you want to talk about
Speaker 1: hell coming to earth it did, and Lock Megantic, And
Speaker 1: we have to consider as we've continued down that path,
Speaker 1: we didn't see this kind of stuff happened very often.
Speaker 1: We're trained state on the tracks. Everything was fine, and
Speaker 1: then Hunter Harrison comes around. So twenty eighteen and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden we see PSR. Well, PSR is all
Speaker 1: about cut cut, cut profits first, you know, shareholder value
Speaker 1: and on air quoting. You can't see me, but I'm
Speaker 1: air quoting. I can I can hear the air quotes. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like and this is this is precision scheduled railroading,
Speaker 1: Like this is the industry name like for all these
Speaker 1: kinds of changes that Jay is describing. Yes, and you
Speaker 1: have to look at that and look at it very objectively,
Speaker 1: be very careful about what you think of it. But
Speaker 1: let's be honest, Barnum and Bailey ran a better circus
Speaker 1: with fewer clowns. They share left it up to them.
Speaker 1: But when you think about those STV hearings, we hear
Speaker 1: the railroad or the railroads being scolded and scorned by
Speaker 1: the STV. And why were they sold in the scorn?
Speaker 1: You know, car inspectors serve as a preventative control. That's
Speaker 1: the position that they take. We used to have people
Speaker 1: all over the company that were railroad employees. They weren't
Speaker 1: contract workers. They were employed by the railroad directly. They
Speaker 1: were at every yard and they would be on top of, underneath,
Speaker 1: in between, inside, to the left, to the right. I mean,
Speaker 1: they'd crawl all over these cars and they would look
Speaker 1: for defects. They had bearings, safety appliances that were loose
Speaker 1: or broken, sharp wheel flanges, broken wheels, all of these
Speaker 1: types of things which could cause it to run it.
Speaker 1: And back in the day when workers felt valued by
Speaker 1: their corporationations, that played a major role in discretionary effort.
Speaker 1: So we know that that's a critical factor in anything
Speaker 1: as discretionary effort. Employers need it, they can't require it,
Speaker 1: and they have no way to measure it. So in
Speaker 1: recent years, from twenty eighteen on, when this PSR thing
Speaker 1: came about, what did we do? We started attacking our
Speaker 1: workforce as a as an industry. The railroad companies started
Speaker 1: attacking and we don't need you. We have record profits.
Speaker 1: You know we're going to cut this. We're going to
Speaker 1: cut that. Your job's going with it. Oh by the way, yeah, Friday,
Speaker 1: you don't need to show up to work because you
Speaker 1: don't have a job anymore. And they've abolished this in
Speaker 1: the mechanical department, diesel shops, all of it. So let's
Speaker 1: think about this train that's that's racing along the track right.
Speaker 1: There are wayside detectors out there. Every railroad has them.
Speaker 1: The spacing between them varies property to property, but a
Speaker 1: wayside detector is a detective control. So car inspector's preventative
Speaker 1: i EU go to the dentisty get your teeth cleaned
Speaker 1: twice a year as a preventative measure to prevent cavities gingivitis,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Right, Well, that's the role of the car
Speaker 1: inspector to prevent the accident from happening in the first place.
Speaker 1: He or she looks at the bearing and says, I
Speaker 1: don't like the way that bearing looks. I'm going to
Speaker 1: shop this car. I don't like the way that wheel looks.
Speaker 1: I think we've got an issue here. We're going to
Speaker 1: shop this car. We're we're gonna send them to the
Speaker 1: shop for inspection, for further scrutiny to see if they're
Speaker 1: safe for the rails, and if they're not, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and repair them. Now, we look at the
Speaker 1: difference on detective controls, So we're going to kind of
Speaker 1: move over from what does it look like on the ground.
Speaker 1: We talked about the cuts, We talked about what the
Speaker 1: railroads are doing. We refer to the STB hearings. I
Speaker 1: would encourage you, if you've not seen it, guys, go
Speaker 1: watch them. There's some pretty heated testimony in there that
Speaker 1: will really give you a lot of perspectives. I would
Speaker 1: encourage you to do that well, And just to like
Speaker 1: add one more footnote there. I remember screaming about this.
Speaker 1: I think on a previous breaking points segment that Surface
Speaker 1: Transportation Board Martin Oberman like said that the estimated that
Speaker 1: the rail carriers have spent I recall correctly is around
Speaker 1: forty billion dollars more on stock buybacks than on rail
Speaker 1: maintenance in like the past ten years, right, So that
Speaker 1: like the money to maintain these tracks and these cars
Speaker 1: and to ensure all that kind of quality and safety,
Speaker 1: the quality assurance and safety measures that need to be
Speaker 1: put in place so that we don't see, you know,
Speaker 1: horrific catastrophic derailments like the one we're watching in East
Speaker 1: Palace time. Those are like, you know, an afterthought compared
Speaker 1: to stuffing the pockets of Wall Street investors and rail executives. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, look at what we've seen, look at the
Speaker 1: derailments that didn't happen versus the ones that are happening,
Speaker 1: primarily in the last four years. I mean, they've been
Speaker 1: piled up on Horseshoe Curve multiple times. That's a national landmark.
Speaker 1: It's recorded twenty four to seven, is streamed of the
Speaker 1: Internet Internet by Virtual rail Fan. You can watch trains
Speaker 1: all day long, and we watched them pull them up. Oop.
Speaker 1: That's a bad thing. We don't like that, right. So
Speaker 1: the podcast that we did back in July was early similar.
Speaker 1: I mean I laid out an event very similar to this.
Speaker 1: In this particular case, it was a single man crew
Speaker 1: and it was chlorine now vinyl chloride, which is what
Speaker 1: we know was built in this accident. If it happens
Speaker 1: to ignite, is probably the best case scenario, the best
Speaker 1: case of the worst cases. And why do I say
Speaker 1: that one You can't see it if it doesn't burn,
Speaker 1: so you're going to have a hard time detecking if
Speaker 1: there's anything wrong until you're exposed, and that's where the
Speaker 1: danger really comes in because you have limited time to
Speaker 1: be exposed to it before it does serious damage. So,
Speaker 1: looking at the situation, the train derailed just outside of town, Thankfully,
Speaker 1: had it been in town and burst into flames like that,
Speaker 1: there would have likely been collateral damage into the force
Speaker 1: and the form of other homes and buildings being set
Speaker 1: ablaze by the radiant heat from that fire. Then we
Speaker 1: have to look at the fact, Okay, it was close
Speaker 1: enough to a populated area that the police are going
Speaker 1: to notify the railroad right away. There's infrastructure to get there,
Speaker 1: so fire departments from three States responded, and that's all
Speaker 1: well and good. Now we get out there and it's
Speaker 1: four degrees in the pump trucks freeze up. Well, we
Speaker 1: now we have an even bigger problem. So we literally
Speaker 1: had a perfect disaster here. Thankfully there was no loss
Speaker 1: of life. But if we move on to the mainstream
Speaker 1: media question, you know, the narrative is that there's a
Speaker 1: technical failure, and you know why were railroaders like myself
Speaker 1: and others predicting this? Well, the technical failure. The NTSB
Speaker 1: made note of some video that they had received of
Speaker 1: what they believe was this particular train passing through New Watertown, Ohio,
Speaker 1: about thirteen miles before the derailment. Is my understanding, with
Speaker 1: an obvious situation developing, there's fire surrounding what appears to
Speaker 1: be the bearing in the car. It's not the best
Speaker 1: video quality and it's dark, so you can't really zoom
Speaker 1: in and see that, but based on my experience, it
Speaker 1: looks to me like we have a bearing issue that's
Speaker 1: going on there. So a real car bearing is a
Speaker 1: roller bearing. Now it's no longer a pile of rereezy
Speaker 1: rag stuffed in the end of an axle. It's actually
Speaker 1: a roller bearing, and that's a seal bearing with grease
Speaker 1: and stuff in them, and periodically they go bad. And
Speaker 1: when they do, this is where your wayside detectors come in.
Speaker 1: So you fire all your car inspectors, you hire contractors
Speaker 1: in right, and we have to think about knowledge versus wisdom.
Speaker 1: So you get rid of all your experienced people. You're
Speaker 1: losing twenty year men and women walking out the door
Speaker 1: and saying I'm done, I can't do this anymore, and
Speaker 1: you bring these new people in. Well, knowledge versus wisdom
Speaker 1: is what. Knowledge means you possess knowledge about a subject.
Speaker 1: Wisdom means you have perspective on a subject. So the
Speaker 1: twenty year person walking out the door or takes the
Speaker 1: perspective with them. The new person coming in. Sure they're
Speaker 1: quote qualified end to air quote, but they lack the perspective.
Speaker 1: So when you think about what the detector does, you know,
Speaker 1: you bring these new car inspectors in. They look at
Speaker 1: something and I don't think anything's wrong with it. Send
Speaker 1: it out on the railroad. The trains wizened by the
Speaker 1: detector and it says, okay, you know all the bearings
Speaker 1: on the train primarily or within say twenty degrees of
Speaker 1: ambient air temperature, whatever that is, and then boom, one
Speaker 1: bearing goes over top, and that one's one hundred and
Speaker 1: three degrees above. That's going to initiate a flag at
Speaker 1: least it should. Now what are we going to do
Speaker 1: with that information? We take this information then, which is
Speaker 1: now intelligible information, and we present it to a human being.
Speaker 1: All right, what does the human being do? We now
Speaker 1: look at this from a intelligent perspective and we say,
Speaker 1: what do we think we have here? Is this something
Speaker 1: that requires action? In this case, the answer would be yes.
Speaker 1: All the other bearings are within forty degrees of each other.
Speaker 1: We have one here that that's popping a flag on
Speaker 1: us for one hundred and three degrees above ambience. So
Speaker 1: we're going to stop the train and inspect it. Well,
Speaker 1: that's all well and good, but we've cut everybody. So
Speaker 1: all of these detectors all across the railroad could potentially
Speaker 1: be sending data into one person and you have to
Speaker 1: wait for one person to read that. Well, if the
Speaker 1: train's traveling at sixteen miles an hour, they're doing a
Speaker 1: mile a minute. If it takes up eighteen minutes to
Speaker 1: get to that particular message that train's going eighteen miles.
Speaker 1: So when you think about detective controls, let's think of
Speaker 1: some examples in history where detective controls were used. So
Speaker 1: let's go back to nineteen twelve. We're going to think
Speaker 1: about the Titanic. Who doesn't know the story of the Titanic, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's nobody that doesn't know that. So Captain Smith was
Speaker 1: interviewed prior to the maiden voyage of the Titanic, and
Speaker 1: he was asked, you know, what he thought about an
Speaker 1: unsinkable ship and why they didn't have enough life boats
Speaker 1: for everybody, And his answer was something to the effect
Speaker 1: of maritime technology had advanced to the point where they
Speaker 1: didn't see any accident being possible that could result in
Speaker 1: a ship foundering prior to the arrival of another ship
Speaker 1: to take everybody off. So we don't have radar at
Speaker 1: the time, we don't have twenty four hour Mann radios
Speaker 1: at the time. All of the stuff we know today,
Speaker 1: much of it came as a result of what happened there.
Speaker 1: So we have two men in a crow's nest way
Speaker 1: above the deck looking out in front of the ship. Right,
Speaker 1: that's their job. They are now serving as a detective control.
Speaker 1: So here goes the Titanic careening across the ocean right
Speaker 1: where we're at almost full steam, and the engines are
Speaker 1: down there pound in a way, the furnaces are blazing,
Speaker 1: hot black smoke pouring out of the stacks, and Titanic
Speaker 1: sails farther south than she normally would well. Unfortunately, in
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, we have an ocean that's still as a
Speaker 1: mill pond, as they say, we have an unusually cold
Speaker 1: Labrador current which is kind traded unusually far south for
Speaker 1: that time of year, and we literally run into a
Speaker 1: perfect storm, kind of like what happened in East Palestine,
Speaker 1: kind of like what happened in Graniteville and Paulsboro, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: The ship sails into this cold water, and what does
Speaker 1: it do. The cold water chills the atmosphere for tens,
Speaker 1: if not several hundred feet above the surface of the ocean.
Speaker 1: So in so doing, we create a temperature version. The
Speaker 1: temperature version pulls the horizon up and cloaks the iceberg
Speaker 1: in blackness. There's no stars, there's nothing, you can't see it.
Speaker 1: There's no silhouette anymore, because your horizon's curled up due
Speaker 1: to that temperature, So the Crow's nest. These two guys
Speaker 1: are up there looking. They can't see anything. Something that
Speaker 1: should be visible for ten miles is now not visible
Speaker 1: except for a few thousand yards potentially. And out of
Speaker 1: the blackness as the ship seems forward comes this black
Speaker 1: mass of ice. They're horrified. They ring the bell three times.
Speaker 1: They pick up the phone and they call the bridge.
Speaker 1: What are they doing. They have no steering wheel and
Speaker 1: they have no engine telegraph. They are going to provide
Speaker 1: intelligible information to the crew on the bridge, which will
Speaker 1: then be acted upon. We know how the story ended.
Speaker 1: They tried to turn, they tried to reverse, It didn't happen.
Speaker 1: Titanic k at the iceberg and fifteen hundred plus lives
Speaker 1: were lost. So we think about detective controls across the railroad.
Speaker 1: We think about the Crow's Nest example I just gave.
Speaker 1: If you look at what you do in this respect,
Speaker 1: you know it takes a human to relay information which
Speaker 1: goes to another human that then ideally results in an
Speaker 1: action that hopefully prevents what we saw. So it's been
Speaker 1: said by the NTSB that moments before the derailment, another
Speaker 1: wayside detector alerted for a critical learn So again our
Speaker 1: detective control says, hey, I see something critical, stop the train,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like they didn't have time. This will
Speaker 1: all come out in the investigation. It'll be weeks for
Speaker 1: the preliminary report, in months for the final for you
Speaker 1: excuse me, But when you think about it, communication is
Speaker 1: both the root cause and the solution to most of
Speaker 1: our problems. So if you look at the industry as
Speaker 1: a whole, as we reduce people and we reduce interactions
Speaker 1: of people who possess wisdom versus knowledge, what do we
Speaker 1: do to ourselves. We're breaking down the preventative control measures
Speaker 1: and we're trying to rely on detective control measures to
Speaker 1: prevent what should have otherwise been found by human being.
Speaker 1: What does that say? I mean, where are we as
Speaker 1: a country when we're allowing corporations to dictate to the
Speaker 1: regulatory bodies what they will and won't do you know
Speaker 1: the surface transport or what happens? Well, apparently this is
Speaker 1: what fucking happens, right, So pardon my French, everybody, But
Speaker 1: like you guys know, like that I my college viewer
Speaker 1: at the Real News, Like we've been covering the crisis
Speaker 1: the long brewing crisis on the nation's railroad system for
Speaker 1: over a year now, right, and I've been talking endlessly
Speaker 1: and publishing, you know, hours and hours of interviews with
Speaker 1: rail workers like Jay, like Matt Parker, like Marrilee Taylor,
Speaker 1: like Michael Paul Lindsey. Right, I mean, like all these
Speaker 1: folks with so much knowledge that I am begging you
Speaker 1: to listen to because we're going to keep ending up
Speaker 1: in situations like this, which is what workers like Jay
Speaker 1: and others have been telling me, right, Because I think
Speaker 1: like that that's the part where I'm really losing my
Speaker 1: mind here, man, And I know I've got to let
Speaker 1: you go in a second, so just to kind of
Speaker 1: like round this thought out, you know, because I think
Speaker 1: there's a real, like, you know, there's a really sad
Speaker 1: metaphor here in the way that we're talking about East
Speaker 1: Palestine and the Norfolk Southern derailment that we're watching unfold,
Speaker 1: and the larger kind of crisis that we were reporting
Speaker 1: on all last year. While the contract negotiations between the
Speaker 1: rail carriers and the and the unions representing rail workers
Speaker 1: were unfolding, Biden's Presidential Emergency Board got involved, you know,
Speaker 1: YadA YadA, YadA. When I watched the mainstream media coverage
Speaker 1: of the derailment in East Palestine and the fallout of it,
Speaker 1: you know, like you said, they tend to focus on
Speaker 1: like a technical failure, and of course there are more
Speaker 1: facets to that story that we will know in the
Speaker 1: weeks and months that come after this. I know that
Speaker 1: Breaking Points and the Lever have both reported that, you know,
Speaker 1: they have linked this back to, like say, the fact
Speaker 1: that Norfolk, Southern and other rail carriers successfully lobbied the
Speaker 1: Trump government and successfully like pushed the Obama government to
Speaker 1: back down. But they essentially like you know, got you know,
Speaker 1: safety regulations wiped off the let when they were the
Speaker 1: government was pushing for these companies to implement electric braking systems.
Speaker 1: The current speculation is that if those breaking systems were installed,
Speaker 1: maybe you know, this derailment wouldn't have been as bad
Speaker 1: as it was. Again, we don't necessarily know that right now,
Speaker 1: but it is an important part of this story. But
Speaker 1: what I'm pointing to, what is what Jay just really described, right,
Speaker 1: is that like when we talk about the derailment in
Speaker 1: East Palestine right now, we talk about the fact that
Speaker 1: this train carrying like these incredibly hazardous substances, mainly vinyl
Speaker 1: chloride that, as you mentioned, is very flammable. They punctured,
Speaker 1: the emergency response team punctured those railcars. They emptied that
Speaker 1: toxic or hazard or substance into like a trench. They
Speaker 1: lit it on fire, hence the massive fireball that we've
Speaker 1: all seen videos and pictures of. Hence you know, like
Speaker 1: all the craps spewing into the air from that, YadA YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: And obviously that's a horrifying image. And so when folks
Speaker 1: see that, like myself, they think, well, like that's not good.
Speaker 1: But the governor in Ohio, the mainstream media, you know,
Speaker 1: the rail carriers themselves are saying, yeah, but this was necessary.
Speaker 1: This was like the best of the worst scenarios, because
Speaker 1: if we didn't release that you know, vinyl chloride, if
Speaker 1: we didn't burn it off, then those cars could have exploded.
Speaker 1: That would have been a worse option. There would have
Speaker 1: been shrapnel going all over the place. Like I get that,
Speaker 1: you know, burning the vinyl chloride on a train that
Speaker 1: had already derailed is the right thing to do in
Speaker 1: that situation. Just but like we're talking about it the
Speaker 1: same way that the media was talking about Biden and Congress,
Speaker 1: you know, just forcing rail workers like yourself to accept
Speaker 1: a contract near the end of last year, instead of
Speaker 1: allowing workers to go on strike, instead of allowing the
Speaker 1: negotiations to continue, And so the media was celebrating this
Speaker 1: as like, oh, we averted a catastrophe. Right. If a
Speaker 1: rail strike or a lockout happened, Christmas would have been canceled,
Speaker 1: it would have been total chaos, would have cost the
Speaker 1: US economy two billion dollars a day, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: So we talk about and we pat ourselves on the
Speaker 1: back for averting like the immediate catastrophe, and then we
Speaker 1: do nothing to address the underlying issues that are making
Speaker 1: catastrophes like this more likely, and that in fact, they
Speaker 1: are happening all around us, Like Norfolk Southern itself, this
Speaker 1: particular company had like two trained derailments, like the very
Speaker 1: week that Biden and Congress forced workers to accept a
Speaker 1: contract back in November early December, right, I mean, like
Speaker 1: these derailments, as Jay described in that first podcast, to me,
Speaker 1: like they're happening all over the place, Like thankfully we
Speaker 1: haven't had one that's this catastrophic, like of late, but
Speaker 1: here it is. And yet you know what, what are
Speaker 1: these companies going to learn? What are they gonna do?
Speaker 1: What incentive is there for them to do anything different?
Speaker 1: After scab Joe Biden and Congress just gave them everything
Speaker 1: that they want and crust workers back into subservience. What
Speaker 1: did we see? We saw these companies giving themselves more
Speaker 1: stock buybacks, paying out more shareholder dividends, making more profits.
Speaker 1: You know, like they're gonna like again, I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm losing my mind here day match your one hundred
Speaker 1: percent right. It's it's maddening. It's sickening if you work
Speaker 1: in the industry. One thing I think about when I
Speaker 1: work with all of my men and women in the
Speaker 1: field is my success is a direct result of the
Speaker 1: relationships that I have with these people. Whether they're in
Speaker 1: maintenance of way, whether they're training engine crews. They trust me.
Speaker 1: There's a degree of emotional intelligence there that I possess.
Speaker 1: When I speak to those guys, they know when I'm happy,
Speaker 1: when I'm upset. I mean, I wear my emotions on
Speaker 1: my sleeve. They can sense it, they can feel it.
Speaker 1: It's palpable, you know. So if you why have other
Speaker 1: railroaders been talking about this, well, we're in it every
Speaker 1: day when I walk in the office. I don't expect
Speaker 1: this to happen. I don't want it to happen. I
Speaker 1: don't want to deal with it. I don't want the
Speaker 1: possibility of a loss of life. If you see that
Speaker 1: nine to one one tone come across the radio for
Speaker 1: a drink dispatcher, there's usually two things that happened. One
Speaker 1: we hit a vehicle at a crossing that has the
Speaker 1: potential to involve casualties or fatalities, or two we have
Speaker 1: a drawnment. It's generally the only two times I'm going
Speaker 1: to get a nine to one one tone, or maybe
Speaker 1: a medical emergency which could happen. So we've been talking
Speaker 1: about this stuff in the industry for quite some time,
Speaker 1: and people were looking at these cars saying they don't
Speaker 1: belong that here. How did this damn thing get here?
Speaker 1: Look at this like it doesn't. The wheels are in
Speaker 1: bad shape, the brakes or the brake pads are worn,
Speaker 1: brakeshoes are worn down. You know, beyond specification, we've got
Speaker 1: more metal and broken safety appliances on these supertrains. You
Speaker 1: have to consider the forces in the train think about
Speaker 1: the power locomotive can put down down near two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand pounds of tractive effort, and your train is fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand feet long. I mean, you're in one town with
Speaker 1: the engines, and your assender's in the next town over,
Speaker 1: and here you go fifty some miles an hour, and
Speaker 1: you're trying to keep track of all of this. You've
Speaker 1: got these slow orders and these speed restrictions, and you've
Speaker 1: got the ptccene screen screaming in your face and trip
Speaker 1: optimizer screaming in your face. And then you have a
Speaker 1: new conductor that has no idea what's going on because
Speaker 1: the training is so bad. All of this is culminating
Speaker 1: to literally create the perfect storm. And you have to
Speaker 1: consider other chemicals. Not every chemical that's dangerous as in
Speaker 1: liquid form. There's chemicals out there, for example, that are
Speaker 1: hauled and covered hoppers. And this is where the conductor
Speaker 1: is so critical, because here's she possesses that paperwork to
Speaker 1: give to first responders. There's certain chemicals, for example, like
Speaker 1: sodium hydride, which reacts explosively with water. There's potassium metals
Speaker 1: which forms hydrogen gas. Well, hydrogen gas is explosive, so
Speaker 1: if you have a situation where a real accident happens
Speaker 1: and you end up with a fire, and you have
Speaker 1: cars close by that contain some of these chemicals like
Speaker 1: potassium hydride, which also releases hydrogen gas. You could end
Speaker 1: up with a real situation if you take fire hoses
Speaker 1: out there and start spraying. I mean, now you get
Speaker 1: a really big fire. Not only do you have the
Speaker 1: existing fire, but you spray this powdered substance with water
Speaker 1: and cabone it goes up. Hey, you got a really
Speaker 1: big problem. So as these cuts continue to happen, as
Speaker 1: record profits continue to be the focus, what do you
Speaker 1: do to people's mentality when you tell them they're no
Speaker 1: longer valued. We don't need you. Technology is going to
Speaker 1: replace you. We don't need your job important. Nothing you
Speaker 1: do is of value. You don't contribute to company profits.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. What does that do to somebody? At
Speaker 1: what point? I mean, that's like a mind work. You
Speaker 1: don't have any incentive at that point to engage in
Speaker 1: applying discretionary effort. And that goes right back to what
Speaker 1: I said in the beginning, the discretionary effort that an
Speaker 1: employee that it exerts into the workplace is required by
Speaker 1: the company for its success. They can't make you do it,
Speaker 1: and they can't measure it. But if you're going down
Speaker 1: there and you feel valued, you're going to be a
Speaker 1: lot more diligent. You're going to look at things with
Speaker 1: a much more focused eye, and you're going to say,
Speaker 1: I don't like that, I'm gonna do something about it.
Speaker 1: But if you don't feel valued, you're just okay, good
Speaker 1: enough down she goes, sign off of the paper. Okay,
Speaker 1: it'll make it, blah blah. And this is human nature.
Speaker 1: This is psychology one o one. I mean, if we
Speaker 1: talk to a psychologist and we were to dive into that,
Speaker 1: they would tell you how the human psyche works. When
Speaker 1: people tell you this stuff, this is why I say
Speaker 1: management possesses a total lack of emotional intelligence. You can't
Speaker 1: tell people that they're not value, abolish their jobs and
Speaker 1: then ask them to help you, because you know what
Speaker 1: you're gonna get. It's a big old fat middle finger.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, look where we are. This is the saddest
Speaker 1: part about the whole thing. I hope it changes. The
Speaker 1: STB hasn't done anything, the FRA hasn't done anything. Now
Speaker 1: we haven't heard about the two man crew ruling yet,
Speaker 1: so maybe this will change their opinion a little bit.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind, most of the time, the only
Speaker 1: time you're going to hear from this it's number one.
Speaker 1: It's political posturing. So it looks good and it feels good.
Speaker 1: It's all touchy feely. Okay, they're doing something because we
Speaker 1: saw them talking. But are you actually going to do something.
Speaker 1: Are you going to put your money where your mouth
Speaker 1: is and say that's enough, that's enough. This jeopardy is
Speaker 1: going to stop. You make plenty of damn money that
Speaker 1: they We're real in the end right here, we're going
Speaker 1: to slap some regulations on you. You're going to stop
Speaker 1: this madness. You gonna start running more reasonable trains. You're
Speaker 1: going to inspect them properly. I had a contract car
Speaker 1: inspector come out and put a portable derail in the
Speaker 1: middle of a mainline interlocking and I didn't know it
Speaker 1: was there. It could have derailed a train purposefully, because
Speaker 1: that's the job of that device. But you can't do that.
Speaker 1: You cannot come out and put that kind of stuff there.
Speaker 1: And this is where you go back to knowledge versus wisdom.
Speaker 1: I know what the derail's for, but I don't know
Speaker 1: where to put it, so God bless I digress. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean again, I could talk to you for hours, man,
Speaker 1: and I hope that you know, in some you know
Speaker 1: that that we've been able to enlighten folks a little
Speaker 1: bit more on how we got to this situation in
Speaker 1: East Palestine, Ohio. Right again, there's gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: about this derailment. There's going to be a lot about
Speaker 1: the emergency response, the evacuation. There's going to be a
Speaker 1: lot about the residual health and environmental effects of that
Speaker 1: response that sadly we're not going to know for you know,
Speaker 1: a while. But obviously we have to stay vigilant. We
Speaker 1: have to keep paying attention to this. We have to
Speaker 1: read those reports, you know, like from the you know,
Speaker 1: uh uh a Surface Transportation Board, from the National Transportation
Speaker 1: Safety Board, you know, like we need to follow up
Speaker 1: on this and not just let companies like Norfolk Southern
Speaker 1: you know, say, oh, our bad sorry, you know, won't
Speaker 1: happen again, while they literally do nothing to address the
Speaker 1: root causes that are putting all of us at hazard. Right,
Speaker 1: And that's what I just really want to drive home
Speaker 1: for folks. I know this segment went long. I hope
Speaker 1: it was useful for you, But I really hope that
Speaker 1: what Jay said resonates because we need to understand that
Speaker 1: all the stuff we were screaming about last year, you know,
Speaker 1: all the stuff that Biden's presidential Emergency board, and that
Speaker 1: the forced contract that Congress made workers accept at the
Speaker 1: end of last year, none of that addressed these core
Speaker 1: issues that Jay and other railroad workers have been talking about.
Speaker 1: Does not address the fact that the rail companies have
Speaker 1: been slashing their workforce year after year after year, piling
Speaker 1: more work onto fewer workers, making the trains longer and heavier,
Speaker 1: more unwieldy, while reducing the crew sizes down to two
Speaker 1: and they want to get it down to one person
Speaker 1: on those trains. Imagine how much worse this catastrophe in
Speaker 1: East Palestine would have been if the railroads had their
Speaker 1: way and had just one person on that train when
Speaker 1: it derailed. Right, And you can't just have a situation
Speaker 1: like that. You can't just have a situation where Wall
Speaker 1: Street is literally sucking all of the resources out of
Speaker 1: this industry instead of investing in its workforce, instead of
Speaker 1: investing in preventative safety measures instead of investing in track
Speaker 1: maintenance let alone, you know, like track electrification and other
Speaker 1: things like that. You can't just keep going going in
Speaker 1: this direction where the only thing we are doing is
Speaker 1: destroying one of the nations like vital supply chains for
Speaker 1: the sake of Wall Street profits and driving workers into
Speaker 1: the ground, making them feel unappreciated, treating them like crap,
Speaker 1: causing them to flee the industry in record numbers. You
Speaker 1: are going to end up with more situations like this, right,
Speaker 1: So we have to do something. We have to listen
Speaker 1: to workers like Jay. I beg of you guys. I
Speaker 1: know you know I'm frustrated because I spent all year
Speaker 1: doing this. Now imagine if you've been working in the
Speaker 1: rails for decades like Jay has, how frustrating this must be.
Speaker 1: So please stay vigilant, listen to workers, lift up voices
Speaker 1: of workers like Jay. And thank you so much for
Speaker 1: watching this segment with breaking points and Jay, longtime trained
Speaker 1: dispatcher trained as a locomotive engineer, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time to chat with us today. Man,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Max's great to be with you,
Speaker 1: and thank you everybody for listening. I hope this really
Speaker 1: sinks in and hits home with you. Get out there,
Speaker 1: get behind this cause, and do something. It's your life,
Speaker 1: it's your town, it's your home. You decide. Thank you
Speaker 1: for watching this segment with breaking points, and be sure
Speaker 1: to subscribe to my news outlet, The Real News. With
Speaker 1: links in the show description, see Assume for the next
Speaker 1: edition of the Art of Class War. Take care of yourselves,
Speaker 1: take care of each other. Solidarity Forever