By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Things are seldom as they seem, especially if we’re skimming the surface of any event to decide its meaning. That’s where astrology comes in. Mars declared war on structure (Saturn) this week, first with a 7.3 aftershock in Nepal — toppling fragile buildings and causing more death — and days later, personifying chaos in the Amtrak wreckage. In the case of Nepal, a first quake in late April — taking more than 8,000 lives, causing major damage to infrastructure, and reducing ancient historical sites to rubble — didn’t rupture all the way to the surface, which created potential for additional quakes to relieve growing pressure. We know this because satellites are now able to assess movement and project patterns, targeting vulnerable areas.
Due to hundreds of expected aftershocks, citizens have been terrified of remaining inside structurally compromised buildings, and thousands have stayed out on the streets. Because of the difficult mountainous terrain, relief efforts have been hit and miss for many, as helicopters fly into isolated areas to deliver supplies. A Marine Corps ‘copter carrying six Marines and two Nepalese soldiers was reported missing in the first wave of rescue effort and found crashed in a densely wooded area on Friday. In yet more tragedy, there were no survivors.
Death seems to have gained the upper hand in Nepal — along with areas in Tibet in April, and in India this week — and yet, defying all reason, a 101-year-old man was rescued, having survived being buried in the rubble for an entire week. So did a four-month old baby boy, dug out of his family’s collapsed home after almost two full days. No matter how dire the situation, life always finds a way, and you can take that to the bank.
Speaking of banks, NGO’s (charities) are begging for continued humanitarian aid, with Nepal’s Prime Minister urging additional “courage and patience” from international contributors. It has become a truism that with so many emergencies at hand, underfunded rescue efforts across the globe remain a constant worry. Remember the Christmas Tsunami of 2004? Hurricane Katrina in 2005? These initial shocking events came one after the next, prompting this nation to open their hearts, and their piggy banks, to help out.
We were still pretty innocent of what was coming, at that point. That was the Good Old Days before everyone caught on to the steady erosion of consumer protections bought by ALEC and cohorts, long before we realized the result of disastrous deregulation in the financial district, and just prior to the fiscal calamity that decades of voodoo economics trickled into. That was also before ‘disaster fatigue’ took over. Sadly, the requests for help come so often these days, we have to flip a coin to decide who is most needy. Still, the act of gifting is a metaphysical signal to the universe that you have enough to spare, which opens the energy of increase. We get by, so they say, with a little help from our friends, even if we never met them before. If you wish to contribute to Nepal’s on-going rescue effort, to help them dig out, here’s information about responsible donation in the area.
Regarding the Amtrak disaster outside of Philadelphia, Eric did his usual masterful job of decoding the astrology (and pointing out everyone’s favorite trickster, Mercury) in the subscription piece this week, and it appears that much of this situation can be traced to human error. Other factors contributed, however — some very political — and it’s worth taking a look at those because once again, structure, structure, infrastructure, oh my!
Since its inception in the 1970s as a federally-funded, for-profit corporation, Amtrak has been subject to the whims of infighting politicians, those on the left vying with the rail industry for money to fund their pet projects, those on the right slashing funds for any enterprise they consider ‘big government’. Not for the first time, experts are pointing out danger from a crumbling transportation infrastructure and spotty funding. Despite little or no effort to modernize the national rail system, ridership steadily increases, year by year. Like our for-profit postal service, Amtrak is the unfortunate step-child fed on scraps by a conservative party that wants none of it.
In 2008, following a major wreck attributed to human error, Congress mandated a rail safety system known as Positive Train Control (PTC), which, when put in place, would automatically monitor train speeds, critical distances between trains, and possible collisions. This week, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a statement saying that if PTC had been installed on that section of track in Philadelphia, the accident could not have occurred. Turns out PTC had recently been added to the section, but not fully tested or activated, one of those so-close-and-yet-so-far things that haunt survivors.
Although Amtrak 188 hit the corner that spelled disaster going twice the speed limit, analysis shows that the train speed increased in just the last few moments before the derailment at Frankford Junction, coming distressingly close to an oil tanker train, the kind that carries crude oil, known as ‘bomb trains.’ Things could have been so much worse!
First responders to these ever-increasing oil tanker emergencies, by the way, are the nation’s firefighters, and despite new federal safety measures, some 65 percent of firefighter groups say they have no specialized training in responding to this kind of hazardous material, especially highly toxic shale from the Bakken fields. They have asked for additional training, more information concerning the nature of the shipment, and of course, adequate funding to provide both. They needn’t hold their breath.
Indeed, Amtrak would commiserate in kind. On the day of the derailment, and within hours of the incident, Pubs on the House Appropriations Committee voted along party lines to cut Amtrak funding to less than half of what Obama had requested, from $1.14 billion to $251 million dollars.
Democrats on the panel attempted to raise the ante, but they were admonished by Idaho Pub, Mike Simpson, not to “… use this tragedy in that way. It was beneath you.” Yes, he said it, on record, for those with ears to hear. And the next day, Paul Ryan, House Ways & Means Chairman, assured FOX News viewers that Amtrak had been properly funded to implement the safety system mandate. Only it wasn’t.
The mandate required that PTC be fully functional in all passenger and freight trains by the end of 2015, but as with all things seemingly related to the good of the public, these things grind slowly. Funding has been inadequate to finish the job, resulting in delays that turned deadly in the very same section of Pennsylvania track that took the lives of 79 people in 1943. Ryan could hardly have missed that fact, since his old buddy (and my Boss Hog Senator) Roy Blunt put forth a bill only weeks ago requiring an extension of the PTC deadline to 2020.
But Gawd forbid we get off the Austerity Express anytime soon! Ryan warned again that there will be a tendency to ‘politicize’ rail-funding using this tragedy in a bleeding-heart lefty effort to spend more. Things like funding actual needs never seem to penetrate to Mr. Ryan’s heart-chakra, and his attitude seems to get worse with every article written about him. According to Think Progress, “Asked whether he thought rebuilding America’s infrastructure should be a priority, Ryan noted that the Highway Trust Fund goes bankrupt later this month but that he would not back tax increases for infrastructure improvement as “’we can do better by saving more money [and] being more efficient.’”
The Highway Trust Fund? Holy crap! Get out yer roller skates, kids — we may have to maneuver around all those pot holes with some fancy footwork! Now, to some of us — me, for instance — the Appropriations Committee voting against adequate money to fund Amtrak on the very afternoon of its worst derailment in more than 70 years seems just one more wink and nod at the plutocracy that doesn’t care if the nation has become an accident waiting to happen, that the trains run on time or even — so it seems — if they run at all. Insult to injury, John Boehner lost patience with a reporter who asked about the Dems’ accusation that funding cuts contributed to this incident by calling the question “stupid.”
“They started this yesterday: ‘It’s all about funding, it’s all about funding.’ Well, obviously it’s not about funding, the train was going twice the speed limit. Adequate funds were there, no money has been cut from rail safety and the House passed a bill earlier this spring to reauthorize Amtrak. It’s hard for me to imagine that people take the bait on some of the nonsense that gets spewed around here.”
Chuck Schumer, on point to replace Dem leader Harry Reid next year, called this response a denial of reality, to my mind typical of all we’ve come to expect of both John Boehner and the Republican Party. Dems may or may not want to upset their corporate overlords by tilting progressive, but they don’t insult my intelligence by pretending things aren’t so!
Even Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who doesn’t appear to have all that many brain cells to rub together, pleaded with his party to stop behaving stupidly. And Rick Perry — who makes Dubya look brainy — has suggested that his state stop acting like paranoid children over the Pentagon’s war games in Texas, that they quit “being insane.” RICK PERRY managed to say something from the reality-sphere, bless his bony head! Yet John Boehner can’t imagine that people look at a sub-standard transportation system, improperly funded by self-absorbed politicians who seem totally committed to sending every dime in our coffers up the chain to the one percent who own them, and get upset? Which question is stupid, again?
This topic of infrastructure has been niggling at me for quite awhile, and came bubbling up like a bad case of agita when I read that the new 6.4 billion dollar eastern tower of the San Francisco Bay Bridge has indications of failed “anchor rod failure,” which is just about as serious as it sounds. And this is not new business. In 2013, 32 similar rods failed and were repaired at a cost of $45 million. This is shocking, not to menton chronic, ineptitude!
I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve traveled over that bridge in my lifetime, but not once — never — did I think it unsafe or unsound. Even during the Loma Prieta earthquake (6.9) in 1989, only one fifty-foot section of the bridge was damaged. It’s hard to think of it as anything other than rock solid, but apparently it’s not, and WTF! Even if we managed to muster the time, money and interest in doing critical repairs, why is it that — much like the still-flawed levees in New Orleans — we can’t seem to kick the corporate bottom-line out of the way to do right by the public trust?
But that doesn’t mean we CAN’T turn out extraordinary work, forward-thinking projects and top-of-the-heap infrastructure repair if we choose! There are great ideas out there, the public is behind such a massive project, and the world demands it — but WE, the People don’t demand it. Rachel Maddow told us this week that it’s almost as if the political system in this nation is designed to fail our infrastructure. Gathering the political will to make this happen will take a movement, the kind Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are suggesting.
Rachel and I are on the same page, regarding the shameful lapse in caring for the nation’s infrastructure, and certainly holding Congress culpable for this latest train accident, conductor error notwithstanding. As Rachel attests in this rant on upgrading trains and dragging our heels on entering a modern world, “trains in Spain travel an average of 154 miles per hour and those in Japan top out at over 200, Amtrak’s average speed is a sluggish 65 miles per hour.”
Evidently, Mr. Boehner, we no longer live in that exceptional fantasy world of yours! The good news? Just about everybody knows it but you. Over on the left, we’re talking about policy. On your side of the fence, you’re still spinning fantasy.
We’re digging out of the rubble left behind by Bush’s Folly and the Great Recession, by decline in infrastructure and government systems and obsolete ways of doing things. We’re digging out from a glut of disinformation, the bizarre fog of unreality and the overt attempt to take the nation and the world back into ages past. And even though it seems impossible to clear the debris no matter how hard we shovel, each problem carries its solution within it, ours to find.
As one who has always looked for, and found, the pony in the horse-shit, here’s my advice: first thing, you’ve got to call it like it is. Second? Look around to see who needs a helping hand, and offer it. Next? Pick up that shovel and put your back into it!
