Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
The end of last month must have been especially rough for the people still living in the contaminated eastern Ohio town of East Palestine.
On March 26, only hours after the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor was knocked down by an out-of-control container ship, they had to watch President Biden come on national TV and promise to “move heaven and earth” to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge “as soon as humanly possible.”
They also had to see Biden pledge to have the federal government pay the entire cost of the accident and hear him say he plans to visit Baltimore as “quickly” as he can.
As extra punishment, sick and depressed people of East Palestine also had to watch Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg perform his annoying act at a one-hour press conference.
I can’t imagine how mad the nearly 5,000 people still left in East Palestine must have been after seeing Biden and Buttigieg rush to Baltimore’s rescue with all federal resources blazing.
Biden waited more than a year to visit them and feel their community’s pain after a train derailment on Feb. 3, 2023, started fires that poisoned their whole town with a cloud of toxic chemicals.
Baltimore’s fallen bridge is a major disaster that should be repaired as quickly as possible by the Biden administration and the federal government.
But so was repairing the daily lives of the victims of the train derailment in East Palestine.
For the last 14 months their lives have been in constant turmoil, their health has been in danger and their futures have been scientifically scary and uncertain.
They are still getting their homes tested for toxins, still wondering if the chemicals they inhaled or drank are the reason they are always sick or depressed.
Many East Palestinians want to leave but can’t sell their homes because their property values have been decimated, and their town is now an American Chernobyl.
Activists are arguing that the federal government needs to put an end to their suffering now, and they’re right.
They say the feds – i.e., Biden and his administration — should offer to buy everyone’s home, compensate people who want to move away, and, as was done at Love Canal and Camp Lejeune, pay for the medical costs of people who were exposed to toxic chemicals.
When everything is as fixed as it can be, the final bill should be sent to Norfolk Southern Railroad.
The people of East Palestine have every right to be angry at Biden and the shoddy way they’ve been treated by his government.
They’re victims of the worst kind of partisan politics.
They had the bad luck to be living in a red part of a red state – an Ohio county that went 71-26 for Donald Trump in 2020.
If they had been living in a Blue State like Pennsylvania, which is only three miles east, or Maryland, we know things would have been much different.
Michael Reagan is the president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Contact him at: