How Things Work: Turning Good Legislation Bad

Train photo by James St. John on Flickr

Ed. note: There was a snafu in our scheduling yesterday, and you’ll be receiving two posts today. Apologies for the inbox overwhelm! —dz

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After Norfolk Southern’s 2-mile long freight train derailed in February, dumping toxic chemicals and exploding in an Ohio town, its corporate PR machine zoomed into panic mode. Facing nationwide condemnation, lawsuits, and political outrage—the $12.7-billion-a-year giant suddenly embraced a congressional package of safety reforms that it had vehemently been fighting right up to the day of its disastrous derailment. Yes, that’s pure self-serving corporate cynicism, but we have to grab progress where we can, and Norfolk’s embrace put bipartisan oomph behind the Railway Safety Act, pushing it forward.

But—screeeeeech, ca-chunk, ffphttt, thunk—by May, the oomph was gone and the bill was stalled on a Senate sidetrack. What happened? Money. Lobbyists. Corporate avarice. Corrupt lawmakers.

The investigative news diggers at The Intercept produced an excellent article on August 18 documenting the death of rail safety reform. I’ve summed it up here with a series of numbers and factoids they dug out: