“Mayor Pete” Buttigieg broke into the national spotlight when he sought the Democratic Party’s nomination as their presidential candidate to run against former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. He brought his vast experience in politics to the table, having served as mayor of the major metropolis of South Bend, Indiana (population approx. 100,000). He eventually dropped out of the race on March 1 after some early successes in the polls. After President Joe Biden took office, he thought it would be a good idea to have him as part of the cabinet, and he was given the job as the Secretary of Transportation.
One aspect of any presidential administration is to respond to the needs of American citizens, especially when disaster strikes. They have to show the population the situation is under control and that the resources of the federal government are available during emergencies.
After a recent disaster, Mayor Pete decided to make like Bugs Bunny in his cartoons where the rascally rabbit jumps into his hole and then pulls it in after himself to escape Elmer Fudd — for more than a week. Almost three weeks after the fact, he claims that he regrets not speaking out sooner, but his reasons seemed to lack a little sincerity to Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO).
East Palestine, Ohio
On February 3, one of those disasters cropped up in East Palestine, Ohio, which sits on the border between Ohio and Pennsylvania (roughly 75 miles SE of Cleveland and 40 miles NW of Pittsburgh) when a Norfolk Southern Railway freight train derailed. The National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) preliminary report says that at about 8:54 p.m. local time, 38 cars jumped the track, including several tank cars carrying more than 115,000 gallons of liquid vinyl chloride.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), vinyl chloride is quite hazardous, where acute exposure attacks the central nervous system (CNS) and can lead to coma or death. Long-term “exposure can cause permanent liver injury and liver cancer [and] neurologic or behavioral symptoms.”
Despite all this, Mayor Pete stayed safely away from the Buckeye and Keystone states. Instead, he took to his Twitter feed to “welcome” the interest the disaster renewed in the department’s work on rail safety — a full 10 days later. There he also tried to blame the bogeyman who still haunts Democrats and Liberals everywhere, former President Donald Trump.
