LABOR & COUNTRY CHAPTER III - WHY

On February 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed while carrying 38 cars of hazardous materials, many incorrectly labeled or completely missing from the manifest. This crash, and subsequent explosion would shake the people from East Palestine, Ohio, all the way through our neighbors over in Pennsylvania. A private company was then greenlit by the governor to detonate a bomb in the form of a controlled burn creating an ecological catastrophe, shooting skyscraper level plumes of smoke sending waves through Ohio and Pennsylvania communities, poisoning everything in its path including my people.

It is still unknown whether the controlled burn was out of an abundance of safety or just to get the trains back moving assuming this community was just going to roll right over. It is however apparent they tried their darndest to cover up their own maleficence at every turn to get the trains back moving. Even the cause of the derailment will remain inconclusive because initial investigations the 'black box', an electronic monitoring system mounted to trains to better understand disasters, was written over as the train was attempted to be shoved right back into service by the company. No backup system for their black boxes. The record profits will continue to roll into these rail companies while refusing train upgrades and worker time off failing workers and community alike.

The Environmental Protection Agency of the United States of America then allowed the very company that poisoned my people to test their own contamination. I finally awoke to the realization that every institution might be compromised, not because of government workers, but the leadership. Worry and anger have only grown as investigations into multiple different water contamination disasters our country over reveal all to have been handled incompetently and incompletely, leaving trails of broken and abandoned citizens in skeletons of buildings where cities once stood.

Testimonials of our fellow citizens through independent media outlets no one will watch has hardened my resolve to lift these people up. The national press and politicians save for a few, seem to have abandoned their duties all together. After hearing working people talk about a process where they must go beg they company that poisoned them for basic living expenses is almost too much to bear. All this while standing on their front lawns staring blankly as their property values plummet and children's stability in home and school are thrown into disarray.

I'm sure my people would've been completely abandoned if it weren't for the outright anger coming from the nation over.

The Federal Government and the agencies that represent it need to reflect the might and will of the people. The Environmental Protection Agency needs a complete disaster response rewrite by a competent group of experts and top leadership tier completely removed. Staff at federal and local levels need better training on crisis response, human interaction, and to become experts at testing water and air if not already. The EPA uses little of the power they're given, leaving citizens to assume it may be for fear of upsetting the donor aristocracy. Looking for oversight from Congress, though hopeful for a moment, may prove difficult as they all relish the idea of causing a stir in their own stock portfolios.

However, the low-level quality in the services that are already paid for, do give our citizens the right to have pause when they think about the necessity for such power to be given to the EPA. Especially if that power is squandered when its needed most. The leadership across government needs to know its ok to admit when they've made a mistake. Serving the American people is a journey. Journeys have bumps in the road and flat tires. Each one of these disasters is not a closed occurrence but a new opportunity to improve services, when they inevitably occur. To not have the best led, trained, and equipped EPA in the world is the tragedy. We can all learn to better serve our people.

Back in the 1980's the Japanese learned to kick our ass in manufacturing by embracing their own mistakes through a new 'Kaizen' methodology that just simply meant 'ever improving'. Giving power to their workers and directly enabling them to make change themselves on the factory floor, helped make both the product and institutions better. It didn't stop in just manufacturing.

Kaizen methodology and advances in electric furnace technology hit many in the American steel industry by surprise as well. Superior technology to the coal fire furnaces and the inability to keep up in technique and automation processes would prove fatal to many of our steel industry-based economies. There is no doubt there are other issues with regulatory burdens and wages, but it was a failure of leadership to not see changes in industry and adapting to them that led to the collapse of many steel-based industries throughout the United States.

With that said, both servants and citizens should be able to shape their institutions. Rapid water and air testing kits with remote response capabilities can be administered by citizens. Who better to understand their own communities and hunger for aggregated data into a real time mapping experience? Everything is a little better with good data. Not perfect data. Good data.

One of the worst things I've continued to hear from citizens is they feel in the dark and the trust in their water source is irrevocably harmed. East Palestine, Ohio, Flint, Michigan, Jackson, Mississippi, all the same. This is the fear that poor citizens must live with that you can't get paid back for. Hard lives made harder by unaccountable rich, and an agency that has decided on a government directed mission rather than one that is community driven, allowing for adaptability and nuance.

The administration of the EPA is a microcosm of a bigger problem within the current degeneration of the Democratic party. There is no glitz and glamour in the modernization and reformation of our institutions to better deliver services. Many of these services in which our fellow citizens have given up completely on. Every major service in government needs mechanisms to intake feedback, flexibly change course when necessary, and most importantly remain transparent. Fear mistakes may be revealed need remedied by leaders that allow for them.

Leadership in the Democratic Party should consider these improvements critical to save and improve the EPA but more importantly to build back trust where we can. This agency should run like a well-oiled machine if there are thousands of trains crashes a year! We must deliver better services that working people can be proud of and more importantly able to build cases in which accountability is necessary. Above all things, the diplomatic nature in which the government chooses to treat businesses that poison our people must end.

While calamity continued to befall my forgotten part of the country, rich investors in Silicon Valley got the federal government and The Federal Reserve to bend to their every wish and desire at the drop of a hat. Over just a short weekend (TWO DAYS!) these institutions decided to create a completely new financial instrument. Disguised as a new loan facility, a veer away from the actual underlying bank insurance for deposits was neatly integrated and plopped onto the balance sheet with a nice little bow all so rich Silicon Valley investors didn't have to upend their precious lives one single iota. I watched the Federal Reserve get together and work for rich investors in a way that working class folks could only dream of! While my people beg the company that poisoned them for scraps to feed their families. Now I know of such things we can bring these imaginative men to heel to create for those who actually need it.

The losses due to the bank out here would mount though. Ohio teachers would see all gains in their retirement accounts over the last twenty years evaporate while the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank and many colleagues would be found cleaning out the vaults on their way out. Still, a quiet suffering is expected of my people when there is a distinct difference in the way classes of our citizens are treated.

Our shared Midwest has been starved of investment capital for nearly forty years while weak leadership decided everything under the sun is better off made by the Chinese except the guns. Now our free-market fundamentalism leaves us less safe, with malice and nihilism rising to the surface of the citizen conscience. Our forgotten towns are now simple pitstops to profitability for the folks at Norfolk Southern, Silicon Valley Bank, and for the Democratic Party, who think they can come into our home and tell us our neighbors are our enemy. Who think our citizens deplorable. Who fill citizens with nonsense and empty culture wars that do nothing to inspire the imaginations of our youth. Who constantly espouse to vote blue no matter who while on their way to brunches with private equity executives and overrated celebrities. I cannot ask struggling citizens to vote for this party that even now censors free speech and shirks at open debate.

The Democratic Party allowed for the murder and dismemberment of an of American journalists in Saudi Arabia while our own President fist bumps him. The Democratic Party that allows for the killing of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh to go unpunished while the American taxpayer must still send over the ships of cash subsidizing Israel’s own Apartheid. The Democratic Party imprisons journalists like Julian Assange, embarrassed over a government would spy on its own citizens and allies alike. These decisions make us look like a weak country with no morality or principles.

The very reason that legislatures around our country exist with such powerful majorities reflects the disdain and mistrust of the national parties and the nationalization of our politics. The right-wing politicians from conservative states attempt to legislate in a domineering fashion with significant power and little oversight.

We need leadership to shine a light on why a properly trained law enforcement officer gang, armed to the teeth, would shoot up an unarmed young man from Akron up like common criminals themselves. These four law enforcement officers fired a total of 94 shots in a span of 6.7 seconds, three of the officers fired 18 times each. If a criminally incompetent Attorney General isn't enough, the governor of my state put changes contained in Ohio Senate Bill 288, to strip away an exemption in Ohio’s public records laws that allows journalists to view preliminary autopsy reports and investigative notes! These men are building a moat around justice. Citizens in Columbus, Ohio can't even get straight answers from their own mayor on police shootings while his cops rain down bullets on citizens with no accountability.

This is not a war on my brothers in blue, but the militarization of the police force will always end up with police obsessed with the idea they're under some kind of threat. It seems our whole country thinks the police in some type of war on our streets when we are only at war with fear in the hearts of our citizens. Our brothers in blue need leadership in a different way. If an executive needs to come in and make use of force a national topic and get it taught in schools, we will. If every single cop shooting needs to come under a microscope and be explained and understood from the executive, we will.

Most importantly, I do not believe in qualified immunity. I see it as an injustice against man that one citizen, even if his job is dangerous, would be treated differently under the law. Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that shields government officials, including law enforcement officers, from liability for actions taken in the course of their official duties. Yet, every piece of training these men receive and are taught to think about is to handle intense situations. The reason we pay them to mostly sit around all day is because the job is dangerous, and they must deal with these types of situations. We need men and women of stronger mind, not with bigger guns.

We cannot allow men so quick to pull their pistol rather than to train properly and take control of their own brain and autonomous system. We must make examples of as many of these cowardly bandits posing as law as it takes to clean out these precincts and to change police culture. I will consider it my duty to root these men out, but I will stand by the side of law enforcement while accomplishing this, like brothers.

Rooting around in a den of snakes is a dangerous affair. Going after one, even if a bad egg, may cause the whole nest to attack whether warranted or otherwise. Instead, we will need to raise up the best cops in our nation and start a national campaign and force this issue until it is resolved. Reason and a hope for justice will simply not be enough. It is the job of the president to protect from enemies foreign and domestic. Bad cops and the chaos that comes with injustice is an enemy to the hearts of our citizens and against good order. "What good is the use is law without justice?"

Speaking on the lawless, on July 21, 2020, the FBI arrested Larry Householder, the Republican speaker of the house of representatives in Ohio for filtering money through a fake nonprofit organization to pay for bribes and evade campaign finance laws in the largest bribery scheme ever perpetrated against the state of Ohio. I'd like to personally thank the Ohio Republican Party and its leader, Mike Dewine for overseeing this monumental achievement of theft. All the of the Republican members of the Ohio Congress voted him back as their leader, surely being rained down on with gifts while our citizens money was stolen from under our nose and electric bills soared through the roof. Still, these men all still won reelection.

This cancer on our states is only magnified as we witnessed the forced removal of bodily autonomy from our female citizens, a situation our national leadership watched happen with a forty-five-day head start. This Democratic Party failed its citizens, unable to prepare or volley against a barrage of laws against a free people. The national Democratic Party did get out those fundraising emails though, a surefire fear campaign I'm sure raked in plenty of money while our female citizens wonder about their own independence. I wouldn't have raised money. I would've raised an army.

I sat at a coffee table quietly paralyzed with my wife feeling for the first time as if something different within our country had been lost. The lackluster fight put up with everyone from the United States Attorney General on down did little to inspire with the significant amount of power we've given these leaders. Instead, government overreach is a tool used by all equally.

Forty-five days went by when a righteous army should've been raised with an executive turned general, giving people faith in their own power rather than waiting for the heavy hand of daddy government once again. Instead, our President plays footsies with men that only respect domineering power. If chosen as your leader, I will begin my fight against these corrupt, feckless conservative men with a volley based on the fourth amendment that says the government can kick rocks about what goes on between my family and their physician. That will be just the beginning.

On both coasts, down in Florida, on the college campuses, in every corporation, on the streets, and at the doorsteps of politicians all over this country, I would have raised hell in line with the weight of the actual event occurring. Every single television across the country would be organizing our citizens to the righteousness felt in a moment when a people feel their rights in peril. I would have started a press conference asking my citizens across the country to prepare for organizing against the hospitals turning women away from health care, against the politicians that voted for it, and against religious institutions that think our people would rather be controlled by the church rather than by the government, neither of which appeals to the independent American heart.

Most importantly my fellow citizens, from day one as your presidential candidate I will raise a righteous army at the doorsteps of every single business that makes even a dollar donation to the Republican Party from here until our female citizens’ rights are restored across the country. Every single business that donates a penny to these men will get an automated and human complemented system reaching out to HR departments, board rooms, and to shareholders, fed directly into a media ecosystem assisted with AI where we will take this information to our people and let them be the judges themselves.

All the information is out there to grab and harness as we can see fit to move our people to. Every business across our country will need to make plain their views on female body autonomy and why they're supporting a group of leaders that think our women common government property. We will then see how creative our Congress can get. I've even included a canned message if you'd like to give one of these businesses or your congressmen a call from your very own home!

"Sir or ma'am, hello I'm a concerned citizen and I would like to respectfully inquire why insert company name or person here, support the removal of our female citizens bodily autonomy and increased government involvement in the personal decisions of our family? (Says no) You don't? I don't either sir/ ma'am. Would you help me spread the message that our citizens will not accept the increased government involvement in the personal decisions of our families and we're going to make it known nationwide until the attack on our fellow citizens ceases. Thank you so much. "

The DNC can have that one for free.

Two black members of the Congress down in Tennessee have found out old traditions die hard being expelled from their Congress for offending delicate Southern sensibilities. Around the country, dehumanizing laws against our transexual population are being used for what seems little more than cheap political purposes, turning citizens against one another with confusing language and blurred lines exist in the involvement of children. Children should be protected at all costs. However, the use of the government as the instrument is tragically callous. The language used by these conservative men has created an unnecessary nationwide panic leaving a vulnerable populous afraid in their own communities.

While in desperate need of a more delicate and nuanced discussion, instead the same ignoramuses that decided to remove female body autonomy now shoot out lobbyist written smut disguised as law and sell it as a child safety features. Once again, a heavy-handed government comes directly in the affairs of families, often grey situations where black and white laws attempt to shoehorn themselves in simply will not fit.

We cannot put ourselves in the myriad difficult situations and conversations that families must endure to make these decisions. I personally wouldn't listen to the government either way. We must trust our families, lean on physicians, psychologists, debate, and independent analysis to help our citizens understand the gravity of these choices. As citizens we must lean on doctors and psychologists, not politicians to figure out what is going on. Not ignorant men with political ambitions ready to drive hatred into the hearts of our people. I will see the cruelty of these weak politicians come to an end. To the Republican Party of Ohio, I look forward to putting many of these cruelties against our free citizens on your political gravestones. To Governor Mike Dewine, I pray our people manifest the power to make your administration a sad footnote in Ohio's history.

Government overreach doesn't stop at the state, with the COVID 19 response around lockdowns the first of many mistakes the federal government would make. Working Americans, usually left for dead, drowning in medical debt, suddenly found themselves under the lackluster and heavy-handed caring protection of our federal government because we have chosen rich leaders that have lost touch with the realities of working life.

Worse, to make the decision palatable to the populous, all attention regarding the extreme detriment to our most vulnerable citizens was swept right under the rug while I saw children in hoods and hollers alike unable to move forward in their young lives, often despondent or worse. Children with no access to the internet or parents with the capabilities to connect them. This all due to a contagion that could've been handled with a significant amount of more trust in the American people. A people that now must adjust to a world completely changed once again. Many small businesses with their backs up against the wall while behemoths take advantage of a subsidized technical capabilities and cheap money Ohioans can only dream of. A state where most lack the capability to even connect to high-speed internet due to malfeasance in infrastructure investment by our own state government. Now, consumers are left with even less choices in its wake, more capital flying out from our local neighborhoods and communities.

The Democratic Party of the United States of America is about to go through a generational change. Bernie Sander's movement was the beginning, not the end of workers finding a path back to one another once more. Our politicians cannot serve corporate lobbyists, their own stock portfolios, and the people all at the same time. We must call out and separate ourselves from the President and this national parties' impropriety and begin the future of the Democratic Party here in the Midwest. Let us take a new set of values and ideas to our people. Ohio can carve a new path by changing the battlefield in which we fight on for a party with midwestern values with a laser focus on family and labor at the forefront.