Transcripts For RT The 20240703

The, there are on average 3 Train Derailments in the United States every single day. 3. Thats more than 1000. 00 derailments every year. Most of those are not serious enough to make that summer disasters trains to rail walk hurrying, dangerous chemicals or petroleum products. They catch fire, they contaminate land and ground water, they lead to the death and farm animals and sometimes even Railroad Employees and members of the public. Why is safety such a serious issue with the American Railroad industries . Why is the United States so very far behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to its railroads . And why has the government over the course of decades over the course of a century . Done almost nothing about it. Im john curiosity. Welcome to the whistle blowers. 2 2 2 2 2 2 here in the United States, were proud of the fact that we invented railroads. They were a product of American Ingenuity in the middle of the 19th century. It was the railroads that opened the west for settlement. Railroads made it possible for americans to settle california and to make it what it is today. Railroads made it possible for huge amounts of goods to be carried efficiently and cost effectively from one corner of the country to the other. So why hasnt the American Railroad industry evolved like it has in the rest of the developed world . Why, for example, does the us not have bullet trains . Why do many of the tunnels that are trans used to the period of the American Civil War in the 18 sixtys . Wire trains sometimes so long that they block emergency vehicles like ambulances, from getting people to hospitals until they die. Why does the United States not have a truly National Passenger train system . Like most other countries do . And why do they seem to constantly the rail often causing environmental disasters and the loss of life . Reasons are several fold. First. This is a failure of policy. Members of congress are lobbied constantly by representatives for the airlines who most certainly do not want a National Training system. Those lobbyist also make Huge Campaign contributions to members of congress that in the end keep them in line and voting for the airlines over the railroads. But another reason is corporate greed. Why spend money on infrastructure when the federal government isnt committed to it any way . Why not just take the money that otherwise wouldnt have been spent and put it in the pockets of Corporate Executives and stockholders . Why not make trains longer so long when they pass through a town that everything has to come to a halt literally until they pass. That would save money after all, then it would lead to even bigger profits. The most important issue here is of course safety. It seems like safety always comes 2nd to profits. How in the world that it becomes so normal in the United States to have 3 railroad the realm, its every single day, more than 1000. 00 a year. How did that become so normal, but its not even reported in the media anymore. Again, its a perfect storm of corporate greed and policy failure. We have a guest today who is able to offer some unique insights into this problem. Michael, paul lindsay, the 2nd is a military veteran who worked for the Union Pacific railroad as a trained locomotive conductor. And the engineer for more than 17 years. He has maintained Good Standing as an employee throughout that entire time. And also over the course of that career, he has been a noted whistleblower. Paul has c and experience firsthand how corporate greed has destroyed the Railroad Industry damage the us supply chain abused workers and put the public in danger. Paul also is unusual among whistle blowers. He has been public about his revelations, putting them on his popular tick tock, channel writing op eds, and giving interviews like this one. And what happens to whistle blowers like paul, even those who make protected revelations, those who speak out for the public good. Theyre retaliated against and off and fire, and thats what happened to paul paul, were so happy to have you with us on the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me on your show, john. Im glad to be here. Paul. I normally start the show by asking some of the Big Questions related to whistle blowing into policy. But id like to reverse that today. And id like to start by talking about you as a person. Your story is so fascinating for a number of reasons. First, youve been public about speaking truth to power. You havent hidden your whistle blowing. Youve been front and center with it. And everything youve said has been to the public benefit. You talk about safety, you talk about corporate greed. Youre talking about the railroads failing the public, tell us about when and how you made the decision to go public with your observations and experiences. And why did you do that . So its, its been a long time coming. Actually, i have been following the Share Buyback program and the outright neglect of our industry and the infrastructure for quite a few years. And its funny, actually about about 6 years ago i the corporate leadership in Union Pacific. The ceo cfo came into the town hall meeting and pocatello, and the whole room was full of people full of employees. And they figured wed be asking normal questions. I stood up and i asked rob night at the time or cfo, why is Union Pacific burning are working capital and destroying our future prosperity by putting all of our money into Share Buybacks every year, instead of growing our business. And i got the most polite screw you, ive ever gotten in my entire life. But it was interesting. And when that went about just just the amount of disdain that they had when, when you actually try to ask why our industry is not growing. So something to put out there is that every year these Companies Put more into Share Buybacks by far, than they do any sort of capital investment. And i was noticing that at the time, and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. But when all the coven stuff started, and then these companies ended up getting preferential money from the federal reserve, i saw as they got to spend preferential loans, just like other Healthy Companies got. Meanwhile, there are contract is a couple of years expired and theyre trying to play hardball on, on our contracts. And the unions arent really trying to actually negotiate for anything, especially when we lost our ability to ride off our non taxable meals. So when the tax cuts and jobs act was passed, that happened to change the Work Environment for transportation workers because it took away our ability to effectively write off our meals every year. And if youre on the road, 200. 00 or more days per year, youre, youre eating that expense and youre getting taxed on all of that. It made me very angry at it really, especially watching the industry start to, you know, through the precision scheduled railroading, cut cut safety, cut, track, maintenance, cut equipment, maintenance starting to see development spiking. Im starting to do that in every single way. And yet they dont even want to come to the table to didnt even want to come to the table to negotiate with us. And so i, i started to actually become more and more, you know, a bit obsessive of with trying to change our industry for the better. And thats when i started my tick tock channel. And it started making some little videos about the railroad to make people think a little bit who own homes, these companies who actually controls these companies. And who is this money that are vital infrastructure . Uh, Vital Transportation infrastructure rely on who, who is that money actually going to and thats also when i started writing your op eds to submit a real wage. And i went to the surface transportation board, federal hearings, thats kind of how it started. And i just kept getting deeper and deeper into it. I also serve on the Media Committee at road workers united, which are like minded individuals that speak to the media about how the industry is changing. Whats going on in the industry since the company itself. Theyre not going to talk about it that we are. We are the people that will actually get this information out there. Ive read many of your opposites. Ive seen your excellent tick, tock channel. You talk about serious and important issues there. These are issues one way or another that affect every american. When you 1st started doing this, what was the response from the railroad . Did it take them by surprise as well . I believe they tried to ignore me. They absolutely tried to ignore me and even my, my local management and all they knew what i was doing and they werent against it at all. It was um, you know, in fact ive, ive gotten, you know, quite a bit of a compliments from management and the ranks appreciating what i was doing. They didnt do anything. They tried to pretend it didnt exist, it did not. They did not pursue retaliation until the east palace being the rome. It happened. And i started making content related to east palestine, which, you know, fell, even though it was Norfolk Southern. But this happened to my content made the point that this applies to all railroads, and theyre all doing this with their hot box detectors where you have someone hundreds of miles away that is monitoring the detectors now. And the crews are not being alerted to the status of their training. Right. And i made this video and it was, this is when it hit the fan after id made dozens of videos that was and also spoken on the media. And by this time i had already spoken to, i dont know how many pod task had been on um you know, morning and america been a few times. Ive been on nbc nightly news. Ive been all and they just ignored it. It did nothing. But when i started talking about these palestine, that is when i was pulled out of service and they escorted me off the property and pulled me into formal investigation. Besides your public revelations, have you approached any governmental or oversight entities after all, much of what you talk about has to do with Public Safety us . Um, so i have, ive, ive spoken extensively with robert prime is the surface transportation board. There are ro, road Regulatory Agency and actually this year in march, when i was out there actually met with them for lunch, you know, to speak about the industry. And that was in washington dc, right across from the capital is very interesting experience. I never thought id be in that position, but unfortunately, his body is mostly to do with the economic side of the railroad because a lot of it has been how is this affecting our economy, which also translates to safety because of the railroads are driving away business to trucks that puts our freight on the unsafe highway system and subsidized by the taxpayers and potentially causes more death and destruction on the, on our highways. Right. And, and, you know, the surface transportation board, they were the ones that have been Holding Hearings before the east palace team before the safety stuff really, really came to the public forefront. So yeah, and then ive also reached out and tried to contact you several congressmen and senators that have proposed pieces of legislation. However, the less far in the legislative effort has been met with lawsuits from the railroad, whether it be federal or state they, they, they seem to think that theyre invincible. And so to give an example of this, i actually made a 10 minute video that was used for Nevada Assembly bill for 56. I believe it was and it was used in the hearings to get this piece of legislation passed on a state level and the representative from Union Pacific there told the state uh in, in the hearing with uh no sort of um, no reservation whatsoever. The Union Pacific will immediately be filing lawsuit against the state and state. Proceed with this. Um, so i, i been involved in uh, on a state level also this was, this happened to be nevada. Um, i could have been doing a lot more. I, i gotta say i, id love to do a lot more, but i, i have been thats, thats been my engagement spies, federal and state. Thank you, paul. Stay right there. We want to continue this conversation. Were speaking with American Railroad whistleblower, michael. Paul lindsey the 2nd about Railroad Safety and about his experience as a list of lower in this important sector. Were going to take a short break and come back to talk about the current and future states of American Railroads and why they are such a mess. 2 the, [000 00 00;00] the executive, and im here to plan with you whatever you do. Do not watch my new show. Seriously. Why watch something thats so different whitelisted of opinions that he wont get anywhere else. Welcome to please or do they have the state department c. I a weapons makers, multi 1000000000. 00 corporations. Choose your fax for you, go ahead, change and whatever you do. Dont want my show stay main street because im probably going to make you comfortable. My show is called direction. But again, you probably dont wanna watch it because it might just change the way you the welcome back to the list of those. Im john curie onto were speaking with American Railroad whistle blower, Michael Paul Lindsey the 2nd about his very unique experiences and about his whistle blowing on safety and corporate greed. Paul, welcome back to the show. Paul. I grew up 15 miles from east palestine, ohio, which was the sight of an absolutely horrible Train Derailment and Chemical Spill earlier this year. Literally, the entire town was evacuated. Farm animals died for miles around, and the ground water was contaminated. The government was very slow to react, and in the end, railroad executives promised a few dollars to those families who had been effected and the railroad and announced that it would build a park a park. This is a disaster on so many levels. First, tell us how its a roman and a spill like this could happen. And 2nd, tell us how the railroads get away with causing such destruction the time. Well, the cause of the east palate seemed the roman is very simple and it was just an overheated bearing. You figure if youve ever pulled a trailer or something, you just got to watch out for, you know, you get bearings that occasionally over he is just something me got to watch for and on the railroad. They have detectors. Um that they typically place every so often along the rails that scan these wheels as they go by sammys bearings. And the way its always been is well go over them with our train and it broadcasts out over the radio and the crew, the conductor, and the engineer, and the cab to share it. And it will announce the mile post, you know, mile post 233, you know, to a mile post 233, dot 5. No dfcs total actually gives you an actual couch train speed. A lot of times it would say the temperature, which is, which is a big deal because its nice to know what the temperature is outside because it effects train handling as an engineer the effects your brakes, how effective your brakes are and everything else. If the temperature has dropped dramatically, it has an effect on train operations. So it was a good piece of information. So in the last few years, these detectors, as these companies have been just obsessive about lowering their operating ratio at any cost, cutting maintenance, cutting track, department, cutting, train crews, cutting everything they can. One thing theyve done is they dont want to see trains stopped. So, you know, you dont wanna have to stop a train so that a conductor has to check for a hot bearing. All that, that just costs the shareholders money, even though its an over heated daring. Um, so what they do now, and this is what i call that my video and the railroad used to fire me, is that now theyve shut off all those exit messages on the detectors. And they go to some 100, some miles away. Um and you know, it sends an alert to their desk and they look at it. Meanwhile theyre managing hundreds of trains. And its easy to not catch that. The equivalent of this would be like, imagine if youre on a plane and theres some sort of engine failure on the plane, but the airline has a policy. Well, we dont want to let the pilot or anything, make a judgment call on that. So even though theres an engine problem, were going to send it to headquarters and have them look at it. And if we decide, maybe well let the pilot know and theres a problem. You know, thats absolutely unacceptable. So that is what happened with these policy. And there was a bearing failure end, that single bearing failure. Even though it seems like what you have hundreds of axles on these trends that one single barrel bearing failure car, it causes a real car to fail, causes it to the to the rail. But since you have all those other cars around it, it causes a pile up in a whole bunch more cars the rail. So even though it was just one bearing, it causes a mass of durham, but you do not want to have a catastrophic there inside your so thats what i made that video on. But i do want to point out that just a couple days ago, there was a news article that was, that was released an investigative journalist, put out an article specifically on this and specifically cited this. And it is now publicly reported by the main stream media, and thats exactly what happened. And there used to be 2 employees in that you know, little cubicle, hundreds of miles away in atlanta, monitoring all the trains on the p. Now there was only one in here, you have this one guy sitting there, monitoring every train on the Norfolk Southern for these problem because theyve silenced all the detectors. The train crews cant make the decision anymore and he missed it. He doesnt have a designated bathroom break. He doesnt have a designated lunch break. He works at 12 hour shift and he said he was working 3 other trains at the time and missed the um, you know, he missed the detector when it ran a 103 degrees on the previous detector when the train went over it. So thats how it happened. It was cost cutting, cost cutting, getting rid of employees that so even though it was a bearing that caused it, and it was cost cutting and it was the obsession with lowering the operating ratio that causes this and this is um, you know, and this, this is not the only case of that the same week the same week. We had another big piece of information release. So there was a amtrak, the roman in montana a couple years ago that killed 3 people. Okay. And the final into us be report came out on this and the report stated that it was truck maintenance. The crews were over worked, there were 2 guys working that section of track and over the previous uh, 4 months said that they had uh worked an average of 13 hours a day and they didnt have enough people out there. And there hasnt been a walking inspection of the rail and Something Like 2 years and a so again, it goes back to cost cutting. How do we give black rock and vanguard . More money. How do we cut the operation to the core . How do we prevent putting any of their own capital into the railroad so we can give it back to the shareholders as buybacks so puts thats, thats what causes these policies to. I mentioned in the introduction to the show that American Railroads are generations behind their european chinese and japanese counterparts. We have no bullet trains. It seems like our trains are never on time. Passenger travel is discouraged in favor of air travel. Why is it like this . Why are we so far behind . Well, theres, theres, theres definitely a lot of reasons we can talk for 2 hours on this subject about the way our cities are designed, the way theyre designed around the car and highway infrastructure. Its a very, very deep issue. But bottom line, and i think the reason why our railroads are so far behind is because we have allowed these companies to consolidate into giant monopolies and they have the right to not invest in growth. So imagine, imagine if our highway system or maybe our, our Airlines System hadnt improved since the 19 sixtys, it just stayed in the same position. It was since the 19 sixtys wed be saying that our highway and our Airline System was antiquated. But that is what has happened with the railroads. Yeah, theyve gotten some new locomotives, but really, very little has changed. They havent invested into double track electrification. Longer sightings. There theres been very, very little investment. Theres has been consolidation and abandonment of track. And, and as far as passenger rail, you know, of course they, they couldnt even, even though federal law requires them to give amtrak priority on their tracks. The railroads that made this decision now that theyll run 12131415000 foot trains. Ill run them as long as they want through your hometown. Walk the same time. Theyre sightings, a lot of times are only 7 or 8000 feet. So even if amtrak wanted to get around them, they cant because there is no is the past. And the railroads take care, they just flat out, do not care. And the reason for all of this is because the railroads are privately owned and they are allowed. They dont, we dont enforce common carrier obligations anymore. We dont really have any standard on what is considered good service anymore, and the highways in the airports and every other mode of transportation, even like Maritime Transportation to save the dredging of the rivers. You know, the ports. We maintain that as vital Public Infrastructure in the United States, but yet when it comes to rail, it is theyre allowed to essentially do whatever they want. And that is the difference between what we have and what they have over in europe. And im not, im not saying that we need to just nationalize and run government government. Freight trains at all. I believe that the freight rail or the, the rail system should be treated the same way as the highway system in the airports. You know, open access and has to be maintained at that point and youre constantly seeing bridges being rebuilt. And new interchange is being put in and modernization going into our free ways and our highways and our airports and everything else. You dont see that on the railroads. You dont see it. A lot of times we still have 15 mile an hour switches out there where the train has to slow down to 15 miles an hour to go from one track to the other. Because we just in the meanwhile, and in january i was over in italy and i was on a train going, you know, uh, 300 kilometers an hour. And we just, we do not prioritize. We do not prioritize rail in the United States and we allow them to be a monopoly even though im know i, you know, im no law professor. But i do believe that having a monopoly or attempting to have a monopoly has been a legal in the United States for a lot of years now. So, you know, we, we have the, the, what the Sherman Anti Trust act as well as several others. Some jurisprudence to lean back on and we dont enforce that anymore. Um, monopolies are allowed and even encouraged now in america and i dont mean to ramble on about this, ill tie it all off there. This topic by stating that. So as far as Public Ownership of the rail versus like the interstate, imagine a on our interstate highway system for the most part, they have problems. But for the most part we have hundreds of different trucking companies. They compete. And for the most part it works out ok, no one is suggesting that a Trucking Company should on interstate, that would be ridiculous and no one would even consider that as reasonable. But thats what we do with the railroads. Paul, thank you for joining us and thank you for your bravery and practically singlehandedly standing up to one of the most powerful industries in the United States. Its not easy and paul is living proof of that after a 17 year career preceded by proud military service. Hes out of a job simply for telling the truth. Every country needs whistle blowers, of course, theyre crucial to a healthy society. The employee who in the Public Interest has the independence of judgment and the personal courage to challenge malpractice or illegality. Is it public hero . Thats paul lindsey. We need more people like it. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the whistle blowers, im john to reaku will see you next time the. 2 the, the, the, they are probably her, my little sister store. Okay. The model girl to i got you. No problem. Seem to them out of the know nothing. 30 minutes. Yeah. Side of the drive i showed my brother through, he was sudden to tell people for a lo so now i never look at searches as being the same. Well, i guess i lost my list. Thats the outcome of the chicago police. Itd be gang chicago is like, you get photos release you losing your life as another crime. Say another could have been a doctor or nurse could have been the next president. We cant keep losing people out here the are sanchez, ive been doing news now for some 30 years to languages all over the world. Here in the United States, ive been interviewed. Ive interviewed some for us president s and work and about 4 or 5 different Us Television networks been fired by most by the way. I really knew it should be honest and direct and impactful, and this, this is direct impact. The so ive noticed that lately, even see and then is it meaning that the situation for ukraine and its kind of offensive as quote,