EAST PALESTINE, OH—Gathering in front of the toxic decimation unfolding as a result of lax safety standards and lack of governmental oversight, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) held a press conference Thursday to champion the Norfolk Southern train derailment as a deregulation success story. “Ladies and gentlemen, behold, as the results speak for themselves—deregulation works,” said the native Ohioan to grand applause, before acknowledging the decades of hard work it took on both national and local scales to bypass costly red tape and bureaucracy and turn this forgotten part of his state into a thriving chemical wasteland, itself a testament to throwing caution and concern to the wind in favor of removing guardrails and severely underfunding infrastructure. “So rarely do we get to see such immediate change as a result of dismantling rigorous safeguards and doing away with accountability, but look at this—just yesterday this was an abandoned rural prairie full of nothing but native wildlife. Now, through a bipartisan effort to completely ignore calls to replace the Civil War-era braking systems on most of our great nation’s trains, we transformed this area seemingly overnight. You’ll notice I am tearing up, not only because the toxic fumes are now being violently blown in our direction, but because this is exactly why so many of us get into politics—to elicit tangible change that makes the lives of everyday Americans so much worse.” At press time, DeWine announced he had now begin work on removing Ohio regulations surrounding organ donations so that residents’ now-infected body parts could be easily transplanted into healthy people to infect them as well.
- Off
- English
Comments are closed.