Regulatory Capture: Company Tasked With Testing East Palestine Water Hired by Norfolk Southern

Huffington Post is almost always a dumpster fire of tired intersectional feminist propaganda. But occasionally, when it actually breaks a worthwhile story, it deserves credit.

This is one such instance:

The testing that Ohio authorities relied on to declare the municipal water in East Palestine safe to drink after a disastrous train derailment was funded by the railroad operator itself and did not initially comply with federal standards.

Even if everything the company hired by Norfolk Southern did were on the level (it wasn’t), this would be a clear case of conflict of interest. And the mere appearance of conflict of interest undermines its credibility.

Exclusively for our VIPs: Joe Biden’s Surprise Trip to Ukraine Is an Insult to East Palestine

Where is the EPA? If the government can’t sample water after a massive chemical spill that endangers the life of every organism for miles and miles, then what good is it?

If government must exist, it cannot cover up water poisoning for the sake of protecting a multi-billion-dollar corporation, no matter how many bribes the flamboyant sexual minority token currently heading the Department of Transportation hopes to get from it when he inevitably runs for president. This is very basic stuff.

The government apparently can’t be asked to make sure drinking water is actually safe to drink in the middle of the country, but it can regularly drone Somalis for some obscure, ever-shifting political project in the volatile Middle East.

The HuffPost article continues:

Although the drinking water in East Palestine may indeed be safe, as officials have repeatedly stressed in recent days, independent experts argue [emphasis added] the initial batch of samples that a consulting firm hired by the rail company collected and submitted to the lab should not have been used to make such a determination. The lab report on the railroad-funded sampling indicates the samples were not handled in accordance with federal Environmental Protection Agency standards.

Here we go again with the “experts say” drivel. Are we so addled and infantilized as a society that we can’t be expected to reach the most obvious logical conclusion without an “expert” weighing in? We don’t need an “expert” to tell us the company that poisoned the water shouldn’t be in charge of testing it.