re: #297 Jay C

And ISTM that a non-trivial proportion of the “confusion” has been pretty much deliberately ginned up by Ohio officialdom, in cahoots with the RWNM media to- IMHO - try to deflect blame (and liability) for the response to the East Palestine derailment issues onto the Federal Government (FTFNYT ran a piece on this the other day: basically a re-write of their stock “Cletus Safari” BS where, despite a bit of factual backgrounding, the focus of the article was on the locals griping about why “The Government” wasn’t doing enough to deal with the present (and potential) problems caused by the spill.
Sec’y Pete Buttigieg seemed to be a favorite whipping-boy for some reason…..

Simple answer is that the intent is to put the entire blame for the disaster upon the Feds to minimize/eliminate the liability of the companies involved. Think the 737 Max crashes, the visible effort is to try to minimize Norfolk Southern’s cost-cutting measures that compromised safety and instead focus all the blame on federal oversight and safety regulations. The idea is to spread the blame around, saying that even if Norfolk Southern engineered an absolute disaster to save a few dollars, the Feds are equally at fault for not calling them on it and penalizing them.