I think people are outraged. But this isn't the first or thousandth time deregulation has lead to regular working people getting royally fucked for the benefit of the ultra wealthy.
Find out the direct holders, institutional holders and mutual fund holders for Norfolk Southern Corporation (NSC).
finance.yahoo.com
71% of Norfolk Southern stock is held by the biggest hedge funds and banks in the country. The management of publicly traded corporations are legally obligated to act in the best interests of the shareholders. They owe nothing to their employees, customers, or the general public.
It was in the interests of the shareholders to buy off regulators in the Obama and Trump Administrations, getting them to relax safety regulations.
It was in the best interests of the shareholders to have Congress break a strike. A strike where the Unions were asking management to hire enough workers to safely operate the rails. Fuck that. Cut the workforce even further and pocket the money with stock buybacks.
At the end of the day, The Glorious and Infallible Free Market has determined that it is good and just to sacrifice a few rural towns for the shareholders. Because it's cheaper to pay meager post incident settlements than it is to safely operate the railways. Simple as that.
Or, we can go in a different direction
“Corporate greed [is] turning railroads into banks to extract billions and billions of dollars from what should be critical infrastructure.”
inthesetimes.com
