37
votes
US Chemical Safety Board scheduled to disappear under Donald Trump's orders
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Trump quietly shutters the only federal agency that investigates industrial chemical explosions
- Authors
- Tristan Baurick
- Published
- Jun 16 2025
- Word count
- 1073 words
They really are just cutting the best things.
Where I live, we had a massive battery plant go up in flames back in January. As it was we got very little information, but it was nice to know there were at least studies done. I can't imagine living next to a chemical plant, having an explosion take place, and having the federal or state government just shrug.
I can imagine many folks think of this as "getting rid of government overreach" but it's such a weird perspective. I can't imagine living with the world view where I'd cheer on this choice. Wild times.
Welp, looks like the next protest I attend isn't going to be a peaceful one.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
Name of the game is non violent numbers. No king's was obviously the best we've had. I'm not familiar with organizing protests, just attending them, but I'm sure you could get an excellent turnout. The people are mad, as we should be. Violence is too easy to villify in the mainstream.
Is there a way to quietly stop folks who want to be violent? We get out of town anarchists who love to trash other cities.
If they're actual anarchists, turning them over to the police should properly dissuade them. If they're out of town fascists, you'd need other solutions.
They’re a bunch of young adults that break windows and then leave town. I don’t know the details of their beliefs, only what’s on their clothes.
I do find it bizarre and unsettling that big protest movements tend to attract these mysterious antisocial people who appear, destroy or steal as much as they can, and then disappear again just as quickly. Who are they? Why do they do this? It seems that the following observations usually hold true:
The local organizers don’t know who they are, and must make a great show of being peaceful to counteract the violence and remain credible.
The opposition focuses on the violence as much as possible, making sweeping claims that “obviously” all the protestors are violent thugs, and ignoring evidence to the contrary.
Rumors swirl that the hooligans weren’t even from there, like they traveled some distance for no other reason than to fuck shit up. And of course those rumors go hand-in-hand with the eternal conspiracy theory that they’re agents provocateur, maybe plainclothes cops or paid agitators. And I’ve seen compelling evidence for those conspiracy theories, in some situations, but nothing ever conclusive.
As much as I want to see more people make the effort to come out and protest peacefully, what I really want is a cadre of investigative people to come with the goal of deanonymizing these hooligans. Ideally the investigators would be actual law enforcement doing actual police work, but there could be a conflict of interest there so it would have to be regular people. People who just watch and observe, and tail troublemakers from a safe distance after they flee the scene. Who photograph faces and hold them accountable for their crimes. Seems like this playbook for a riot keeps getting used, and it’s not going to stop until someone strikes at the root of the problem.
Wow, I had never heard of this study. Thanks for sharing, much needed bit of optimism for me.
Flying-Spaghetti-Monster damn it.
trump looked over at Russia and said 'hey, let's be more like that'.
Including the frequently exploding chemical plants.
Damn, I really hope they survive, I love the CSB videos on youtube, not to mention that they are incredibly important!! Though I don't work in a related field my friend does and he tells me that all his coworkers and him are watching CSB and keeping up with what they put out. The CSB videos are always full of comments from people who work with industrial chemicals saying how helpful the CSB is. Shame :( hopefully it works out!
I keep telling myself that things that get broken can be rebuilt. But of course that is hugely expensive and it would be much better to not destroy it in the first place.
Sadly, this is not the first or last time that leadership has chosen destruction over prosperity and well being. There are many examples from history around the world.
The Democrats had one job and they blew it.