h/t I Hate The Media
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| This is no way to run a railroad, and that isn't because of one county's district attorney. |
The RR corporate @$$clowns at Union Pacific Railroad, having gotten spanked publicly in the media for the rampant daily train burglaries revealed over the last week, is desperately casting about for a scapegoat:
(CORPORATE BULLSH*T) Adrian Guerrero, the director of public affairs for Union Pacific, wrote a letter to Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon blaming the prosecutor’s far-left policies for the mass looting that takes place every day on the tracks.
Natzsofast, Guido. How do we know you're just conducting a belated CYA mission?
Because you just admitted that this has been going on for three months, and if you coulda pinned this all on LA County, you'd have released the video of the Junkyard Of Stolen Packages yourself, weeks ago, to pull the D.A.'s pants down yourselves, and pro-actively take the heat off yourselves.
You didn't do that, because you're full of shit.
And your train engineers and brakemen ride over those tracks multiple times a day, so it's not like nobody told you there's a problem before five minutes ago, is it, Bullshit Artist Spokeshole?
Oh, and Point Of Order:
The trains, the tracks, the cargo, and the right-of-way they travel on is Union Pacific's job to police, which is why railroad police with interstate powers have been a thing in America since just about 5 minutes after the first train robbery in 1866, which is why your own UPRR company website explains that UP railroad special agents have primary enforcement jurisdiction over 32,000 miles of track in 23 states, and were the first federally authorized police with interstate powers after the U.S. Marshals, and long predating the FBI.
90 cars/day is one every 15 minutes, 24/7. For three months! If they were going into someone's house every 15 minutes, at a certain point, it's a homeowner diligence problem, not a prosecution problem, i'n'it? Spare us all the PR assgas and bullsh*t.
So let's stop pretending the problem is all the fault of L.A.'s abysmally stupid catch-and-release policies, retarded as they are. These jackholes have been looting your cars blind for months without a peep out of your corporate pieholes, and until private citizen-shot videos shone a light on your lackadaisical enforcement of security for the cargoes you've been mishandling, nobody even knew there was a problem, including you and your bunch of Keystone Kops.
As for shutting off service to the L.A. area, which would have a wee impact on the still backed-up cargo fiasco in the ports of San Pedro and Long Beach harbors, which handle 40% or more of all port traffic in the United States between them, let's just suppose that before your mouth makes promises your ass can't cash, you think over long and hard how much you'd like to have your little enterprise conscripted into the U.S. Army, which would place every Swinging Richard in your lash-up, including PR flack @$$-For-Brains here, completely subject to the jurisdiction and auspices of the Uniform Code Of Military Justice, under the command of the US Army Chief of Staff and all military officers designated, and not to put too fine a point on it, but with your entire railroad, top to bottom, compensated at military scales of pay, and dining sumptuously on MREs daily, for the duration of the emergency. Ask your train engineers how much they'd enjoy working for about $16/hr, which is the per-hour base rate of pay of a sergeant in the Army. And with the added chance of going to federal prison for so much as lipping off about the whole deal, for anyone from janitors to the CEO.
So STFU about "not serving the Los Angeles area", stop trying to palm off the massive enforcement incompetence of your railroad bulls solely onto the L.A. D.A., and maybe start putting armed guards with shotguns in the affected areas, and start apprehending trespassers and burglars with 00 buckshot and Doberman Pinschers, instead of throwing a sternly-worded press release at the problem, to paper over a bunch of railroad fatcats with their asses hanging out in the breeze, and about to have their theft insurance premiums go up 1000%/month, if not cancelled outright.
Because if you get federalized, the one good thing to come out of it would be the chance for Army troops to start policing the railroad yards like it was Fallujah during the Surge, and running anything left alive through federal courts, instead of the local county circus, which is probably the greatest blessing that could befall both the area, and your bunch of executive fuckwits.
You worthless corporate wankers could fuck up a crowbar in a sandpile, and you sure as hell can't run a railroad. Stop pissing your pants while making excuses, and start taking care of business, like you're paid to do.
22 comments:
Admittedly not my primary area of focus, but from reading American histories of the 1800s, railroad corruption was rampant from at least the War Between the States, and really got going after the fighting was over. While trains are cool, and their engineering is fascinating, the companies in the industry all seem to be as corrupt as can be, and too reliant on government handouts.
Look at the fact that Warren Buffet is heavily invested in the industry, and that right there is a major sign of problems. I'm sort of surprised Billygoat Gates isn't involved with the industry; he's involved in a lot of other decadent industries.
What's the solution? End all subsidies to the RR industry(and to the commercial airline industry, but that's for another time), and let the railroads compete on a more even playing field. While that's being done, I'd like a unicorn that excretes rainbow colored feces...
As an engineer with said railroad, I concur with this message.
Said railroad eliminated a shit ton of positions a few years ago in the name of cost cutting. Special agents were cut drastically.
UP has caused inquiring minds to wonder if UP just threw a rock at C of LA from inside a glass house
Could it be that youngsters are being victimized by an attractive nuisance of free stuff on ground? (see top nuisance)
https://people.howstuffworks.com/10-common-attractive-nuisances.htm
Does City of L.A. have no potential action to protect its streets and waterways from litter?
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN§ionNum=374.4
Eviscerate: to disembowel. Best example: Aesop 1/19/22 blog. Shee-it dude I would truly love to see a takedown better than todays epistle, but I won't hold my breath. Like me and others of like ilk, I imagine throughout all of this BS the last 2 years, you awaken "pre-annoyed" and are in the perfect mood to deliver such a magnificent missive.
Yeah, I really enjoyed that this morning, went well with coffee.
I was wondering when someone was going to point out that railroads have their own police forces. And, as you so eloquently put it, have had them for well over 100 yrs.
Somehow, I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around the concept of the US Army, under a chain-of-command involving Gen. Milley, SecDef Lloyd Austin, and the animated corpse of Go Brandon executing anything resembling swift justice on RROC (Rail Robbers of Color). Much more likely, I think, that a bunch of Trannies in Uniform would be deployed with forklifts and rolling portable stairways to make sure that RROCs are not accidentally injured in their climbs into boxcars for undocumented shopping, nor at risk of muscle strains while getting those sweet, sweet 150-inch flat-screens down to ground level. We must keep in mind that black Lives Matter.
I agree with the sentiment, but disagree with a few things.
Having LE jurisdiction doesn't mean much when they still have to hand them over to the county for prosecution.
The feds and the RR most likely care more about the poor oppressed porch pirates (h/t WilderWealthy&Wise) than they do about the cargo getting through. It's bullshit all the way through, there is no one with power salivating at the prospect of bringing back Law and Order.
RR cops shooting these porch pirates isn't going to lead to cleaned-up tracks, it's going to lead to a bunch of George Floyd moments for the usual suspects to exploit. Suddenly the LA Cty DA would spring into action... to prosecute the evil cop oppressor who violated D'Traxius "Slow Train Comin'" Johnson's right to loot trains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeATCwk5PTQ
From Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.
You wouldn't even have to update the technology, considering the skulch you're dealing with.
Well, we know that Los Angeles, from top to bottom, is run by incompetent Communists. That is self evident in a large way. IF we had an actual President, say someone like Warren Harding or Thomas Jefferson, the problem would be solved in about 30 seconds. But given the Mr. Senility, Kneepads, and their ilk who have never met an illegal that they didn't love......It is a roundhouse in the worst way. I would LOVE for the Army Boys to have some training in the Land of Hollywood. It would further divide the self appointed into opposing herds.
Ex multis irrumabo 'em.
Awesome rant!
Railroads are notoriously socialist with expenses and capitalist with profits.
I doubt the union went for the jabs...the truckers didn't and the pilots didn't...all those dang non-diversists...
aj
@Zorost,
The L.A. DA and the local woketardedness is a factor, but it's small and entirely ancillary.
The overarching point is that because of railroad incompetence and dilettance, there is no "enforcement".
When miscreants are looting 90 RR cars/day (i.e. one every 15 minutes, 24/7) the problem isn't the D.A.
It's that nobody's guarding the fucking tracks.
It isn't like the UP SAs are bringing in a schoolbus full of the looting assholes every hour on the hour, and have been for 90 days.
That's exactly what they're not doing.
If someone was breaking into your house every 15 minutes around the clock for 3 months running, at some point, it's a homeowner problem properly solved with buckshot, not a prosecution problem.
UP is so full of shit on this story, their eyes are brown.
This has been set in place for about 20 or 30 years. While not all of this lands on the fault of the Rail Roads just look at the sheer amount of vandalization of the rail road cars themselves with tagging. There is hardly a car with out it. (Admittedly those that escape it longer are the ones that are not often or long in urban areas..) When you see the rail roads shifting the practice of the reporting marks being moved from the bottom of the cars to the top to avoid them being masked out by spray paint it shows the railroads have capitulated instead of doing anything about it. Graffiti used to be a uncommon thing in the scale we see it now on every single rail road car. The railroads don't even clean up the cars unless they are shopped or overhauled for repairs of some order. Of course that ended up helping show the people robbing the trains that there are no repercussions or any protections for the cargo. Sadly the shippers are in a bind as there's such a need for truck drivers and moving things quickly that they cant tell UP, BNSF, etc to pound sand and we are pulling our cargo from your trains and moving it ourselves completely. Though I wonder if they might not start to put actual pressure on the railroad companies to do something about it, especally if they start to say the railroads are going to pay for the lost cargo. This is not something new either. Hell in the 80s Southren Pacific refitted some obselete cabooses to house and transport their own police due to this very thing happening. The railroads could entirely stop this by doing somethign similar, moving to shorter trains and having more of their own police actually onboard these trains. But as was pointed out by people that work for this very railroad company those are the first people they cut and lay off. I'm with Aseop on this one, this is UPs clusterfuck to clean up. Till they employ police on every single train or actively have police stationed 24/7 in these sectors they can't complain at all. When they do that and they then still have the issues they complain about with DAs catch and releaseing I might start to listen to them.
Already wrote about the easy-button solution - re-tag the Marines to guard this, just like they did the U.S. Mail trains prior to the railroad bulls being a thing:
“To the Men of the Mail Guard, you must keep your weapon(s) in-hand and, when attacked, shoot and shoot to kill. When two Marines are covered by a robber, neither must put up his hands, but both must immediately go for their guns. One may die, but the other will get the robber, and the mail will get through. When our Corps guards the mail, that mail must be delivered, or there must be a Marine dead at his post. There can be no compromise.
When necessary, in order to carry out the foregoing orders, you will make the most effective use of your weapon(s), shooting any person engaged in theft of the mail entrusted to your protection.” -SECNAV Denby
Your solution is also totally viable, and more likely than getting this administration onboard with doing anything productive.
Yep.
Every dozen cars or so mount an M2 until this is under control. Call the district you are passing through to come collect their trash.
"Problem" is that this is largely the executives, willing to pass the costs on. Eventually to the people who are mostly playing by the rules. So solve the problem. Toss the executives from the car right behind the locomotive, and let the Ma Deuces get some practice.
Won't take too long before they stop passing the costs of their ideology onto others.
No longer will any sentient man enter into a law enforcement career. Any sentient man in that career will avoid, as much as possible, any use of force upon any protected species to avoid being Chauvin'd. We can argue that the latter should not be taking the salary, but it does not change the reality on the ground. Additionally, any military personnel authorized for this issue will be under strict ROE's so that ANY use of force will be grounds for severe punishment.
This issue is a direct reflection upon the current state of the culture. Until the culture changes, this will not.
@ZOROST:
"RR cops shooting these porch pirates isn't going to lead to cleaned-up tracks, it's going to lead to a bunch of George Floyd moments for the usual suspects to exploit. Suddenly the LA Cty DA would spring into action... to prosecute the evil cop oppressor who violated D'Traxius "Slow Train Comin'" Johnson's right to loot trains."
Bingo! You hit the nail on the head right there. Years ago, I read what happened to a couple of railroad agents in a book entitled: "Illegals: The Imminent Threat Posed by Our Unsecured U.S.- Mexico Border". (written by Jon E. Dougherty / published in 2004)
Read the beginning of Chapter 1: "Crisis Approaching". You can bring up the book on Amazon.com and do a "Look Inside" to read what happened to two railroad agents near Mount Cristo Rey on a remote stretch of railway just yards from the Texas-Mexico border. They were damned near killed by train robbers from Mexico.
Some - if not most - of these train robbers are violent scumbags who would think nothing of harming (or even killing) railroad agents who protect these trains.
Granted, Los Angeles is not the remote area of Mount Cristo Rey; but it is likely that, without the ability to just shoot these bastards on sight, the railway police (agents) would have a very difficult time protecting these trains.
Although I agree with Aesop on how these railroad pirates should be dealt with, we know that is never going to happen. A shame.
In my earlier post I mentioned "railroad agents". I misspoke. These were NOT "railroad agents", but FBI agents. Apparently, there were a number of them aboard that train to try to stop the thefts that had been happening for months. I have more information about that in the articles below:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/immigration/border-sting.htm
And a longer version of what life (and death) was like - at least back in 2009 - in and around that area of the border, which was actually across the U.S. Mexican border in New Mexico near a Mexican shantytown called "Colonia Anapra". Sunland Park, New Mexico is directly across the border from Anapra. The UP train tracks run in between.
http://www.vqronline.org/vqr-portfolio/manny%E2%80%99s-story
The author of the longer article above is a journalist by the name of Jordan deBree. It seems to me, after reading this article, that pretty much all the "players" in this story sucked. This is just an FYI if anyone is interested in reading this rather lengthy article.
C'mon, Aesop - tell us how you really feel..
One solution might be "Tomorrow".
Perhaps folks have read it.
Or, Bracken. He has some thoughts, as well.
Great comments - all, and a great perspective, Aesop.
Does the RR have responsibility to guard the tracks. Yes. Are they doing it adequately? No.
Corollary question: while we both agree buckshot and attack dogs is the answer, in the post-Chauvin world, how many RR cops are going to use buckshot and then face 25 to life in a jurisdiction where the logic of "lives are more important than property" is the default position of the DA?
RR should police. Bringing charges against the looters where they face real penalties should happen. BOTH parts of the system are broken.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Stop taking them to the local lack-nuts D.A., and turn them over to the U.S. Attorney for prosecution under 18 U.S.C. §1951 and §1991.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1951
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1991
1-20 years in the federal pen, and they'll do 95% of it.
If the train engineer counts as "in the presence", they do the whole nut for train robbery - 20 years.
Any gun present and they get another 5 years.
It gets better: if the prior cargo robberies caused the derailment of a subsequent train, under 18 U.S.C. §1992, they're on the hook as terrorists for any term between 1 year and life in prison. If anyone dies, they're eligible for the federal death penalty.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1992
Of course, that only works if Union Pacific has railroad police to make the bust to begin with, as they're responsible to do under federal laws dating back 160 years.
They've suddenly gone very quiet on the whole topic.
Speaking of terrorists, if the Fibbies had time between faking presidential wiretap subpoenas and dossiers, and instigating criminal trespass, to actually pursue legitimate violent federal felons, they could take an active interest in railcar robberies, and, y'know, actually do some legit federal law enforcement, like they're paid to do.
Sh'yeah, right, as if they were real cops, or anything but American gestapo, doing their masters' bidding.
And I still want a pony, and world peace.
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