You have to check out their incredible safety investigation videos on youtube. I don't know how well-organized or efficient they are but clearly their role needs to be played by someone - and as a taxpayer I appreciate that they are doing it in a way that educates and informs.
Direct from the CSB:
> The President’s Budget proposes $0 for CSB’s FY 2026 budget with the expectation that CSB begins closing down during FY 2025. CSB’s emergency fund of $844,145 will be appropriated to cover costs associated with closing down the agency. Exact closing costs will be determined upon consultation with OMB and Congress.
Their YouTube channel is equal parts fascinating, terrifying, and boring: https://youtube.com/@uscsb
I think we will soon have to confront serious, real world proof that an unregulated free market is not ultimately self-regulating. Control systems without upper bounds (e.g. shareholder value / profit maximization) are prone to feedback loops and oscillations. And an oscillating system cannot be judged in its entirety during an upward cycle alone (20th century).
Going one level of abstraction higher: there is no evidence that demand/supply dynamics alone will regulate a society over larger populations and time scales. Even the phrase "invisible hand" appears only once in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, somewhere around page 500, and that refers not to the market at large, but to the emergence of protectionist behaviours among suppliers within a country.
Laws and regulations are part of the free market system. As rules approach zero, competition approaches war.
I love the USCSB videos and in couple incidents I likely protected myself and others from an accident due to risk awareness I had as a result of their videos. (e.g. most recently the realization that few micron tungsten powder might be significantly pyrophoric at elevated temperature-- which it is).
I'm also a fan of their written reports, which are much more informative than the videos but less well known.
But contrary to other posters here I'm less convinced that it's so obviously cost effective: $14.4 million dollars a year isn't much compared to the staggering waste in other federal programs. But it certainly sounds like a lot compared to only investigating 180 incidents over 27 years-- 6 incidents a year (which is also the figure for 2022 so it's not just a product of a slow ramp though some years have less or more).
So it's something like more than a million dollars an incident which seems not so efficient.
It's also a small enough scale that it ought to be pretty reasonable to fund it through the industries directly.
That said, OSHA's budget is more like $700 million a year... and I'd rather see CSB's funding just come out of that. If public money is to be spent supporting industries, I'd rather more go to investigations and education than on a regulatory empire.
In the name of efficiency, we should just ignite the vinyl chloride in the freight trains before they even leave the station.
Certified doge moment.
Waiting for all of the people who said that doge would lead to increased efficiency (or at the very least a smaller deficit) to say they're wrong.
I hope someone is keeping a list of all these crazy rollbacks so the next democrat administration (assuming there is one dun-dun-dun etc) can be held accountable for not rolling back the rollbacks.
Even if they do I'm worried that this kind of sabotage of progress will become the new norm, with each subsequent administration undoing everything the previous one did as standard, and going even further to appease the extremists.
I know this has always happened to some degree with executive orders (the was a great tradition of presidents signing all sorts of crazy stuff just so the next guy would have to undo it and look bad) but it seems nuclear now (sometimes literally)
Oh good, we can save money to pay for like, 1/5000 of another parade no one will attend. So much fiscal responsibility.
This is horrible news. The USCSB does incredible work.
It is highly surprising that the narrative in the US has morphed the expenses on public institutions of enormous importance, into wastage, something that has to be cut or eliminated.
Why is it that no one is pointing out the contribution of these institutions to the US and the world?
The US, has a society, has grown so materialistic, that they fail to see anything beyond money.
Somethings cannot be measured by money. In fact, when it comes to public governance, money is the least useful thing.
Admittedly, I'd never heard of the CSB until this article but their mission - from their "About Us" page - seems important:
"The CSB is an independent federal agency charged with investigating chemical incidents to determine the cause or probable cause."
Out of curiosity, I looked up the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment in 2023 and can't find their investigation on their site in either the active or completed investigation sections. Looking elsewhere, I'm only finding FEMA's concerns about cancer clusters, nothing from the CSB. Can anyone else find it?
Politics is complicated and often has competing goals, but this seems at odds with the equally loud MAHA movement.
Save lives?: X
Increase safety?: X
Make more money?: YES
The USCSB makes life safer for everyone in this country, especially people that work around potentially dangerous chemicals and pressurized equipment.
Waiting for when smoking is allowed on planes again...
The article mentions redundancy but doesn't specify what organization is claimed to make CSB redundant. I'm guessing it's the NIH since, to be fair, Vance announced an investigation into the East Palestine chemical spill five days ago: https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/nih-long-term-health-research...
Chesterton's Fence moment
> the CSB is an independent federal agency
Keyword: "independent".
They investigate before talking. They narrate the fact instead of reading the official narrative. Those pesky wokes must go.
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Hot take:
The United states of america MAGA movement wants to compete with taliban in turning their countries 500 or even 900 years back.
Who will win? Not really sure. Its a touch and go situation and it can turn any either way and emerge as the winner
make AMERICA the FIRST world country with the most third world disasters
what will they do next, revoke the patriot act?! how unpatriotic!
Much more cutting is required to balance the budget.
What advantages can we take with this !?
I would leave the funding as long as they make MORE videos than one a year. With all the AI tools coming out they should be able to produce much fantastic content. I can't count the number of times I've referred our site EHS managers throughout the years to their Youtube.
Or, I guess, cut the funding, and next Dupont or Deridder or Bhopal, we will just shrug and hope the company responsible for the incident is transparent and forthcoming in their internal investigation /s
I think this is pretty consistent with the old school 1950s views of the current administration. Companies can prioritize profits over people again. Yeah, dump in the rivers, dump in the woods, just drive around in circles dumping in an empty lot. You don’t need masks- give everyone cancer and blow some shit up, maybe get some acid burns. Super-fund sites? When was the last one we had anyway- we need more of ‘em- lots more! Let’s let the kids eat the lead paint and complain of the smells wafting into their cars from the chemical, paper, etc. plants on road trips, just like the olden days!