I wasn't going to write about this...
Dark as a Dungeon
It's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew,
Where the danger is double and pleasures are few,
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines,
It's dark as a dungeon way down in the mine.
Merle Travis, "Dark as a Dungeon"
Every time this happens it hits me in a personal way. I think about what my father was able to get away from, which of my relatives died this way, how little has really changed in over 100 years. I feel panicky. It's like there's a visceral connection between my insides and theirs. I turn on CNN like some people do for plane disasters. I come home from work and ask my family "Did they get them out yet?" It's horrible.
And then I ran across this. It's certainly not unexpected. Birds of a feather. And these birds have been with us since the Reagan years. To be completely fair, the Carter did some cutting back on safety regulations for miners, too. (Check it out)
Robert Borosage at huffingtonpost.com said it better than I can, although I think he soft-pedaled the role of (yes even) the left in this.
The one thing I wanted to add was that even on CNN there was coverage of the mine workers fears. A family member of a lost miner said he had expressed concerns in a Utah newspaper that a certain part of the mine was unsafe. The mine owner claimed on CNN to have no knowledge of any safety concerns. That same owner tried to blame the collapse on an earthquake, not the horridly unsafe practice of retreat mining. A natural disaster. Never mind that seismologists claimed the 3.9 reading was a result of the collapse itself. We all know science is godless, socialist drivel.
Profit before people? We all know these people are the poorest of the working poor in most of these incidents. Mining pays more than other jobs in their areas, so often.Yet it pays the mine owners and coal company execs exponentially more.
Going back a year to West Virginia, to the Sago mine, there is documentation of other unsafe practices. The owners claimed a huge lightening bolt set off the explosion that killed at dozen miners there. Oddly, there are mining exerts who say that tons of falling rock (there had been roof collapses prior to the Sago disaster) could easily have produced a spark to ignite the explosive gases.
I wouldn't trust the United Mine Workers, most of the Democrats in Congress and certainly not the Republicans. I wouldn't trust any of the state or federal regulatory groups. This just sucks. The coal bosses still rule in West Virginia. And Utah, apparently. And Kentucky. And Ohio. Pennsylvania. And Colorado. Wyoming.
And now it looks like a federal judge has ruled that the media will be kept out of hearings on Crandall Canyon.
It's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew,
Where the danger is double and pleasures are few,
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines,
It's dark as a dungeon way down in the mine.
Merle Travis, "Dark as a Dungeon"
Every time this happens it hits me in a personal way. I think about what my father was able to get away from, which of my relatives died this way, how little has really changed in over 100 years. I feel panicky. It's like there's a visceral connection between my insides and theirs. I turn on CNN like some people do for plane disasters. I come home from work and ask my family "Did they get them out yet?" It's horrible.
And then I ran across this. It's certainly not unexpected. Birds of a feather. And these birds have been with us since the Reagan years. To be completely fair, the Carter did some cutting back on safety regulations for miners, too. (Check it out)
Robert Borosage at huffingtonpost.com said it better than I can, although I think he soft-pedaled the role of (yes even) the left in this.
The one thing I wanted to add was that even on CNN there was coverage of the mine workers fears. A family member of a lost miner said he had expressed concerns in a Utah newspaper that a certain part of the mine was unsafe. The mine owner claimed on CNN to have no knowledge of any safety concerns. That same owner tried to blame the collapse on an earthquake, not the horridly unsafe practice of retreat mining. A natural disaster. Never mind that seismologists claimed the 3.9 reading was a result of the collapse itself. We all know science is godless, socialist drivel.
Profit before people? We all know these people are the poorest of the working poor in most of these incidents. Mining pays more than other jobs in their areas, so often.Yet it pays the mine owners and coal company execs exponentially more.
Going back a year to West Virginia, to the Sago mine, there is documentation of other unsafe practices. The owners claimed a huge lightening bolt set off the explosion that killed at dozen miners there. Oddly, there are mining exerts who say that tons of falling rock (there had been roof collapses prior to the Sago disaster) could easily have produced a spark to ignite the explosive gases.
I wouldn't trust the United Mine Workers, most of the Democrats in Congress and certainly not the Republicans. I wouldn't trust any of the state or federal regulatory groups. This just sucks. The coal bosses still rule in West Virginia. And Utah, apparently. And Kentucky. And Ohio. Pennsylvania. And Colorado. Wyoming.
And now it looks like a federal judge has ruled that the media will be kept out of hearings on Crandall Canyon.