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Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The Sago Mine Disaster: Real-world consequence of pro-corporate policies
Posted by Jill | 8:20 AM

You may have noticed that I'm not doing blow-by-blow blogging on the Alito hearings. The reason for this is quite simple: Alito is going to be confirmed, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. The time for hue and cry was last November, not now. The day the 2004 election was called for George W. Bush was the day to kiss reproductive freedom, bodily self-determination, and the right to privacy goodbye. This is just the post-mortem.

But since we already have one avid pro-corporatist on the Court in the person of John "Percy Dovetonsils" Roberts, and another one in Strip Search Sammy the Stem Cell Alito on his way, it's useful to note just how much Bush Administration policies are culpable in the Sago mine disaster -- and why we can expect even more workplace tragedies as the full impact of this Administration takes hold.

Editorial, NYT:

The haunting question from the deadly mine disaster in Sago, W.Va., last week becomes ever clearer: Why did it take nearly 12 hours for enough rescuers to gather so they could attempt their first descent toward the 13 miners trapped with limited emergency oxygen? The explosion occurred at 6:30 in the morning in the rural Appalachian mine, as the work shift headed in. The first rescue team was not at the scene until 1:30, seven hours later. It had to wait for a second team, the backup required by law, and that could not be assembled from the far corners of the coal region until after 5:30 in the evening.

This devastating timeline is at the core of a detailed report by Ken Ward Jr., a reporter for The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, that questions whether some of the 12 fatalities might have been prevented by a faster, better-organized rescue effort. Signs of hope persisted for 10 hours into the tragedy, according to one desperate note found down below.

The emerging facts are not encouraging about the roles of government safety officers and of the companies that are so routinely allowed to dominate in running the mines, even down to the rescue effort at Sago. National requirements about maintaining readily available rescue teams have gradually been allowed to erode in the 29 years since the last overhaul of mine regulations. The law stipulates that at least two teams be at or near each mine; the reality is that this standard has slipped to where only one team is on hand for every four mines. The number of trained rescuers has dwindled alarmingly in parallel with the rise of mechanization and the reduction in the number of manned crews.

At the same time, vital positions at the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration have gone unfilled in recent years, inviting only further laxity on the part of companies that have been allowed to outsource their safety responsibilities to off-site contractors that are not subject to regular federal inspections. And the safety administration, which once maintained rescue experts at regional offices, now has them dispersed across the nation on the theory that they can be summoned fast enough to save lives.

Warning signs have abounded in recent years. Yet The Gazette found that a plan begun a decade ago to upgrade the mine rescue program was quietly scuttled by the Bush administration. The pro-company bias of the administration is itself a factor deserving full investigation if the inquiries now being promised are to have any credible effect.


And that, my friends, is and always was the current definition of conservatism: Less government when it comes to corporations, regulations, and corporate malfeasance, MORE government in terms of individual rights. Conservatives love to say that corporations are people when it comes to campaign contributions. Now it seems that ONLY corporations are people. The rest of us are just the collateral damage.
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