Dark as a Dungeon
Too bad about all the recent mine tragedies, no? Who could have predicted them? Just part of a dangerous business, I guess. Tough work.
Good thing that we have a government to oversee this sort of business -- you know, make sure that at least some decisions are driven by something other than profit-logic. The headlines of the major dailies, after all, tell you that "Feds Mandate More Oxygen in Mines." Hooray! We were all mistaken! We claimed that this is an administration that consistently puts short-term financial windfalls over long-term preservation of infrastructure, environment, and human life, and we were wrong! These recent tragedies have revealed a flaw in the system that we now know we should address. If the American worker needs oxygen three miles underground, by god, he's going to have it!
Too bad most of the papers don't note that it was these same exact federal officials who "four years ago axed a requirement to stock coal mines with spare emergency air masks to protect miners from poisonous gases."
That is to say, praise the Bush Administration for reversing a decision they themselves made four years ago, the results of which directly doomed workers to a horrible death by suffocation. That is to say, they claimed four years ago that such safety regulations were just too expensive (and unnecessary) to mandate, and that such requirements were just another sign that Federal government was out of control. So they stopped requiring extra oxygen masks in mines. And it killed people.
Notice that in Canada they did not reverse these regulations. Consequently, potash miners in a disaster similar to the one in West Virginia all survived. Thank you, Canada!
In the long run, however, I guess eighteen miners is a drop in the gut-bucket for the venal fuckwits who are running the U.S.A. Best not start calculating the WV miners as a percentage of overall killed, at least just yet; we reckon there's more to come.
Good thing that we have a government to oversee this sort of business -- you know, make sure that at least some decisions are driven by something other than profit-logic. The headlines of the major dailies, after all, tell you that "Feds Mandate More Oxygen in Mines." Hooray! We were all mistaken! We claimed that this is an administration that consistently puts short-term financial windfalls over long-term preservation of infrastructure, environment, and human life, and we were wrong! These recent tragedies have revealed a flaw in the system that we now know we should address. If the American worker needs oxygen three miles underground, by god, he's going to have it!
Too bad most of the papers don't note that it was these same exact federal officials who "four years ago axed a requirement to stock coal mines with spare emergency air masks to protect miners from poisonous gases."
That is to say, praise the Bush Administration for reversing a decision they themselves made four years ago, the results of which directly doomed workers to a horrible death by suffocation. That is to say, they claimed four years ago that such safety regulations were just too expensive (and unnecessary) to mandate, and that such requirements were just another sign that Federal government was out of control. So they stopped requiring extra oxygen masks in mines. And it killed people.
Notice that in Canada they did not reverse these regulations. Consequently, potash miners in a disaster similar to the one in West Virginia all survived. Thank you, Canada!
In the long run, however, I guess eighteen miners is a drop in the gut-bucket for the venal fuckwits who are running the U.S.A. Best not start calculating the WV miners as a percentage of overall killed, at least just yet; we reckon there's more to come.
posted by Swill to Power at 12:10 AM
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