Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Owner of Utah Coal Mine Blew Off Safety Concerns


In the weeks following the Sago mine disaster in West Virginia in 2006, the owner of the Utah mine where six workers remained trapped underground Tuesday called state efforts to pass stricter mine safety laws "seriously flawed, knee-jerk" reactions.

"I resent these politicians playing politics with my employees' safety," Robert E. Murray told the Columbus Dispatch in January 2006.

Murray was responding to a proposal in the Ohio legislature that would have created a mining emergency operations center and required workers to wear wireless communications devices.

Talk about classic Repignincan thinking! Its more important to scrimp on safety so our bottom line can be larger than it is to do the right thing and ensure that the facility is safe and that they might avoid costly incidents like this one.

My guess is that this afternoon we'll hear that Bush has flown to Utah to "evaluate" the scene. He'll take the Bureau of Mines Director with him and he'll pledge to do everything he can to improve mine safety. Then this evening when he's back in DC he'll instruct the Interior Department to cut $500 million from the Bureau of Mines budget so he can ship more kids to Iraq to die for his lies. And tomorrow he will have forgotten about this latest mine disaster just like he's forgotten about the victims of Hurricane Katrina and those unfortunate souls caught up in the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis last week.

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