It doesn't surprise me, but the guy who owns that mine in Utah has a history of fudging, prevaricating, and contributing to Republicans (these three acts seem to have some correlation). From the Huffington Post:
In 2003, when safety inspectors ordered the owner of a Utah coal mine where six workers have been trapped for more than a week to shut down one of his Ohio operations because of repeated safety problems, local press reports say he did not hesitate to flex his political muscle to get the inspectors off his back.[snip]
Murray has personally donated $115,050 to Republican political candidates over the past three election cycles. He has given another $724,500 to the GOP over the past ten years through political action committees connected to his businesses.
[snip]
Murray's Galatia mine in southern Illinois has racked up 2,787 violations over the past two years. MSHA has proposed more than $2.4 million in fines at Galatia, according to Gehrke's reporting.
Another Murray-owned company - Ken American Resources - and four of its top employees were convicted in a federal court in Kentucky of conspiring to violate federal mine safety rules.
Sounds like a charming man.
Posted by Linkmeister at August 16, 2007 10:46 AM | TrackBackYeah. It sickens me.
We've been getting regular updates; it's grim.
Posted by: shelley at August 16, 2007 02:25 PMThis is the sort of thing that I miss, since I stopped listening to the radio. Been spending most of my time playing with my son, during the times that I would normally be catching the news.
This is a pervasive mentality amongst a certain segment of business owners. A contractor the roofing company that I used to work for, back in Michigan, came out with horribly repugnant views during a business lunch with me. This happened fairly early in the bush administration.
We had just finished going over the changes in the plans for a job I had done the bid on and were settling in to eat, when we overheard a conversation of a couple of contractors, one of whom had just had a moderately serious injury occur on one of his jobs. He was bemoaning the fact that the injury (involving a broken bone) was more than he could cover out of pocket, so his insurance rates were going to rise. (It's very common for contractors to pay ER visits out of pocket, if at all possible, to avoid rate hikes, my boss at the time has only had one injury in thirty years that he didn't)
The contractor that I was dining with, then went into a tirade about it. He was seriously hoping that bush would work out a lot of these sorts of "problems." Being a very strong supporter of workers rights, I couldn't keep my mouth shut. This led to a tirade about how, as one who also has issues with underemployment, I should support deregulation and tort reforms. That every serious to fatal injury, means a new job, also meaning that the contractor that won't likely suffer financial losses that would lead to losing their business.
At that point, I lost it. I mean I lost it bigtime. Lets just say that the tirade I went on, would not be very nice to print here. I went back to the office that afternoon and explained to my boss, that I was pretty sure we shouldn't be expecting to get any more work from that particular contractor again. That after what I called him, he might just want to drop us off the jobs we had contracts with him for. To my (and my bosses, I actually told him what I had called the guy) surprise, he still wanted us to work for him. In a move that earned my boss my eternal respect (this contractor was worth about fifty grand a year, in jobs, or about 7% of our work), he told him where he could shove those new jobs.
Posted by: DuWayne at August 18, 2007 04:39 PM