Federal Mine Safety?

Baah Humbug...


I’ve watched with amusement these past few weeks as the politicians have preened for the TV cameras and the media has done somersaults and back-flips over the horrors of corporate greed and the need for additional government intervention in the mining industry.

I heard Senior West Virginia Senator Robert “Pretty Pretty” Byrd in a sound bite on TV yesterday lamenting that it took 11 HOURS for the searchers to even start looking for the men killed in the latest ccident.

Does anyone honestly believe that KKK Byrd would have gone running into a smoke filled mine in his younger days while the fire was still burning to save two of his co-workers?

I think that Senator Byrd needs to have his med’s adjusted—better yet, I wish that the people of West Virginia would just do the right thing and take a risk on replacing Senator Rockefeller’s counterpart in the US Senate before Byrd petrifies in office…

Don’t get me wrong here because I agree that it is a horror that fourteen souls have been lost in coal mine accidents in recent weeks, but I also assert that these brave gentlemen chose to accept the risk and higher pay associated with mining work over getting shot in the head by some low-life bastard while employed selling beer and lottery tickets and earning the lower pay as a convienance store clerk.

Being a veteran of heavy industrial construction, I think that I bring a certain insight to this pity party that the average news reader lacks in doing the analysis. I’m going to tell you a couple of things about safety as it relates to mining and heavy construction.

Let me preface my comments by stating that I believe that the Imperial Federal Government of the United By-God States of America has no constitutional business getting involved in the intricate details of mining safety.

It’s just that simple.

Adams and Jefferson didn’t write “life, liberty, and a really, really safe coal mining job” into the constitution anywhere as far as I can read.

It’s not Washington’s business beyond where we already are today with all of the unenforceable pansy assed OSHA (Occupational Safety Health Administration) regulations that are already out there.

Face it, Labor laws and OSHA regulations already say that you can’t hire 12 year old boys, hand them a burlap sack and a machete, then send them out to climb coconut trees to harvest coconuts in Miami.

OSHA’s meddling generally doesn’t stop accidents and loss of life—it’s only when the management and employees of a company exercise what could be considered common horse-sense while working that accidents are prevented and lives are saved.

OSHA is usually relegated to wandering in after the fact, placing blame, and then extracting a TAX, in the form of a MONETARY FINE, then they disappear over the horizon until the next calamity occurs.

Actually, since mining poses a unique risk, mines have to conform to yet another layer of government intervention, MSHA (the Mine Safety and Health Administration) division of the US Department of Labor. MSHA jumps in and busybodies around, but on the whole they have actually done a good deal of good since former Georgia Governor and Socialist Dictator loving Ex-President Jimmy “smile when you say that” Carter started the organization in 1978.

Mining historically has placed a premium on “Brawn” over “Brains”, but being an idiot and complete dumbass will get you killed in a mine (or any construction site) in an instant. Further, with the advances over the past fifty years utilizing automation to cut and remove the minerals from the ground, miners have been forced to go from “pick and shovel” handlers to machine operators.

Of course the unions have had yearly conniption fits as machines and automation have reduced the number of humans required to cut and remove a ton of coal, but injuries and fatalities have declined at an even greater rate than the reduced employment would have predicted.

By the way, if PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) was around 100 years ago, our grandparents would probably have all frozen to death due to a lack of coal because the mules and horses used to pull the ore carts out of the mines would have been put out to pasture and hand fed sugar cubes and apples every day. Fortunately, electrically powered conveyors replaced the animal pulled cars and that national disaster was averted

I could ramble on for another ten pages, but instead just take a look at this page on the MSHA website that puts this all into perspective for me—sorta a “Cliff Notes” for mine safety:

OK, let’s take a look at the data before your eyes glaze over…

In 1900 there were 448,581 miners and 1,489 deaths, a rate of 3.31 deaths per 1000 miners.

Then move on to mining employment’s peak year in 1923 when 862,536 miners were wandering around under the ground, there were 2462 deaths—a rate of 2.85 deaths per 1,000 miners.

Keep looking…

1929? 3.34 deaths per thousand miners
1939? 1.99
1949? 1.20
1959? 1.43
1969? 1.52
1979? 0.55
1989? 0.41
1999? 0.31 deaths per thousand miners

In 2004, the most recent year in which final statistics are reported, there were 108,734 miners digging holes in the ground, but only 28 deaths—a rate of .26 deaths per 1,000 miners.

SEE THAT?

Mining deaths have dropped from 3.31 per 1000 miners in 1900 to 0.26 per 1000 miners in 2004...

A 305% DECREASE...GASP...GURGLE...PANT...HASSLE...

OH MY GOSH…IT CAN’T POSSIBLY BE TRUE…

NO *&%$# WAY….UHHHH UHHHH

Mining is supposed to be dangerous as hell they tell us.

That’s what the newspapers and TV reports say, right?

"WE NEED NEW LAWS" says the WV Governor and Old Man
Byrd.

MINERS NEED NEW PROTECTIONS…

I thought that the media and our Congress was telling us that mining companies, supported by the E-V-I-L Republican party and supervised by “Bush Appointees” is supposed to be throwing innocent Democrats from West Virginia into a endless deadly pit…an Abyss from which they run a substantial risk of never returning from each day when they don their hardhats and carry their little lunch buckets full of “Twinkees” into the damp darkness.

YOU STILL DON'T GET MY POINT?

Here it is, in a nutshell:

This is total, unadulterated media induced hysteria and political BULLSHIT.

(taking a big breath and checking my pulse)

Now...go out and find something really worth worrying about...