Winds of Change Newsletter, February 2006     See sidebar for table of contents

A Discredited Regime

Louisville Courier-Journal editorial, Jan. 25, 2006

Enough.

The arrogance with which the Bush administration waves off questions about the protection of America’s coal miners has exceeded all bounds of decency.

The man chosen by President Bush and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to succeed Dave Lauriski as acting head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration – David Dye – simply walked out on Sen. Arlen Specter’s inquiry into the back-to-back accidents that have taken 14 lives in West Virginia…

This typifies the administration’s supercilious and dangerous approach to protecting the nation’s miners…

For 15 years, the industry had pushed MSHA to ignore those risks and ease the rules. The head of MSHA under President Bill Clinton, long-time safety advocate Davitt McAteer, refused.

But in 2004, the Bush-Chao regime gave its coal industry friends and contributors what they wanted, just as the administration made it easier to savage Appalachia with mountaintop removal mines…

Ms. Chao’s husband, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who represents some 15,000 Kentucky miners and the largest number of coal operations in the nation, has raised not a public peep about the administration’s dismal approach to mine safety.

This is not surprising, since he has welcomed hundreds of thousands of dollars in industry contributions to (political) campaigns over the past 15 years…

(Congress must look into) why the Bush-Chao team also has:

D Appointed industry insiders to oversee the regulation of a largely outlaw industry, which has proven time and again that it is resistant to safety controls. Mr. Lauriski, although arriving from a firm with a good safety record, even favored allowing higher coal dust levels in mines. He eventually left amid concerns about the awarding of questionable contracts. He will be remembered in Kentucky for his efforts to rig the probe of the great Martin County blackwater spill.

Revived industry’s favorite dodge: The idea that voluntary “cooperation” between companies and regulators will do what tough enforcement can’t – a fantasy for which miners pay a price in blood.

• Squelched the public’s opportunity to monitor how federal
• mine safety laws and regulations are being applied…
• Withdrawn a Clinton administration plan to protect strip mine workers from the mayhem of haulage accidents.
• Overseen a dramatic decline in large fines for mine safety violations…
• There’s more, but this is enough to explain why David Dye preferred to duck out.