GOP and dead miners

by: Carnacki

Wed Oct 31, 2007 at 04:48:34 AM EDT

From the Charleston Gazette:

EVERY few weeks, it seems, West Virginia gets a fresh reminder of what happens when the government does not do its job. Unfortunately, the reminder comes when another coal miner is killed.

On Sunday, Charles Jason Keeney, 34, of Danville, became the seventh West Virginia miner to die this year when a piece of rock or coal struck him while he worked with a crew cleaning a conveyor belt and building roof supports at the Long Branch Energy Mine near Wharton.

Although federal law requires each underground mine to be fully inspected four times annually, the mine where Keeney died had not been inspected for almost a year.

Indeed, reporter Ken Ward Jr. recently discovered that 60 percent of all Southern West Virginia mines are overdue for their regular inspections from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. Missed inspections are also a problem around the country, but it is most severe here, the nation's most concentrated coal-producing area.

Budget and staffing cuts dictated by the Bush administration have left MSHA with too few employees with enough training and experience to keep up with their important work.

UPDATE:

The Republicans also hate regulations intended to keep the public safe from dangerous products too.

From The New York Times:

The nation's top official for consumer product safety has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation intended to strengthen the agency, which polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools.

On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency's authority, double its budget and sharply increase its dwindling staff.

Ms. Nord opposes provisions that would increase the maximum penalties for safety violations and make it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products, protect industry whistle-blowers and prosecute executives of companies that willfully violate laws.

The measure is an effort to buttress an agency that has been under siege because of a raft of tainted and dangerous products manufactured both domestically and abroad. In the last two months alone, more than 13 million toys have been recalled after tests indicated lead levels that sometimes reached almost 200 times the safety limit.

Ms. Nord's opposition to important elements of the legislation is consistent with the broadly deregulatory approach of the Bush administration over the last seven years. In a variety of areas, from antitrust to trucking and worker safety, officials appointed by President Bush have sought to reduce the role of regulation and government in the marketplace.