http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/why-are-the-new-york-t_b_60412.html

Why Are the New York Times and So Much of the MSM Neglecting a Vital Part of the Utah Mine Collapse Story?

Yesterday, while speaking at the Aspen Institute's Forum on Communications and Society, I commented on how the mainstream media have, with a few exceptions, been focusing on only one aspect of the Crandall Canyon Mine tragedy -- the desperate attempt to rescue the trapped miners -- while paying scant attention to investigating the reasons why these miners were trapped in the first place.

I specifically mentioned Sunday's New York Times piece by Martin Stolz, who had been dispatched to Huntington to cover the story. Stolz's report was filled with details about the progress rescuers had made through the collapsed mine (650 ft), and the capabilities of the hi-res camera being lowered into the mine (can pick up images from 100 ft away) -- but not one word about what led to the collapse, including the role retreat mining might have played in it, or the 324 safety violations federal inspectors have issued for the mine since 2004.

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What a bunch of whiners!
This is the free market capitalist system at work and at its best!
If these wusses want safe mines, they should quit this job and find one at a safe mine. Or they could just start up a safe mine themselves. They just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and go elsewhere if they don't like the jobs here.

Whine, whine, whine.
Business is business.
It's the American Way.

AM

AM whines :"What a bunch of whiners!
This is the free market capitalist system at work and at its best!
If these wusses want safe mines, they should quit this job and find one at a safe mine. Or they could just start up a safe mine themselves. They just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and go elsewhere if they don't like the jobs here."

In CHina, thousands of miners are killed a year. You don't read about it. They are 'human beings'.

Mining is inherently risky. Weather it be uranium, gold, iron, copper or coal mining.

Retreat mining has been in use for decades. In fact, the studies shown to date on the mine in UT have shown they did extensive geological testing, and were building signficantly stronger pillars that previous areas of the mine because of the risk of problems. Coal doesn't happen to all be on the surface where you can pick it up, and in WV and KY, folks are upset about strip mining (which negates the need for underground coal mining and the risks there).

Americans are addicted to energy. Half the electricity in the USA comes from coal fired power plants. The rest from natural gas (also a risky business with thousands killed over the years in offshore platform accidents and collapses, or injured or killed on the job, or explosions at facilities, or killed by hitting a natural gas meter on a residential street (maybe just passer by).

Of course, the other form of electrical generation is nuclear - plant accidents, uranium mining accidents, processing accidents.

business is not 'risk free'. Policemen die in the line of duty. So do firefighters. So do bus drivers, or federal workers in OKLA City.

The 'real story' is not the EPA violations. EPA is the habit of writing things up like 'failing to have a safety label on your flashlight', failing to dot the 'i' at the end of a sentence, etc. Every mine has violations...the question is were there serious violations that comprimised mine safety, or the annoyance type from EPA that require all the 'kill lables' (Warning, dummy, using this ladder is dangerous - you might fall off - don't use near power lines, ...Using this chain saw is dangerous. Be sure saw is off before touching the blade......, etc)

The human story is in the rescue attempt, not attemptng to 'place blame'.

Only a sicko is going to put 'placing blame' ahead of getting to the miners. Only a lib dem is going to assume it is GW Bush and crowd 'allowing' anything that might injure anyone anywhere for any reason including sheer stupidity to be the subject of a national news story for days on end.

t.

t.

AM whines :"What a bunch of whiners!
This is the free market capitalist system at work and at its best!
If these wusses want safe mines, they should quit this job and find one at a safe mine. Or they could just start up a safe mine themselves. They just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and go elsewhere if they don't like the jobs here."

In CHina, thousands of miners are killed a year. You don't read about it. They are 'human beings'.

Mining is inherently risky. Weather it be uranium, gold, iron, copper or coal mining.

Retreat mining has been in use for decades. In fact, the studies shown to date on the mine in UT have shown they did extensive geological testing, and were building signficantly stronger pillars that previous areas of the mine because of the risk of problems. Coal doesn't happen to all be on the surface where you can pick it up, and in WV and KY, folks are upset about strip mining (which negates the need for underground coal mining and the risks there).

Americans are addicted to energy. Half the electricity in the USA comes from coal fired power plants. The rest from natural gas (also a risky business with thousands killed over the years in offshore platform accidents and collapses, or injured or killed on the job, or explosions at facilities, or killed by hitting a natural gas meter on a residential street (maybe just passer by).

Of course, the other form of electrical generation is nuclear - plant accidents, uranium mining accidents, processing accidents.

business is not 'risk free'. Policemen die in the line of duty. So do firefighters. So do bus drivers, or federal workers in OKLA City.

The 'real story' is not the EPA violations. EPA is the habit of writing things up like 'failing to have a safety label on your flashlight', failing to dot the 'i' at the end of a sentence, etc. Every mine has violations...the question is were there serious violations that comprimised mine safety, or the annoyance type from EPA that require all the 'kill lables' (Warning, dummy, using this ladder is dangerous - you might fall off - don't use near power lines, ...Using this chain saw is dangerous. Be sure saw is off before touching the blade......, etc)

The human story is in the rescue attempt, not attemptng to 'place blame'.

Only a sicko is going to put 'placing blame' ahead of getting to the miners. Only a lib dem is going to assume it is GW Bush and crowd 'allowing' anything that might injure anyone anywhere for any reason including sheer stupidity to be the subject of a national news story for days on end.

t.

t.

You're beginning to stutter.

AM

AM: "You're beginning to stutter."

If that is the best you can do, I feel sorry for you.

Ah, the libs....hey, you're supposed to be 'sensitive' and 'caring'......

YOu know, like 'We're all in it together Hillary'..which means she feels perfectly OK to confiscate wealth, to tax the industries that provide all the jobs and GDP growth, simply to emulate the welfare states of Europe that are at the moment approaching near zero growth because of the staggering debt loads and costs to corporations to do business there.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20070814/tbs-europe-economy-growth-5268574_2.html

"The European Union and its member states released a raft of disappointing economic growth figures on Tuesday, just as investors were seeking good news in the maelstrom of the financial markets."

"Gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the 13-nation eurozone slowed to a lower-than-expected 0.3 percent in the second quarter, compared with 0.7 percent in the previous three months, official EU figures showed. Those figures represent the least robust pace since late 2004."

" German expansion was hit by a contraction in construction investment and sluggish consumer spending, while French activity suffered from a sharp loss of momentum in business investment and markedly negative net trade."

Hmmm...Nanny states that are finding they can't 'afford it all'....







t.

Mining is inherently risky. Weather it be uranium, gold, iron, copper or coal mining.
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Looks like spelling is inherently risky for some, whether they admit it or not.



Oh, and not knowing your facts is risky too.

in WV and KY, folks are upset about strip mining (which negates the need for underground coal mining and the risks there).
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'Negates the risks' ?

B-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-T! Wrong

'Folks' are upset that the mining companies just tear off the top of a mountain and dump it down into the valleys, leaving a raw gash of mud and rocks after they've stripped out the coal. Meanwhile the sludge from the mining process is dumped into streams, lakes, and hollows destroying a vital part of Appalacian ecology for generations.

In the name of corporate expedience, coal companies have turned from excavation to simply blasting away the tops of the mountains. To achieve this, they use the same mixture of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel that Timothy McVeigh employed to level the Murrow Building in Oklahoma City -- except each detonation is 10 times as powerful, and thousands of blasts go off each day across central Appalachia. Hundreds of feet of forest, topsoil, and sandstone -- the coal industry calls all of this "overburden" -- are unearthed so bulldozers and front-end loaders can more easily extract the thin seams of rich, bituminous coal that stretch in horizontal layers throughout these mountains. Almost everything that isn't coal is pushed down into the valleys below. As a result, 6,700 "valley fills" were approved in central Appalachia between 1985 and 2001. The U.S. EPA estimates that over 700 miles of healthy streams have been completely buried by mountaintop removal and thousands more have been damaged. Where there once flowed a highly braided system of headwater streams, now a vast circuitry of haul roads winds through the rubble. From the air, it looks like someone had tried to plot a highway system on the moon.
http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/02/16/reece/

That's without even mentioning the resultant health issues the residents are enduring.

Wiley started flipping through the sign-out book and found that 15 to 20 students went home sick every day because of asthma problems, severe headaches, blisters in their mouths, constant runny noses, and nausea. In May 2005, when Mountain Justice volunteers started going door-to-door in an effort to identify citizens' concerns and possibly locate cancer clusters, West Virginia activist Bo Webb found that 80 percent of parents said their children came home from school with a variety of illnesses. The school, a small brick building, sits almost directly beneath a Massey Energy subsidiary's processing plant where coal is washed and stored. Coal dust settles like pollen over the playground. Nearly 3 billion gallons of coal slurry, which contains extremely high levels of mercury, cadmium, and nickel, are stored behind a 385-foot-high earthen dam right above the school.



It ain't the mining so much, it's the mess the mining companies leave behind.





ten

Thanks for the correct info on what goes on in the Appalachian mining areas. People think it's better than "mining," when, in fact, the resulting adverse effects are staggering.
Al R.