This is the news everyone wanted to avoid:
An agonizing four-day wait came to a tragic end early Saturday morning when rescue workers failed to find any survivors in an underground mine after a huge explosion earlier this week.
The news at the Upper Big Branch mine about 30 miles south of Charleston brought the death toll to 29 in the country’s worst mine disaster in four decades.
“We did not receive the miracle we were praying for,” said Gov. Joe Manchin III, looking somber, his voice barely audible. “This journey has ended and now the healing will start.”
The announcement closed a grim Appalachian ritual and the third major mining disaster in the state in the past four years.
What I find odd is that there seems to be very little anger simmering to the top- this has been going on for so long, that we sort of have an odd fatalism about it.
Basilisc
Now the demand for accountability for Massey – real accountability, from regulatory penalties to civil liability and criminal charges – has to begin. These mo-f’ers cannot be allowed to get away with it again.
Brian J
This may be the wrong way of looking at it, and correct me if I am wrong, but I suspect it’s playing slightly different in West Virginia, or any other states that have a big mining industry, than it is in, say, New York or California. It’s probably not a stretch to say that those working in the big media centers have never and will never know anybody who works in a mine. They certainly realize how tragic it is, but at the same time, it’s not going to hit that close to home.
Keith G
I subscribe to the Diane Rehm show on iTunes. Her Friday News Round Up Pt 1 (domestic) featured Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat on her panel. A generalization: Ezra used stats and facts to build his arguments. Ross, not. so. much.
Just finished listened. Was fun. I recommend.
I add this here because Ross was a particular dumb ass in his comments about the explosion.
Redshirt
The idea of worker’s rights has been thoroughly crushed in most places in America. Even people who would nominally be pro-worker’s rights will lament the inefficiencies and corruption of Unions.
I guess the defeat of the USSR really did end the debate about what a person deserved. Our side won, and so now we’re in a de facto “get what you deserve” universe.
I would assume most Wingnuts would say the Miners knew the risks and while unfortunate, stuff happens.
I would not say that, of course, but I bet it’s a fairly common sentiment.
SGEW
No. More. Coal.
DBrown
The media attack the moneyed powers that be? Right. So a few WV poor die giving us cheap energy and the media’s job is only to show the weeping relatives/family and avoid telling us the truth about the last eight years of GW the shrub putting mining execs into Gov positions to oversee safety enforcement. Also, the Ray-gun’s model of getting rid of regulations is a mantra that the media can not go against – ray-gun is the media’s god and all good came from his rotting brain.
khead
Welcome to southern WV.
Brian J
@Redshirt:
Is it a question of union activity or simply safety regulations? Or do the two go hand-in-hand?
Michael D.
Also, tremendous loss to the people of Poland today.
But I have to ask: What the HELL were they thinking putting all of those important people on the SAME PLANE?
Bill E Pilgrim
@Michael D.: A lot of them weren’t on it also, like WAPO columnist Anne Applebaum’s husband, the foreign Minister.
The timing/location is just ghastly, even on top of the tragedy all by itself. That country feels haunted sometimes.
SGEW
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Not haunted. Cursed.
Or, as former President Kwasniewski said today, “a damned place.”
Seriously, reading Polish history is like a litany of bad luck.
Montysano
@Redshirt:
Just another facet of the most amazing, effective marketing campaign in recent political history: getting middle- and lower-class voters to vote Republican. Getting them to vote against their economic self-interest, to rail against unions and health care reform and taxes on the wealthy. Someone (Taibbi?) wrote that it’s “serf mentality”, this hope that someday they’ll live in the Big House and be the opposer instead of the opposee.
It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.
Linda Featheringill
@Brian J:
Safety and union membership often go hand in hand. I am not sure if that is more because the unions educate people about safety [and they do] or because the folks that want a union are truly looking out for their own interests.
I have not read any UMW statistics lately but there used to be a real difference in the accident rates of union mines versus nonunion facilities. The union was begun, historically, over safety issues rather than money.
Comrade Darkness
This shit doesn’t have to happen. We need a Ralph Nader of mine safety because there isn’t a James Dean working in the mines.
Keith G
@Montysano:
Again, in the DR panel, Douthat coolly gave the GOP line: (paraphrase) It’s dangerous work, they earn a good living, it’s their choice.
And the winner: If there were tougher regs, there would be more closures and less money for the workers. I swear I could hear Ezra’s skin crawling.
When we were a poorer country, we worshiped money less.
Honus
I noticed this week that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of rage in West Virginia. Instead, a lot of talk of God, miracles, fate. In 1968, when Arch Moore said the Farmington explosion was an “act of God” there was nearly a riot.
This was a non-union mine, unheard of 30 years ago, but common now in the 21st century coal boom. People were calling Diane Rehm yesterday saying that it was difficult to get any work done and still abide by the regulation; and that a lot of the violations were not the company’s but “miner violations” It seems like they put the hicks on TV as if to make the point that if these guys go down there to get the money, they have assumed the inevitable risk. I repeatedly heard that oal minig is a dangerous profession; I never once heard anyone say that coal might be more expensive if it were mined safely. Or that maybe Morgan Massey and Don Blankenship could get by a little less than several hundred milion a year in salary and profit to make the workers a lillte safer.
sbjules
I don’t get this either. With Massey’s horrible disregard for his workers I would think there would be. Why no call for a union at least? Where’s today’s John L. Lewis? I remember his eyebrows from the Saturday afternoon movietone news.
HRA
@Redshirt:
“The idea of worker’s rights has been thoroughly crushed in most places in America. Even people who would nominally be pro-worker’s rights will lament the inefficiencies and corruption of Unions.”
This is absolutely true.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Honus:
That’s an extremely depressing observation. When they’ve got poor people blaming a phantom invented precisely for that kind of misdirection instead of blaming them, they’ve essentially won.
PurpleGirl
@Brian J: The two go hand-in-hand: where there is union membership, there is more attention to safety regulations that do still exist because the miners have someone external to the company to bring complaints to. Then there is the problem of regulation implementation — since Reagan, that has become less and less stringent even as more and more regulation has been dismantled.
Citizen_X
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Let’s reorder that:
Mission Accomplished.
The Truffle
@Keith G: I suspect Douthat has a wonderful career as a conservative affirmative-action hire ahead of him. Seriously, he’s one of these people who was hired to be a conservative, not because of his rhetorical brilliance.
scav
@Bill E Pilgrim: I’m pretty sure this is the research your comment made me remember. The Tornado Threat: Coping Styles of the North and South (first page only). If I remember it correctly, the difference did seem to be real and was at least partially attributed to people even bothering to go to shelters or leaving it all in the hands of [insert diety of preference here]. Caveat. Yes, 1972 study. Fundamental coping styles probably haven’t changed that much though. EDIT: meaning patterns may have also changed geographically to some degree. I’m thinking brains most important here.
arguingwithsignposts
I grew up and worked in “right-to-get-screwed” states most of my life. All of my jobs were in non-union workplaces. Except my step-father was in a union at his job. Yeah, there were union abuses, but they paled in comparison to the company abuses that they tried to foist on the union workers, who – because of the union – were able to push back on that b.s.
Now, I’m working in a unionized state, and I have to say that my benefits are better, my job protections are better, and I know that my interests are being represented in the state house (which is terminally f’d up) – all because of a union. And my job is not nearly life-threatening.
I really don’t get the anti-union sentiment among the lower classes (meaning everyone who doesn’t own a company).
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@SGEW:
Um, coal is the cheapest fossil fuel and coal generates over half the electricity in the United States.
I don’t think coal is going away any time soon.
kay
@Honus:
What makes it so jarring is media don’t do this with anything else. Any disaster event of any kind is analyzed from the aspect of “safety first!” and “could this have been prevented?” Terrorism is the obvious example, but the approach is consistent.
Except when we’re looking to a for-profit private entity for answers. Then it’s an act of God, or the inevitable collateral damage associated with risk.
It’s goddamn weird. Media are safety-obsessed to an almost ludicrous degree, with one huge glaring exception. It’s as if there can be no accountability or mitigation of risk as long as profit is involved. “Oh, you didn’t tell me they’re making money! In that case, all bets are off!”
sven
I haven’t spent any time in the WVa/Kentucky area and so admit total ignorance of how people in this area view the world. I am from the West Coast where lots of people hate the big companies and would blame conservatives and be pissed as hell about a disaster like this. John notes that there hasn’t been an outpouring of anger over this tragedy despite a brutal history between mine labor and management over exactly these issues.
I guess what I am trying to ask is why aren’t people angry? What is the actual thought process among folks from these areas? Do they not blame Massey Energy for negligence? Do they view it as just an Act of God? I know these areas have been trending conservative, does that have anything to do with the response?
Any insight from folks from or familiar with this region would be really appreciated.
Keith G
@kay:
Have you noticed how many news and public affairs programs are underwritten by “Coal”?
Probably money well spent.
Michael D.
@Keith G:
Actually, they are underwritten by some magical fantasy thing called “Clean Coal.”
An item which has never and does not exist. But if we say “Clean Coal” enough times, people will believe it is clean.
kay
@Keith G:
No, I haven’t. I’ve noticed a decidedly pro-business slant, however. I first heard about the mine disaster on the car radio (I was listening to CNN on satellite radio) and they went to their local correspondent, a tv news reporter in West Virginia. I listened to this person present the coal company case ( “these people stick together, they feel attacked by environmentalists and regulators…”) and I was amazed. I stuck around to after the commercial break just so I could verify that this was a reporter, not a representative of the coal industry. That’s how biased the presentation was. The problem here is environmentalists and regulators. That’s how it was presented. Miners v Lefties and Big Government. It was preemptive. He set it up.
Lisa K.
To do that in WV would mean admitting that the conservative philosophy driving the business is fundamentally anti-worker. It is easier to view it as an unavoidable and devastating tragedy than what it is-a case of manslaughter driven by greed.
Angela
@Keith G: “When we were a poorer country, we worshiped money less. ”
This.
This is not over until those safety fines are levied and collected in full.
Lisa K.
“This is not over until those safety fines are levied and collected in full.”
Then it will never be over, because you know Don Blankenship has been working the phones since this happened, trying to twist the arms of regulators and politicians so they will collude and he can avoid any admission of responsibility.
tim
It sickens and saddens me to no end that so many workers in WV and elsewhere are so brainwashed that they believe their only option for a livelihood is to descend into a deadly, dark and toxic hellhole every single working day of their lives. It is insane. That is no fucking way to spend a life; no more than is burning filthy shit from underground a rational way to fuel a country.
But WV and all other coal producing states will continue blowing up coal miners and the U.S. will continue burning coal long into the future, I have no doubt: the forces of corporate evil are too powerful and well financed for it to be otherwise.
HRA
@sven:
“I guess what I am trying to ask is why aren’t people angry? What is the actual thought process among folks from these areas? Do they not blame Massey Energy for negligence? Do they view it as just an Act of God? I know these areas have been trending conservative, does that have anything to do with the response?”
It’s because they have to go to work tomorrow or whenever they are allowed to be able to put food on the table. They have nowhere else to go for sustaining their lives. Even those who have lost someone in this disaster more often than not have a relative who will still be working that mine. Privately they may be blaming the company. They won’t be blaming them publicly. Religion may sustain them. Politics are not foremost in their thinking.
These are good decent hardworking people. If only we had more like them in our midst.
Donald G
I lived for nine years in Beckley, the heart of Raleigh County, before I escaped. In the aftermath of the Sago disaster, I wrote a piece to explain to my friends my understanding of the mentality in the Southern coalfield communities. If I may be permitted a lengthy excerpt:
The adversities that rural West Virginians face along with the remoteness of many areas lead to behavior that a lot of us would find inexplicable. Communities become very close-knit, clannish and distrustful of outsiders. You are who your family is. If you have no family in the area, you’re nobody, and you’ll never be one of them.
Injustice is rampant in West Virginia going back to the days when towns were directly owned and operated by the coal companies, coal companies which were owned by out-of-state corporations and which often treated their workers like slaves. I would strongly recommend to anyone trying to understand West Virginians that they read up on the West Virginia Mine Wars and the battles over unionization which lasted well into the twentieth century.
Remnants of the coal-camp mentality remain and surface from time to time. Given the corrupt nature of power-relationships in West Virginia, this leads to feelings of impotence, grievances, and often displays of misplaced anger along with a fatalistic worldview, an Appalachian fatalism which I have taken on in my nine years there.
Native West Virginians are tied to their land, their homeplaces, by very strong emotional ties. Most lament the necessity of their children having to leave the state to seek out employment and their is resentment of out of state workers coming in to take away “West Virginia jobs” – a constant refrain in current governor Joe Manchin’s campaign ads when he ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1996.
In many ways, significant portions of West Virginians are like abused spouses who refuse to leave their batterers.
In my experience, West Virginians are some of the most outwardly religious people I’ve ever encountered. In the interviews with the inhabitants of the Sago mining community, you’ve probably heard indications of what I’m talking about. They take “God” very seriously in West Virginia in ways that “sophisticated” urbanites – even those who classify themselves as believers – would find perplexing and embarrassing.
In West Virginia, you can’t go wrong in expecting a near worst case scenario to come to pass. If you hear good news in West Virginia, you often have to expect a sick twist that will leave you with the taste of ashes in your mouth. . . .
The mining companies control West Virginia. They’ve controlled West Virginia for more than a century. The mining companies have used miners to keep down other miners for all that time, and have been able to historically divert the miners’ anger [from the their real oppressors to] outside threats– environmentalists, Al Gore, outside interlopers from the big cities. . . .
. . . I’m sorry that the regulatory authorities in West Virginia were too toothless and in the pockets of the mining interests to shut down the . . . mine for its safety violations.
Maybe out of this evil something good will come.
Given West Virginia’s history, I wouldn’t count on it.
I wrote the above in 2006. It still applies today.
ally
Unfortunately it is called Fear – that leads to Acceptance of whatever.
I come from a family of coal miners and all they hear now is the threat of shutting down the mine – if they are too regulated – which leads to no jobs – their greatest fear. And yes, many vote republican because of that fear too.
That said – those same family members will be very happy to see someone like Don Blankenship and all CEOs thrown in Jail.
Corporate profits rule over safety and workers. Can we ever reverse that? Not with rulings like Citizens United – and we need serious Public Campaign Financing.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Donald G:
Yes, from east KY here, and I agree basically with your analysis of the area. I would add to the mix the nature of coal markets over the past 100 years or so. That being of boom and bust. During periods of boom over the decades, the opportunities for employment drew in people from other areas, such as southern Ohio, and when the bust phase occurred people became trapped with few other viable employment possibilities mostly due to geographic isolation from the rugged mountain terrain. That has been mitigated some in east KY due to more 4 lane highways giving better access to the area, but it is still a haven for poverty and unemployment. Unions have helped the miners lot considerably, but coal companies know they are about the only employment game around and exploit that fact to get away with a lot of shit, and assholes like Blankenship become experts at manipulating the regulatory system, both federal and state.
SB Jules
@Lisa K.:
I just heard on NPR that Blankenship is reassuring Stockholders! It made me gasp! He is not reassuring them about safety of course, but that work at other mines will continue and profits will continue. Slime is too kind a word for this guy.
jake the snake
There is no better epitaph for a miner than this.
Jackie DeShannon
Johnny Cash
PhoenixRising
Donald covered WV nicely. I can only add this: No one in DC or NY who sets the tone for the news knows a mining family. Otherwise, the price of coal as a function of deadly conditions underground would be openly discussed, if not treated with empathy.
Coal is up to almost $110 a ton since Sago. What would it cost to adequately vent the gases so that miners could survive the process? I don’t know, but I expect to find out soon. Meanwhile, turn off your computers, lights and cell phone chargers when not in use please.
My sister, bless her, went to work for the Public Health Service a few years ago. They have a program for health care providers, work 3 years in an area of the US that is technically so poor and uneducated it’s a colony (coal country Kentucky, Indian country New Mexico, etc.) and your student loans are forgiven.
She went to work in the hills of southeast KY and I didn’t feel sorry for her; I told her that our ancestors had to spend 7 years working off their passage to the New World before they headed out there, free at last, to carve a farm out of a wilderness Daniel Boone hadn’t yet shot bears in.
One night about 2 years into her hitch, counseling 19 year olds with three kids about using formula in the bottle instead of Diet Pepsi and cutting down on the smoking while pregnant, she called me in tears. She had seen 2kg newborns die of meth withdrawal and 5 car wrecks in which the county didn’t have enough equipment to extract the survivors from the fire and 24 year old mothers beaten to death by their uncles/father of their children, and joked about it, so I thought it was pretty bad.
I was surprised when she said, “We have to get out. I can’t let [Little Niece] go to school down here. My assistant Janey [who was 21 and had an associate’s degree, making her the best-educated and most worldly person in her family] lost her only brother in the mine last week. Janey came into work and said, We’re just handling it. He didn’t have a chance. I guess this is just how life is. I guess it’s the same everywhere.”
My sister apparently exploded in rage, and they’re still talking about it I’m sure. “No, Janey, this is NOT how things are. In other places, workers organize and refuse to go to work doing dangerous jobs until the job is as safe as it can be.” That moment of fury, when everyone found out that she’s not really one of them because she thinks that justice in this world is something more than a fantasy or fairy tale, was her breaking point.
Our father’s daddy was in his 10th year of work in the mine when he had a seizure. Peabody didn’t want a 19 year old dying on the cart line underground, so the shift boss took him to a hospital in Oak Hill. As a result of that bill he couldn’t pay (turned out to be appendicitis) he and my granny took his last pay and got on the train for Up North. Thus making my life, and my sister’s life, the stories our cousins Down Home tell instead of a story I wouldn’t want to live, one in which ‘this is just how it is’.
DBrown
@sven: Again – it is a function of the media – it is in their interest to protect the moneyed powers that be and be very careful not to indict the people who caused the murder of these miners; hence, no outcry or coverage of the real issue – starting under raygun and pushed really hard by bushwhack the roll back of all safety rules and put down of unions so coal remains cheap as an energy source but highly profitable for the elite (ie the dirty, coal covered hicks can die for pennies so the wealthy elite can dine on steak.
John Cole
Listen to Donald.
I tried to explain to a lot of Republicans that George Bush would be a lock in 2000 in WV and Gore would lose, because of what Donald said- we knew George Bush’s mom and dad and they seemed alright.
Also, the respect and worship of the military is big in the state, because we have so many veterans.
ericblair
@kay:
The answer is obvious: we need to put young blonde white women and sharks into every mine in WV. I’m not sure whether I’m joking or not.
jh46inaz
From Donald G
the days when towns were directly owned and operated by the coal companies
I wrote the above in 2006. It still applies today.
Let’s see a show of hands – how many remember the song “16 tons”? (just let the age cat out of the bag) According to Wikipedia, first recorded in 1946 by Merle Travis. Probably the most famous version recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955 (the one I know). 2006?? Yup, this has been going on for a very long time . . .
Martin
A bold move by Obama would be to have Holder bring criminal charges against the CEO and all other executives that had responsibility in the decision to not meet safety regs. Sure, the right would jump all over it, but from what I’ve read, there’s more than enough on the record from the CEO to make him indefensible in the eyes of the public.
I’m not a fan of the ‘shut them down’ solution. Let’s be honest here, that’s not realistic – and it’s not what the people there want. But there needs to be a change of leadership over these mining operations and a change of attitude, and a willingness to book cellblock time for the guys that willfully avoid safety laws would certainly start that ball rolling. If the cost of coal goes up 15% to accommodate the changes, we’ll all manage to get by just fine.
Allan
Don Blankenship is just the latest right-wing nut job teabagger to murder dozens of innocent Americans.
29 charges of first degree murder.
phoebes-in-santa fe
[email protected] – that’s quite a story. Did your sister stay her full three years?
John [email protected] – are you from WV?
KDP
@arguingwithsignposts: I think there is a perception that getting a union job has become an exercise in ‘who you know’ rather than the will to learn coupled with some degree of competence and ability? I don’t think that existing unions have done a very good job of promoting the benefits the provide to all workers nor the path by which an individual can become a union worker in a particular industry. It would be nice to see some media buys by unions that focused on pointing out differences in worker benefits, workplace safety, and worker satisfaction in union vs ‘right to work’ states.
I was listening to NPR on my way to school the other night and the discussion focused on the effect that the passage of stronger regulations after the 2006(?) mining disaster has had. Prior to the passage of those regs, 1 in 3 citations were contested by the mine management. Now, the ratio is 2 in 3. This is attributed to the add-on effect of having multiple citations for the same violation. So, if management accepts and pays on violation one for ventilation, the next time they are cited for ventilation the fines and other penalties are substantially increased. If they are cited at third time, even greater penalties are incurred. It is in the interests of mine management, particularly in non-union mines where there is no strong advocate for the workers in that mine, to fight citations. Unfortunately, I think also that management considers workers as assets like its trucks and tools and property. When looking at budget allocations for a year, there is a ROI analysis that compares the risk of death and injury to its workers against the cost of maintaining the safest possible workplace.
It is unfortunate that so many of those who manage our corporations are so disengaged from any awareness that their decisions have a tangible effect on actual lives, and that the human lives of workers should be just a line item in the balance sheet. I attribute much of this to the shift towards deregulation that started under Reagan and which has made the financial interests of shareholders preeminent over the interests of all other stakeholders affected by an organization’s operation. There is a rising interest in the role of corporate social responsibility across peer professional organizations, but that interest must fight the entrenched interests of a corporate community that is mandated to protect the financial interests of its shareholders above all. Those interested in promoting social responsibility must, like those promoting quality management, show an economic value to initiatives that protect workers and the community.
Ok, then, I guess I am a bit passionate about this, and I’ll stop now. have school work to do.
Ninufar
@Brian J: Here’s what info Meteor Blades could collect:
[safer mines dkos link]
Eyeballing the stats he’s provided suggests that union miners experience similar injury rates but lower fatality rates.
Sad stuff.
(BTW our nation’s voracious appetite for coal is — last I heard — protected by midwestern politicians… the northeasterners get all the windborne emissions from their plants… but I don’t have recent facts to support that.)
khead
@jh46inaz:
Would you settle for one my grandfather’s pay stubs from the 1930’s that shows him owing $$$ to the coal company at the end of the week? I think my Dad keeps them in a safe deposit box.
WereBear
@PhoenixRising: That’s an amazing story; and repeated in many places people don’t think of, such as central Florida.
What I saw growing up, in the MidWest and the South, was families actively preventing their children from education and aspiration; because it meant the children would go away, fracturing the family unit and removing sources of support from both parties.
I understand the emotions involved, but what it winds up doing is miring the family in poverty and despair. It’s hard enough getting an education off the ground when you come from behind the eight ball; it’s nearly impossible to do so when you have to do it alone.
That’s where the fatalism comes in. How many of you with higher educations would have given up your whole family to get it?
How many of you only got it because your family helped?
Kyle
What I find odd is that there seems to be very little anger simmering to the top- this has been going on for so long, that we sort of have an odd fatalism about it.
It’s unMurkan to question your bosses’ corner-cutting. Mine working conditions are immutable aspects of fate. At times like this, good little serfs focus on Jeebus and prayer and miracles, not safety regulations violated. It’s the Freedumb granted to the working people by cheap-labor Republicans.
And never, ever make the connection between mining deaths and the wholesale dismantling of safety regulations by Bush Administration foxes-guarding-the-henhouse. Remember, Obama’s a scary negro, so keep voting Republican.
PanAmerican
The end of coal production in the region is on the horizon. It might stumble on a swing producer for a while but the higher quality, lower production cost veins are increasingly played out. Trying to hold production costs down through sleazy operators like Massey or mountaintop removal aren’t any kind of solutions.
Political leadership should step up and map out an economic transition for the region.
Lisa K.
@jh46inaz:
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store.
Lisa K.
@PanAmerican:
Good luck with that one. Like Lewis Black said, at the rate we’re going the only thing left for us to do will be deliver pizza to each other.
Honus
@Bill E Pilgrim: They’re talking about these miners in largely the same terms they used to reserve for firemen or soldiers. Brave men risking their lives to get energy for all of us. It’s almost as if Morgan Massey is an acetic altruist, fighting the evil regulators, instead of an aristocratic absentee billionaire living off the backs and blood and destruction of the people and land of the coalfields. People in the coalfields have been educated to see Al Gore and Robert Kennedy as the enemy.
I think it was Graham Greene who said many years ago that West Virginia was essentially a third world country within our own borders.
Honus
@Lisa K.: I was born one mornin’ in the drizzlin’ rain
Fightin’ and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the cane brake by an old mama lion
ain’t no high-toned woman make me walk the line
I was born one mornin when the sun didn’t shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
and the straw boss said well, bless my soul
If you see me comin’ better step aside
A lot of men didn’t, a lot of men died
one fist of iron and the other of steel
if the right one don’t get the the left one will
Lisa K.
@Honus:
There’s a lot of misery in that song, but a lot of pride, too…
Lisa K.
@Honus:
An example of one of the brilliant things about conservative politics, too-how they can get people to believe and vote against their own interests.
sven
Thanks to Donald, Phoenix and others for sharing their experiences and insights; I feel awful for everyone who has been affected by the events at Big Branch and feel like news reports have done a lousy job filling in the context from the perspective of people who live in the area.
In a larger sense I continue to be frustrated by our nation’s unwillingness to address even obvious issues. I think like most people my impression of how public policy worked in the real world was something like this:
i) Something tragic happens,
ii) a bunch of stuff is proposed,
iii) one argument wins out and is implemented,
iv) inevitable problems pop up and are addressed later
It would be nice if problems could be addressed before a tragedy but at least progress was made in fits and starts.
But recently it seems like even this basic willingness to recognize failure has been lost.
Somehow it isn’t a big issue when dozens die because Massey Energy disregards the safety of its miners but it is a big deal when Tiger Woods cheats on his wife.
I know most of the people reading and posting in the BJ comments see this same problem so I guess I am really looking for ideas about how we change this. The push to call Congress during the conclusion on HCR was great and it really got me motivated. Is there something similar I can do about the media/public debate in this country?
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@John Cole:
You guys are describing what amounts to a frank failure of self government. In other words, the failure of the American experiment.
If exploited people cannot see, and then vote, their real interests, and in the case of labor, organize effectively to promote their real interests, then self government ceases to work, and becomes simply a ruse perpetrated upon the exploited class by the exploiters.
I don’t see how this works out any other way: Either the exploited class figures out the game and changes the balance, or else Marx was right.
Am I missing anything?
Lisa K.
@ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty:
Yes, that socialism is worse than dying in a mine explosion any day.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@sven:
Not fully awake yet, but it seems to me that what is needed is a second great labor movement in this country.
Right now, reality appears to be perched on a wire between two opposing views: Either the great American middle class is the result of the moxie of the 20th century American labor movement, which fought in the streets and in the conference rooms to give working people rights and benefits that produced things like the 40 hour work week, and healthcare insurance, and pensions for workers … or else the great American middle class resulted from the grace and generosity of the capital class, as the owners of capital in their infinite kindness allowed the benefits and rights to trickle down from the pinnacles of money and power in the correct fullness of time, to the workers as fast as the workers could learn to behave themselves and sustain the game.
I have always been a believer in the former view. That’s why I am a Democrat.
John Cole
@phoebes-in-santa fe: Born and bred. Lived here my whole life, other than time in the army and some time I lived in NY briefly.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@Lisa K.:
Heh. Well that sounds like a good slogan for Don Blankenship.
How do we put the question to the people of West Virginia in a way that promotes something akin to a healthy outcome that works for both capital and labor?
Because the tone I hear right now is more like the lowing of a herd of exploited people who are still willing to go along with a game that essentially uses them and gives them back not very much.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@John Cole:
Help me out here John. Are you folks, the cognoscenti there in WV, just educated versions of Loretta Lynn, or can you fashion a movement that changes the equation between capital and labor in that state and produces a different outcome?
Otherwise, the WV model just becomes a nursery for the production of mournful songs, doesn’t it?
Lisa K.
@ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty:
Sounds like a job for The Time Traveller.
John Cole
The other thing to keep in mind when listening to the reports come out of this explosion is to not get confused by the presence of methane. Methane may have caused this explosion, triggered by just about anything, but it was as violent as it was only because of the explosive material, which was a lot of coal dust. High levels of coal dust is simply inexcusable and a real sign of problems, and the folks I’ve heard talking said that it had high levels of float dust at the mine. Coal dust can be dealt with in any number of ways (putting rock dust and limestone in, watering it, etc.), but if it isn’t, it is like sitting on tnt.
I’ll let others who know more explain it better than I can, but put it this way- you know all the power plants that use coal to create electricity? They don’t burn coal in chunks like many of you think of in steam powered trains with a guy shoveling coal- in many plants they pulverize it and manufacture essentially coal dust because of how harcore the stuff is.
John Cole
I’ve also heard rumors that the ventilation was shut off in Sago for the holidays as a cost-saving measure when it went up, and someone suggested the ventilation might have been turned off to save money for Easter. Again, just rumors I heard on the radio.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@Lisa K.:
Hmm. Sounds like the WV world ends not with a bang, but with snark.
Too bad. Sad.
I don’t do well with hand wringing and institutionalized sadness, and surrender. I’m more of a labor organizer type. Type A personality, and all that.
Lisa K.
@ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty:
Well, I think there is a job for you in WV, then…
DecidedFenceSitter
@John Cole:
Anything [X]-“dust” is explosive, especially if it is granular. I’m more familiar with flour dust explosions but as wikipedia notes dust explosions just require five things.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@Lisa K.:
But I am in Arizona, and retired. I like the country back there but I am not going to live there and do their work for them.
I am not sure what to do, just read a thread like this, watch the mine disasters go by on tv, and cluck my tongue and shake my head? Or call out the John Coles of the world and urge them to get off their former Republican anti-labor asses and get working on fixing that situation back there?
Torn, in Arizona, I remain, yore friend, TZ.
Little Dreamer
@ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty:
__
You had better remain in Arizona, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to end up in West Virginia (na gan hapin!)
;)
Lisa K.
@ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty:
“Or call out the John Coles of the world and urge them to get off their former Republican anti-labor asses and get working on fixing that situation back there?”
I don’t know…I know nothing about coal mining or coal culture in WV (I am a New England elitist) but I sense a huge dose of Stockholm Syndrome apparent amongst this group of people. Is it too late for this generation to change it’s outlook? Are we better served by focusing on the next generation, the up-and-coming mine workers?
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@Lisa K.:
I guess it depends on what the citizens of WV really want.
Do they want to be a state that just exists there in the eddies of the backwater of America, as if the 20th century in our country with its labor movement and history of progressive politics never happened? Just a sad tale to watch on tv, like The Wire(tm)?
Or is it time for WV to join the rest of the states in moving forward into a more progressive future, where government serves the people and not just the moneyed interests?
I’m a classic Democrat. I actually believe in the pro labor and progressive view of government and the activism that produces it. I am not content to play Woody Guthrie songs on the Victrola and shake my head in sadness.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@Little Dreamer:
Don’t worry, if I move it won’t be East, it will be West, and we’ll be doing it together.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@Lisa K.:
I think that for now, this thread is a symbol of the reality.
Already bored or tired of talking about tragedy in WV and what it might mean in a realtime political sense, we are off on another thread to talk about a senseless tragedy in Eastern Europe.
Time on the blogs does not wait for the likes of West Virginia, eh?
ericblair
@Lisa K.:
I’ve never spent any time in WV, but it sounds like the basic rural outlook:
-Life is hard, unfair, tragedy will happen and you’ll never get ahead in life; and
-You will fight to the death to make sure things never, ever change.
I don’t think it’s even a fear that change will make things worse, it’s just that change should never, ever happen with no rational reason why not.
Lisa K.
@ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty:
I agree. And based on what little I know of them, I am not sure a lot of them really want what you are selling, even if it makes them safer.
I believe in it, too, but I am more cynical about the long-term effects of worldwide economics and conservative brainwashing and resentment politics on this group than you are. I think the times and cultures have changed a whole lot since Norma Rae unionized the textile mill backed by a Jewish guy from NY. Back then, the jobs were pretty secure and not so hard to come by even if the conditions were horrid, and so there was much more leverage for the workers to demand better conditions. Since then, globalism and Reaganomics has so squeezed the life out of the middle class and working poor that they no longer feel entitled to complain about conditions as long as they have a job-in fact, it is almost as if their employers are entitled to treat them badly as long as they sign a check every couple of weeks. I am sure many miners and their families see Massey as a provider, not an exploiter, and this latest tragedy as just the cost of doing business.
If that is cynical or snarky, so be it.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@ericblair:
Well, we live in a bipolar, two party world.
We have Republicans, who embrace stasis, and resistance to change, and bitter resentment, and a lack of ideas and a lack of courage to change the future.
And we have Democrats, or at least classic Dems, who believe that progressive ideas will lead to a balanced situation where both labor and capital can win the same game at the same time, and things work, and there is dignity and prosperity across the whole range of stations.
If WV wants to become a monument to exploitative capital and Republican thought, let them. But I will be damned if I will sit by and watch it and wring a hankie and go tsk tsk and say nothing. I will call them out. Because, it’s hot out here in Arizona and because I have a keyboard and I can.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@Lisa K.:
I think it’s just a realistic assessment of what is happening in the coal belt. The modern plantation owners, the mine owners and their stockholders, have persuaded the workers to accept their fate and just pray to Jesus on Sunday that the mine doesn’t kill them the rest of the week, and sing their songs and play their Loretta Lynn records and look glum.
Used to be the same out here in the copper and silver mines, until labor stood up for itself. Arizona still produces a pretty large percentage of the world’s copper from mines, we don’t live in a bubble of unfamiliarity with the world of mineral extraction out here.
Little Dreamer
@ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty:
Sweetheart, you have to remember, West Virginia is part of the anti-labor South.
You can’t change those people, they have to want to change first.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@Little Dreamer:
Well then I will just learn to do what they do. Just pray for their mortal souls as they go down into the mines and run that coal for Mr. Blankenship.
As my grandmother would say, Goddie Bless ‘Em.
sven
This video has been making the rounds and seems to be the perfect summary of the problem.
Here is Don Blankenship, head on Massey Energy, speaking at a teaparty thrown by Friends of America.
Moneyquote:
h/t to digby
Little Dreamer
@sven:
Wow, awesome find!
Bet he’s wishing he didn’t attend that event and mouth those words now.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d suggest some magical God up the in the sky heard him and made an example out of his words almost immediately! That sounds to me like the best example of a Godsmack that I’ve ever seen!
tenkindsofgrumpy
I happened to have access to cable while waiting in the hospital, and I saw an interview with a 19 y/o miner who had just come from work in the mine. Leaving aside the obvious fatalism in his voice, the first thing I noticed was that his face was black, and blackest around his mouth and nose. my conclusion based on years of experience wearing toxic gas masks, is that this man was working in the mine without a mask. WTF, how is this possible? More important, am I the only one who noticed this? This guy was on national T.V. We are screwed.
tenkindsofgrumpy
I’m curious what kind of drawl Mr. Blankenship would have if I cut off his balls and stuffed them in his mouth.
Donald G
Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I have never been a coal miner, nor am I a native West Virginian like John. I’m from as near Southeastern Virginia as you can get and am currently living in New Mexico (which shares some socioeconomic similarities to West Virginia, oddly enough). I’m just an outsider who spent a little under a decade in an economically depressed part of the state before I got out.
I don’t have the solutions to West Virginia’s economic and social justice problems. The factors leading to such rampant inequality seem to me to be systemic and cultural and cannot be changed without changing Appalachian culture. . , and that’s just not going to happen.
To illustrate my point, I’d like to go back to a democratic rally I attended on the steps of the Raleigh County Courthouse during the 2000 campaign. Among the speakers at the rally were Senators Byrd and Rockefeller, Congressman Nick Rahall, and, I believe, Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers. All talked about the need for electing democrats to Washington to protect West Virginia’s interests, but not one person on the podium said one blessed thing about the necessity of voting for Al Gore to be president, despite handing out Gore/Lieberman signs. The speakers did not mention Gore’s name once. Despite being a Democrat and the party’s nominee, as an environmentalist, Al Gore just wasn’t “one of them”. As a former VISTA worker, Jay Rockefeller isn’t necessarily “one of them”, either, but publicly embracing the 2000 democratic nominee for the presidency was apparently seen as some kind of electoral suicide on the parts of these longstanding senators and representatives in what is generally a one-party state – the one party being, ironically enough, the democratic party.
In WV, both parties are beholden to Big Coal: the democrats to the mining companies with or without unions and the unions themselves, and the Republicans primarily to the non-union mining companies.
Changing the culture is a nonstarter for other reasons, as well. West Virginians are a proud, feisty, ornery, and contrary bunch. They’ve been put down so long that they are very sensitive to perceived slights, real and imagined.
Outsiders aren’t to be trusted – they look down on you, they think they know better than you, and they’ll cheat you and exploit at the first opportunity, no matter what evidence of the cheating and and exploitation which has been going on for decades within the community. Those with power within the culture know how to play on those fears and insecurities in ways that most of us can’t possibly imagine.
This is not to say that there aren’t good people in West Virginia, but any outsider, no matter how well-meaning, has a hard row to hoe in counteracting the cultural conditioning. All too often, the well-meaning liberal outsider will end up re-enacting the Guardian’s “Operation: Cook County” of the 2004 campaign.
Donald G
@tenkindsofgrumpy:
Shortly after we moved to WV, we were told that it was a struggle to get some miners to wear protective gear like gas masks because “Gas masks are for sissies.”
There’s an element of misplaced macho pride at work.
tenkindsofgrumpy
@Donald G: I worked at Boston Whaler boats in the sixties and I didn,t like wearing the masks either, but it was a no exceptions condition of your employment there, no mask ,no job. This is inexcusable.
sven
@Donald G:
I worked around commercial fishermen in Alaska for several years and witnessed a similar dynamic there.
It does seem that dangerous professions can attract individuals with a “it will never happen to me” attitude. The same attitude which might be necessary to stay in a risky profession year-after-year also might make them resistant to changes which would make it less risky.
My impression is that fire-fighting is a field where some of the same attitude is present but they have also made amazing strides in professionalization and risk mitigation. It might be really interesting to how they approach their training.
khead
It’s really not that hard to do when those outside folks compare the miners to serfs and battered wives.
Donald G
@khead:
Your point is well taken, khead, but what analogies would you use to make the same point without making it so easy for the power structure to turn the analogy against the outside folks?
Honus
Guns-n-Jesus. It’s all guns-n-Jesus now, the UMWA is pretty much dead. Everybody in WV thinks they’re Ted Nugent now.
CDWard
Don Blankenship murdered those miners just as surely as if he had held a gun to their head and pulled the trigger-He should be punished accordingly.
Brad
RE: comments on this page that Arch Moore called the Farmington No. 9 disaster an “act of God.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. Never happened, not even close. Arch was a congressman from that district at the time and was there, consoling the families. More twisted lies from the left. I think what the moron may have been talking about was Buffalo Creek, but Arch didn’t say that then, either. It was a quote from Island Creek, not Gov. Moore. Get your facts right!