President Obama just offered brief remarks at the White House about the mine disaster here in West Virginia:
UPDATED, WITH COMPLETE TEXT OF PRESIDENT’S REMARKS:
Before I begin, I want to send my deepest condolences, our thoughts and prayers to the families and the friends of the workers who lost their lives after an explosion took place in a West Virginia mine yesterday. At this moment, there are still people missing. There are rescue teams that are searching tirelessly and courageously to find them.
I spoke with Governor Manchin of West Virginia last night and told him that the federal government stands ready to offer whatever assistance is needed in this rescue effort. So I would ask the faithful who’ve gathered here this morning to pray for the safe return of the missing, the men and women who put their lives on the line to save them, and the souls of those who have been lost in this tragic accident. May they rest in peace, and may their families find comfort in the hard days ahead.
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Let’s hope no one blames the president for this tragedy, like they did Bush for Sago. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/blog/2006/01/blaming_bush_for_the_sago_mine_trag.html
Bush was clearly not responsible for Sago, but regulations are not a frivolous thing in the mining industry. The corporations obviously cannot supervise their own safety measures, and industry standards are a good thing. While any accusation against Bush is clearly making a strained connection, the sentiment that government is responsible for miners’ safety is correct.
There is no such thing as clean, safe coal. It depends on exploiting poor people to do the dirty work, and always has.
Clean and safe are relative terms. You can obviously make mines safer but doing so increases the cost so the owners and operators of mines are incentivized to reduce those costs and keep the mine producing so that the owners and operators will be more profitable. I can’t help but wonder if miners who owned their own mines wouldn’t be a little less worried about maximizing profits and a little more concerned with safety. And they would probably care a whole lot more about preserving those green hills and not be in such a rush to cut their tops off and push them into the valleys next door. There was a time when every executive at Avis spent at least 2 weeks each year working a rental counter. I would dearly love to see Massey Energy adopt a similar policy but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting.
Obama not be willing to say the word “coal” in describing the type of mine disaster or in any of his remarks today in an indication of how much he has now embraced the false illusion of there being any such thing as “clean coal”. This seems to be a pattern of how he is giving in to the pressure of big corporate oil and coal, just as he changed his tune on off-shore drilling and nuclear energy!