Terri Whitehouse November 19th, 2007
An article in the Washington Post paints a stark picture of mine safety oversight:
U.S. mine safety regulators failed to conduct inspections required by federal law at more than one in seven of the country’s 731 underground coal mines last year, a year in which the number of worker deaths in mining accidents more than doubled to 47, a government report says.
Budget constraints and a lack of management emphasis on worker safety by the Bush administration are responsible for the lapses, the Labor Department inspector general said in a report released yesterday. The report details the department’s failure to meet inspection mandates of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977.
Of course, we already knew that, now, didn’t we?
Terri Whitehouse August 22nd, 2007
Dave Meyer of OpenKY.com has a timely post about Mine and Health Safety Administrator, Richard Stickler. As has been reported in the media, Stickler is a former mining executive whose safety track record was less than satisfactory. And, as Meyer points out in his post, Sen. Mitch McConnell played a big role in Stickler’s recess appointment:
I know there has been a hold on the MSHA Director nomination on the other side of the aisle. I have been told that there will be an objection yet again today. But I want to plead with those from the other side who may believe that this is not the perfect nominee— he is the nominee, nominated by the President, reported out of the HELP Committee. If he were to be drawn down and this whole process were to be started all over again, we wouldn’t have an MSHA Director for months and months into the future. We need a permanent Director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
The McConnell/Chao/mining connection has been previously documented on DM-KY. Meyer’s post on the topic is definitely worth the read.
Matt Gunterman July 5th, 2007
Hey, Elaine, all’s I’m saying is if you think your job’s impossible, or the people whose interests you’re supposed to be looking out for just aren’t worth the trouble, you can always go elsewhere.
I mean, haven’t you spent pretty much your entire adult life on the public teat, just suckin’ away all the rich taxpayer goodness? Why not try the private sector, where the free market will judge you on your mental agility and actual managerial skills.
Yeah, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, you’re all for competition until it’s your ass that has to compete.
Here’s what Chao told PARADE Magazine:
[...]
“American employees must be punctual, dress appropriately and have good personal hygiene,” says Chao. “They need anger-management and conflict-resolution skills, and they have to be able to accept direction. Too many young people bristle when a supervisor asks them to do something.”
[...]
You call this kempt, Elaine?
Shawn Dixon June 15th, 2007
Technically his wife, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, is the breadwinner in the family, but either way the couple owns a house in Washington, D.C. that is worth an estimated $5 million dollars.
From the AP story
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, said he held property in the District of Columbia worth $1 million-$5 million. But a large portion of the family assets is held by his wife, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.
Hmm….the cushy Secretary of Labor job, which is a postion appointed by the President, is keeping the McConnell/Chao lights on in their posh D.C. house. No wonder Mitch McConnell supports President Bush 96% of the time and even called him “one of the greatest presidents in history.”
Perhaps a lavish $5 million dollar home in Washington, D.C. has caused Mitch McConnell to forget who he is representing. While Mitch McConnell has been living it up in D.C. and voting with the President to give tax cuts to the richest Americans (himself included), Kentuckians are having a hard time finding jobs. In many cases Kentuckians are living paycheck to paycheck. The unemployment rate is perfect indicator of the growing financial squeeze on Kentucky families. In February of this year the national unemployment rate was 4.6%, while Kentucky had an unemployment rate of 5.7%, one of the highest in the country.
But don’t you worry Mitch McConnell, we won’t let you forget your roots that easy. After voters bring you home from Washington, D.C. next November you’ll have plenty of time to get re-acquinted with Kentucky.
Terri Whitehouse April 10th, 2007
In a Media Matters story, Kathleen Henehan reports that Murray Energy Corp. CEO Robert Murray openly mocked Al Gore on CNN’s The Situation Room. CNN correspondent Carol Costello says of Murray and his stance on Gore’s climate change agenda:
If all of these emissions controls are being put into place all at one time, he fears that’ll be too expensive for companies to absorb. And what happens when that happens? They lay off workers.
Indubitably! Because everyone knows that the well-being of their employees is always the number one priority of coal companies. Am I right, ya’ll? No? Well how the hell was I supposed to know that? It is CNN after all, it’s not like they have the resources and qualified journalists to research topics and guests prior to filming or anything. If I wanted to do homework I wouldn’t watch TV.
Henehan rebuts:
Despite Murray’s purported sympathy for miners, the Pittsburgh office of the National Labor Relations Board issued a formal complaint against Murray and an associate in 2001 because they “[t]hreatened Union officers and its employees with reprisals for publicizing the labor dispute between the parties” and “[t]hreatened its employees with the loss of jobs, and the loss of wages and benefits if they failed to select new Union officers and because of their support for the Union,” according to a 2002 United Mine Workers Journal article.
But wait, it gets even grosser, says Henehan:
An October 20, 2006, article in Kentucky’s Lexington Herald-Leader described Murray as “a huge donor to Republican senators” and reported on a meeting at a Mine Safety and Health Administration [MSHA] office in which “inspectors confronted him [Murray] about safety problems at his mines.” During the meeting, Murray reportedly made reference to his connections to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and McConnell’s wife, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao: “Shouting at a table full of MSHA officials … Murray said: ‘Mitch McConnell calls me one of the five finest men in America, and the last I checked, he was sleeping with your boss,‘ according to notes of the meeting.” The article added: “Murray, in a recent interview, denied that he referred to McConnell ’sleeping with’ Chao.”
I think I need to take a shower now. Full text of the Media Matters report can be found here.
Matt Gunterman March 11th, 2007
The Rocky Mountain News lede says it all.
Federal officials secretly schemed to limit payouts for sick and dying nuclear weapons workers, including thousands from the Rocky Flats plant outside Denver, newly released documents show.
Those “federal officials” just happen to be from Elaine Chao’s Department of Labor, and Secretary Chao is the woman in the dynamic duo that President George W. Bush called the “ultimate power couple” on March 2 at his $2.1 million fundraiser for McConnell. Imagine the pillow talk.
Read the article. It’ll boil your blood and make you wonder if we shouldn’t add a new category to the whole motif of DINO (Democrat in Name Only) and RINO (Republican in Name Only): AIMO, or American in Name Only.
What a spectacular cost-saving measure: draw the process out so long that the former employees simply die before they get treatment and care. The lengths these people will go to to save a buck for a tax cut, huh? Here’s what Assistant Secretary of Labor Victoria Lipnic had to say about the expanding costs of treating sick workers, “There is not a fiscal conservative left anywhere.” You are so right, Vicky. It’s such a waste of money. Everybody’s gotta die sometime, right? And billionaires only live once.
Many in Congress aren’t terribly happy about this. How much did Secretary Chao know? Whatever the answer, I don’t think it reflects kindly on her. She might be SOL in more ways than one.
