Another Mining Disaster

This may seem like a month for mining disasters. But it happens too often to be a coincidence. As the AP reports:

Though the cause of the blast was not known, the operation run by Massey subsidiary Performance Coal Co. has a history of violations for not properly ventilating highly combustible methane gas, safety officials said.
* * *
Massey Energy, a publicly traded company based in Richmond, Va., ... ranks among the nation's top five coal producers and is among the industry's most profitable. It has a spotty safety record.

In the past year, federal inspectors fined the company more than $382,000 for repeated serious violations involving its ventilation plan and equipment at Upper Big Branch. The violations also cover failing to follow the plan, allowing combustible coal dust to pile up, and having improper firefighting equipment.

The New York Times adds:

For at least six of the past 10 years, federal records indicate, the Upper Big Branch mine has recorded an injury rate worse than the national average for similar operations. The records also show that the mine had 458 violations in 2009, with a total of $897,325 in safety penalties assessed against it last year. It has paid $168,393 in safety penalties.

Although the exact cause of the latest disaster is not yet known, the Times reports that a United Mine Workers spokesman's "current theory was that the explosion might have been caused by a buildup of methane gas in a sealed-off section of the mine. A similar type of explosion occurred in the 2006 Sago mining disaster, which left 12 miners dead after trapping them underground for nearly two days."

Just last month, Massey Energy bought a rival coal company, further reducing competition in the energy market. The company paid $960 million.

That was a deliberate corporate choice. Although Massey Energy has one of the worst safety records in the nation, it chose to spend its profits on another corporate acquisition rather than improving mine safety.

Corporate greed over worker safety, Wall Street avarice taking the world economy to the brink of destruction, irresponsible bank lending run amok, oil and coal corporations outright buying congressmen and senators, federal financial regulators secretly using taxpayer money to soak up worthless brokerage assets, municipalities driven to bankruptcy's doorstep by "nomadic thievery"...... Something has gone seriously wrong with America's moral compass.

And this has consequences. This week, it was the lives of twenty-five or more miners. Next week, it could be yours.

minor edit 04-06am

History Rhymes, Again

"History never repeats, but it often rhymes."
-- Mark Twain (attr.)

Scholars can't really tell you where or when the witticism so commonly attributed to Mark Twain was uttered, but it's just the sort of thing which that biting skeptic of human nature might have said. In any event, he surely would have added a sarcastic rhyme this week after news of the latest coal mine disasters in China.

Five times this week -- five! -- scores of Asian miners have been killed by flooding, gas explosions, or sudden collapse of mine shafts. The worst appears to be in Shanxi Province where 153 workers have been trapped for over a week. Hopes were raised yesterday when mysterious "tapping" noises were heard coming from the mine Thursday, NPR reports.

Ironically, this same week at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, the centennial commemoration of the famous "Cherry Mine" disaster in Illinois was just winding up. Above ground a hundred years ago, mysterious tapping noises were keeping hopes alive in north-central Illinois, too.

The Cherry Mine disaster has historical importance beyond the grim numbers of the dead and surviving widows, mothers, and siblings left bereft and penniless. Subsequent investigations established that company executives were deliberately and repeatedly violating what few laws there were protecting worker safety and preventing under-age employment.

Those findings led to a number of progressive worker safety laws including, one year later, creation of the U.S. Bureau of Mines and, among the states, one of the first worker compensation statutes. A fascinating, and historically accurate, two-part diary on Daily Kos ["How Regulation Came to Be"] explains the connection in detail.

All of which provides a useful reminder, in today's era of Tea Party and neo-Republican attacks on "government" in general, of just what life was like before progressive ideas became the law of the land.

Window on Wall Street

Jim Zarroli (NPR reporter), summarized: Former Merrill Lynch CEO/Bank of America executive John Thain --

• spent $1.2 million just to redecorate his office last year
• ran Merrill Lynch to bankruptcy's doorstep
• finagled $4 billion in early December bonuses for fellow execs
• initially demanded a "$10 million bonus for himself
• then came begging, twice, to the U.S. Treasury Dept. for a total of $30 billion in taxpayer money so Bank of America could buy the shitpile he'd made of Merrill Lynch
• which quickly ballooned to $115 billion
  

However, Jim Zarroli assures us, Thain is regarded by Wall Street as "smart"and "illustrious." Indeed, even today he is "well regarded" by his Wall Street peers.

That's all you need to know about Wall Street's standards.

Wall Street Puts Another One Over On You

A reader of Josh Marshall's reports that Merrill Lynch paid $3-4 billion in early bonuses, just days before it was acquired by Bank of America, backstopped by $128 billion in taxpayer TARP funds.

John Thain, former head of Merrill and now formerly with BofA (fired today), paid the bonuses earlier than they are normally paid (late January, February) because he knew that once the BofA deal closed, he would be unable to "reward" all those hardworking Merrill bankers and traders who lost a mere $27 billion in 2008

The reader makes a larger point that Congress (and those of us who vote for congress persons) should keep in mind:

I worked on Wall Street for 15 years, and was laid off late last year. I can tell you this for sure: you don't need to pay a dime in bonus to anyone on Wall Street these days. I know this firsthand: there's nowhere to go!

Where would a Merrill banker unhappy with a donut for a bonus go? Lehman? Bear? Bank of America? There are no jobs on Wall Street, there are no jobs on Main Street (and certainly none that will even pay close to what these guys earn just in salary; my salary alone put me in the 99+ percentile in income).

These guys aren't going to leave Merrill because of no bonus to become CEOs, law firm partners, or MLB shortstops. They'll do what every single person I know on Wall Street that still has a job: they'll keep their heads down and hope the next round of layoffs doesn't include them.

Want to see some limits on executive compensation for federally-funded banks and brokerage houses, anyone?