[Vision2020] Aggressive Audit of Poor Par for Course (Molly Ivins)

[Phil Nisbet]

Keely

All I have to do is read Molly's routine that turns Miners into demons to 
stop bothering with getting further.  Her standard is to pick somebody and 
dehumanize them while singing a soft song for somebody else.

MSHA has a dual mission.  They have to do mine inspections, but they also 
are the only ones left who can also carry out the work of the Bureau of 
Mines.  They are not the enemy.

The coal companies are trying to mine and sell coal to the power industry 
for turning out electrical energy.  They fight to keep costs down so that 
the consumers do not pay higher electric bills.  They pay their workforce 
higher wages than most industrial jobs do, for what is a very hazardous 
profession.  They are not the enemy.

Miner's love their jobs, which is why they work in an industry with such 
high hazards.  Its a job that has a built in culture very different than 
that on the street.  Its why the older miners would give their self rescuers 
to keep the young guy alive.  They are not the enemy.

Not one of the people involved in that tragedy was a stooge.  They were all 
hands who knew the risks and did a job that others find distasteful or 
frightening.  They are not demons from hell, bent on destroying the 
environment or dollar hungry slime balls uncaring about worker safety.  No 
doubt Molly typed her report on a computer powered by the coal that those 
men dug, but instead of celebrating their lives and the gift that their 
labor gave her, she terms their culture one of stooges.

She can never know the generosity of those miners, guys who will give their 
last dollar to worthy causes with nothing more than a shrug.  She will never 
be as close as a team working on a face to any other person she knows.  
Molly's worse fear is a paper cut on the job, not the clear understanding 
that one day the rock with your name on it is going to get you.

Mine safety is better now than it has ever been and hopefully it will get 
better still.  But mining will always be a risky job, as anything involving 
millions of tons of rock and high explosives and heavy machinery is bound to 
be.  And there will always be men and women who love the work and are 
willing to do it for the resources that you all enjoy.

Phil Nisbet
Just another stooge I guess, Molly Ivers told me so.

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