[Vision2020] What I learned (aka thinking v. self-deceipt)

Chris Storhok cstorhok at co.fairbanks.ak.us
Mon Jan 30 11:38:42 PST 2006


Phil,
To lay the egg of the closure on the Bureau of Mines squarely on Bill
Clinton is a bit disingenuous to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich who in
his "Contract with America" proposed and carried out the execution of the
BOM.  The BOM was killed by the simple act of (HR1977, 104th Congress)
non-appropriation budgeting thus eliminating its 2200 employees, eight
research centers, and moving the mine health and safety office's to the
Department of Energy, Pittsburg.  Unfortunately from there this office has
migrated to its final resting place deep within the unproductive bowels of
the US Department of Labor with some research activities also found within
the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. 
Naturally, Secretary Babbitt, and President Clinton went along with the
plan, but really Phil, you know as well a I do that this was one of Newt's
ideas and you really do him disservice by crediting Clinton with it.

Chris


Here is a partial list of BOM accomplishments: 
· Technologies that contributed to reduction of fatalities in mine disasters
by 97 percent, from 3,000 in 1907 to 98 in 1993.
· Self-rescue equipment to allow miners to continue to breathe when caught
in underground disasters.
· Low-cost methods to extract radium for cancer treatment.
· Production processes for titanium, which is critical for aerospace and
automobile manufacturing, and zirconium, which is essential to nuclear naval
vessels.
· Techniques to recover strategic and critical minerals, such as cobalt and
chromium, to reduce U.S. vulnerability to import blockages in international
crises, especially during the Cold War.
· Construction of manmade wetlands to limit pollution of waterways by acid
mine drainage from nearby mining and mineral-processing operations.
· Methods to minimize damage from subsidence, the sinking of the surface of
the earth above underground mines.
· Improved recycling of metals, plastic and paper from municipal wastes,
including a technology, now used around the world, to recycle municipal
solid wastes.
· Non-intrusive ways to recover minerals without disturbing the surface of
the land.
· Use of bacteria to remove arsenic and cyanide from waste waters on public
and private lands.
· Uncovering the world's largest deposits of lead and zinc at Alaska's Red
Dog Creek, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investments
for mine development.
 



    

-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Phil Nisbet
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 9:51 AM
To: m1e2y3e4 at moscow.com
Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: RE: [Vision2020] What I learned (aka thinking v. self-deceipt)

I need to reply to something that is obviously directed at me.  It interests

me that Jim does not seem aware that I have been working in the minerals 
industry, including a not inconsiderable few years spent underground.

Jim tells us;

"Are you a thinking person? You know, the kind of person that is 
introspective enough to test his/her own thoughts and prejudices when 
confronted with a differing truth. Can you really THINK? "

So Phil replies;

Reading your response below I would have to question your ability to think 
and not to act in a highly partisan fashion that makes little or no sense 
when looking at facts objectively.  As per your Emory study, your reward 
center must be lit up like a Christmass Tree when you ead a Molly Ivins 
article.

Jim writes..

"What I learned recently is that two die-hard Republicans on V2020 believe 
Molly Ivins is an idiot--as is anyone who would even consider her thoughts 
is an idiot, as evidenced by both their initial comments--"Are you kidding?"

and then by their avoidance of addressing the questions Molly asks, and one 
of them even  going so far as to put words in her mouth she didn't say and 
then discounting them."

And I reply;

Molly is a partisan who does not care for inconvenient truths.  And I do 
have a name Jim, you can use it.  And you would have nothing to write the 
rest of the post with had I not address the issue of Molly not dealing with 
the facts.  Now care to tell us all what words were placed in Molly Ivins 
mouth?

Jim then presents things he thinks are facts;

"Well, here here are the facts about mine safety as I can discern them."

I reply;

Yes Jim, you have very little knowledge of mines or mine safety, which makes

your discernment of the subject pretty weak and based upon research that is 
not very detailed.

Jim Fact #1

"--Under the Bush Administration, since 2001, fines have been routinely 
dismissed or diminished--one example is $450,000 being reduced to $3000."

And the real fact

Mine safety violation fines were reduced under Clinton as well  Companies 
have often pitched such fines to their Senators, the most powerful of whom 
is Sen. Byrd of West Virginia.  Total fines and violations have not 
decreased between the two administration  What has changed is that under 
Clinton, the US Bureau of Mines was destroyed and the $100,000,000 a year in

funding for mine safety research was taken with it.  The USBM was the agency

which came up with new mine safety devices and also with new mine safety 
regulations, MSHA was and is solely the enforcement group.  So since 1996, 
there have been no new ideas in Mine Safety.  St Molly of Fort Worth was the

person who lead the charge to do in the US Bureau of Mines, something you 
seem to have conveniently forgotten.

Jim Fact 2

"--Under the Bush Administration, the requirement to have two shafts, one 
for the miners ventilation and one for the coal conveyor has been 
unenforced."

The real facts

First, please provide any evidence for your statement there.  The 
requirement for a separate man way is standard.  Care to provide any proof 
that MSHA did not enforce that requirement?  If you are referencing the most

recent mine fire, the conveyor was in a separate drift and there were 
numerous other manways.  Frankly I doubt you would know a shaft from an adit

from a decline from a drift or a crosscut or be able to tell stopes from 
longwall cuts.  Further, ventilation is not something that shafts provide, 
shafts are the means of enterence and exit from a mine working and 
ventilation is provided most often by ducting in the various adits and 
shafts of a mine.

Jim Facts 3, 4, 5 ect

"--That it is considerably cheaper to pay for a dead miner than pay for all 
miner's safety. It costs $20 each for a personal pager sized device that can

locate a miner in the mine. It is made in Australia, by the way. It costs 
about $800 for a text messaging device that can allow those outside the mine

to communicate with trapped miners. These items were not in use at the Sago 
mine. The company owning the Sago Mine paid for the equivalent of pine box 
funeral and made Cobra insurance payments for, I believe 1 & 1/2 years for 
the family members of killed miners. The family members also receive 
$150,000 or $300,000 in life insurance payments. That is it. If you do the 
math, you can see that it is less costly to pay for killed miners than it is

to pay for their safety."

Line of sight devices do not work underground.  You can equip every single 
miner with a pager and it will do absolutely nothing for locating them if 
they are not within your line of sight.  Transmission of signals 
communication through hundreds to thousands of feet of solid rock using a 
tiny device is simply not going to happen.  The US Bureau of Mines was 
working on devices that could do that kind of job, but the scrapping of the 
complete Agency did tend to do in the potential to get devices designed and 
tested.

As for the Australian device that you reference, it is brand new.  The PED 
and Tracker system requires more than simply putting a pager on each miner.

Frankly it's a good idea, but it was not even approved for use in the US 
until about a month prior to the Sago Mine disaster and it is not mandated 
by MSHA or required by the UMW.  The Australians are just now installing all

the equipment as are the New Zealanders and the company involved in the 
systems design is now looking at selling it into Japan.  Of course the 
Aussies were just following through with the ideas and the preliminary work 
that the US Bureau of Mines had going back in 1993-6 and all of the Sago 
Miners would have had a US made device had the R & D on it not been wiped 
out by the Clinton Administration, but who the heck is counting.  You can 
send a nice thank you letter to Molly Ivins for being such a big supporter 
of doing in the USBM's on that one.

As for the pay outs from the International Coal Group, you are totally all 
wet.  First, they have a policy for $5,000 in funeral expenses, which is 
considerably more than a pine box.  Next, in addition to the $300,000 in 
life insurance, each family is getting over $300,000 from the company for 
education of their minor children and support for their widows.  The company

is also paying the families the lost miner's wages for a two years 
readjustment period and is honoring the pension clauses that the men had in 
their contracts, so that the widows will get a retirement income.  You do 
the math, because it's considerably more than the sum you suggest.

ICG lost 12 men with a lot of experience, had a mine hit by lightening that 
blew up, lost infrastructure and a lot of production capacity.  They also 
sprang a lot of money for the mine rescue operation.  All told, they are out

tens of millions of dollars.  Now please try to convince me that they were 
not interested in seeing the mine operated such that it would not blow up 
and that they would not lose money by the ream.  Having your mine blown to 
kingdom come is something any company wants to avoid, yet you are suggesting

that somehow they would allow it to be liable to explode at the drop of a 
hat.  Ideological blinders and your reward sensor hitting overload have to 
be at play on that one.

Jim strange facts;

"--Although mine deaths have gone down over 30 years, it needs to be taken 
into account that the numbers of underground miners has gone done 
dramatically also, probably by more than 1/2."

And this is a bad thing?  If there had been a dramatic increase in Mine 
related fatalities since the Bush Administration came into office you might 
have something to talk about, but the fatality rate has been steady state 
for close to a decade.  It might have fallen further had the US Bureau of 
Mines not been wiped off the map.

Jim yet stranger factoid;

"--That since 2001, federal mine safety regulators emphasized getting along 
with the company--not miner safety."

Are you totally unaware that this policy was put in place under Clinton?  As

a matter of fact, the numbers of mine health and safety violations and 
citations has not decreased, so they are still inspecting as much as under 
Clinton/Gore, they are simply resolving the issues, working for compliance 
rather than working to increase the fines.  Is the objective in your eyes to

have miners get a safer work place?  Or is it to collect money?  Because 
collecting lots of fines does not make for a safer work place, but demanding

compliance does.

And then Jim has this strange "fact";

"--That like Katrina, some questionable people, closely related to industry,

were in positions affecting mine safety, one of those being an OSHA head."

Name one person appointed by Bush who actually has anything to do with MINE 
safety that you think is questionable.  You see OSHA has nothing to do with 
underground mine safety and not one regulator at MSHA fits your supposed 
bill of indictment.  It's extremely disingenuous to suggest that an 
unrelated agency head with no authority for underground mine safety might be

conflicted in the Sago Mine disaster.


Then Jim Notes;

"In other words, Molly Ivins asked perfectly reasonable questions and these 
were entirely dismissed by some of you on V2020. I guess your reward center 
must be just glowing."

I can only reply;

No Jim, in other words your knee jerk support for the kinds of falsehoods 
that Molly spreads has your little pleasure centers humming and lighting up 
the boards.

And then Jim gives us advice;

"By the way, the CSPAN website has the Senate Appropriations Mine Safety 
subcommittee hearings on it. Do what I did, listen to that and then do a 
little research on your own. And then think (without the usual emotion)."

Good advice, you really should start to do research and not rely on 
propaganda so much.  Try starting with basic references like what a mine is 
and work your way up to reading what MSHA had to actually say about why the 
accident occurred.  You might just find out a little something that does not

fit into your ideology driven agenda.  In the mean time try not to think you

can teach your grandma how to suck eggs.

Phil Nisbet



>From: Jim Meyer <m1e2y3e4 at moscow.com>
>To: vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: [Vision2020] What I learned (aka  thinking v. self-deceipt)
>Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 07:27:44 -0800
>
>Are you a thinking person? You know, the kind of person that is 
>introspective enough to test his/her own thoughts and prejudices when 
>confronted with a differing truth. Can you really THINK?
>
>"Emory University psychologist Drew Weston has found that our brains have a

>convenient way of processing facts that challenge our political 
>convictions. Using MRI scanners, Weston found that when committed 
>Republicans and Democrats were confronted with negative information about 
>politicians they supported, the parts of the brain responsible for 
>reasoning essentially shut down--and "emotion circuits" lit up. As the 
>subjects dealt with their inner conflict by discounting the new 
>information, the brains "reward centers" lit up--a response similar to what

>addicts experience when they get a fix. Biases can be overcome, Weston 
>tells The New York Times, but only if people are willing to engage in 
>"ruthless self-reflection"--a quality , he notes, that's "rarely talked 
>about in politics." Nor is it likely to be. It's so much more rewarding to 
>close our minds"  The Week, Feb 3rd 2006.
>
>What I learned recently is that two die-hard Republicans on V2020 believe 
>Molly Ivins is an idiot--as is anyone who would even consider her thoughts 
>is an idiot, as evidenced by both their initial comments--"Are you 
>kidding?" and then by their avoidance of addressing the questions Molly 
>asks, and one of them even  going so far as to put words in her mouth she 
>didn't say and then discounting them.
>
>Well, here here are the facts about mine safety as I can discern them.
>--Under the Bush Administration, since 2001, fines have been routinely 
>dismissed or diminished--one example is $450,000 being reduced to $3000.
>
>--Under the Bush Administration, the requirement to have two shafts, one 
>for the miners ventilation and one for the coal conveyor has been 
>unenforced.
>
>--That it is considerably cheaper to pay for a dead miner than pay for all 
>miner's safety. It costs $20 each for a personal pager sized device that 
>can locate a miner in the mine. It is made in Australia, by the way. It 
>costs about $800 for a text messaging device that can allow those outside 
>the mine to communicate with trapped miners. These items were not in use at

>the Sago mine. The company owning the Sago Mine paid for the equivalent of 
>pine box funeral and made Cobra insurance payments for, I believe 1 & 1/2 
>years for the family members of killed miners. The family members also 
>receive $150,000 or $300,000 in life insurance payments. That is it. If you

>do the math, you can see that it is less costly to pay for killed miners 
>than it is to pay for their safety.
>
>--Although mine deaths have gone down over 30 years, it needs to be taken 
>into account that the numbers of underground miners has gone done 
>dramatically also, probably by more than 1/2.
>
>--That since 2001, federal mine safety regulators emphasized getting along 
>with the company--not miner safety.
>
>--That like Katrina, some questionable people, closely related to industry,

>were in positions affecting mine safety, one of those being an OSHA head..
>
>In other words, Molly Ivins asked perfectly reasonable questions and these 
>were entirely dismissed by some of you on V2020. I guess your reward center

>must be just glowing.
>
>By the way, the CSPAN website has the Senate Appropriations Mine Safety 
>subcommittee hearings on it. Do what I did, listen to that and then do a 
>little research on your own. And then think (without the usual emotion).
>
>Jim Meyer
>
>
>
>
>
>
>_____________________________________________________
>List services made available by First Step Internet, serving the 
>communities of the Palouse since 1994.                 http://www.fsr.net

>                              mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
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