Obama preaches reconciliation with coal bosses [View All]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/obam-a26.shtml


At memorial service for West Virginia miners


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The remarks, filled with religious and patriotic rhetoric, were aimed at concealing the criminal responsibility of the mine owners and the complicity of federal and state agencies that allowed miners to work in a deathtrap.

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Billed as a service to promote “hope and healing,” the event was aimed at dissipating the anger of miners and their families against Massey Energy and other mine owners. The talk was of reconciliation and forgiveness. The miners, Obama declared, died in pursuit of the “American dream.”

“All of West Virginia is in pain and not without some anger,” US Senator Jay Rockefeller said before the president’s remarks, “But we will bind together as a community because that is what West Virginians do. We will find a way to go on.”

This was an unmistakable appeal to “bind together” with the coal bosses, including Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship who rather than being tried and sentenced for the deaths of 52 miners at his operations over the last decade sat in the audience.

In addition to Rockefeller, US Senator Robert Byrd and Governor Joe Manchin, both Democrats, were also in attendance. The West Virginia Democrats, like their Republican counterparts, have long been in the pockets of Big Coal. If the miners were to conduct a mass struggle to defend themselves, these politicians would quickly shelve their sympathy for “hard-working miners” and dispatch the state police to arrest them.

(I didn't know Blankenship was in the audience!!! what shit is that?)

In his remarks, President Obama repeated the self-serving theme stated over and over by the media to justify the continued carnage in the coalfields: that mining is a dangerous occupation and disasters are a just a normal part of life in the Appalachia coalfields.

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Such a presentation is designed to conceal the fact that there were real people responsible for the deadly conditions in the mines. The explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine—the deadliest coal mine disaster in 40 years—was not an “Act of God,” but the inevitable result of the willful disregard of the most basic safety precautions by Massey management, which was determined to extract as much coal out of the mine as possible. Moreover, federal Mine Safety and Health Administration regulators, appointed by the president himself, are also responsible because they allowed the mine to continue operating despite ample warnings of an impending disaster.

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It would be more honest to say they lived and died as part of the American nightmare. Miners in the area were forced to take their lives in their own hands in an effort to escape the poverty that prevails in West Virginia, the third poorest state in the nation, lagging only behind Mississippi and Louisiana.

In an interview with the New York Times, a foreman at the Upper Big Branch Mine described the brutal conditions workers faced in the mine, where each day methane levels were double or triple the allowable levels. “Have you ever been scared for your life, when you go to work in the morning—daily. That’s what went on down there. Daily. I’ve had guys come to me and cry. Grown men cried because they’re scared,” he said.

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The president made no reference to this damning evidence or the accumulated safety regulations that were ignored by Massey and not acted on by federal regulators. Knowing full well that these deadly conditions would continue not only at Massey but throughout the industry, he continued, “How can a nation that relies on its miners not do everything in its power to protect them? How can we let anyone in this country put their lives at risk by simply showing up to work? By simply pursuing the American dream?

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On Friday, a 28-year-old miner was killed just eight miles west of Beckley, in Eccles, West Virginia, when he was crushed between a continuous mining machine and the mine wall. The mine is owned by International Coal Group, which also owns the Sago Mine.
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Blankenship being allowed to sit in the audience says it all.