the unsexy scandal

Posted from a comment I left at m-pyre:

Great commentary, marjorie.

American workers have been completely abandoned by the political establishment and broader culture, no doubt a consequence of our troubling metamorphosis from citizens to consumers.

With liberalism safely in the rearview, society openly exalts whomever most efficiently exploits the more desperate among us. No wonder we break up our toxic envy and misguided hero worship with sentimental pap designed to the smallest byte to sell cars and toilet paper and every other goddamn thing under the sun.

From People's Weekly World:

Jordan Barab, a former special assistant at OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and health and safety expert for AFSCME and the AFL-CIO, said the federal government is doing little to protect workers. He also noted 90 percent of coal mining industry campaign contributions in recent years went to Bush and the GOP. “The fact is Bush has not requested budgets for OSHA or MSHA that even keep up with the rate of inflation and mandatory pay increases over the past several years while penalties for OSHA or MSHA violations remain laughably low,” Barab writes on his website, Confined Space. “The highest penalty of the…citations received last year by Sago was $878. But that was the exception. Most of the others were $250 or $60. At that rate, it’s hardly a good business decision to even bother fixing anything. And the administration has shut down any new worker protection standards in OSHA and MSHA,” Barab wrote.

That mine pulled in $15.7 million - profit - for the International Coal Group (ICG) through the third quarter of 2005.

Talk about criminal.