October 8, 2010, 11:45 a.m.
Workplace Safety: Look to China's Coal Mine Solution
. . . and other lessons
(bought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
China seems to be doing a lot of things right, and I'm not just talking about what appears to be their stealth monopoly control of the world's essential "rare earth" resources. Keith Bradsher, "China Tightens Grip on Rare Minerals," New York Times, September 1, 2009, p. B1.
At a time when we don't seem to have figured out how to make corporate executives and their government overseers take a more serious approach to workplace safety, the Chinese have come up with an approach that can be applied to improving administrators' behavior generally.
"[N]ine men . . . have died inside U.S. coal mines in the six months since the Upper Big Branch mine disaster in West Virginia, in which 29 men were killed on April 5." David A. Fahrenthold and Kimberly Kindy, "Mine Safety's Black Hole," Washington Post, October 5, 2010. And see Nicholas Johnson, "Honor Workers Every Day," Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 6, 2010, p. A7 (and in "Labor Day: Honor Workers Every Day," September 6, 2010); and Editorial, "Miners Die, Congress Dawdles," New York Times, September 19, 2010, p. A20.
What can we do? Where can we look for "best practices"?
Admittedly, it seems counter intuitive to look to China for coal mine safety. There are seven million Chinese coal miners -- more than in the rest of the world combined. In 2004 6000 Chinese miners died in mining accidents. China produces 40% of the world's coal, but 80% of the mining deaths. Chinese miners die at a rate 100 times greater than in the U.S. Mark Gregory, "Why Are China's Mines So Dangerous?" BBC World Service, October 7, 2010.
But last year those deaths dropped to 2600. Id.
And now Beijing has added another innovation that will not only reduce those deaths further, but offers an insight into reforming the attitudes of elected officials, administrators and managers generally.
"New regulations have come into force in China that require managers of mines to accompany workers down the shafts. . . . The authorities hope that putting officials in the mines alongside their workers will act as a strong incentive to improve safety conditions." Martin Patience, "China Introduces Mine Safety Rule," BBC News, October 7, 2010.
As you'd suspect, China's coal mine managers aren't crazy about the idea. "[A]lready there have been reports of some managers trying to manipulate the new regulation. At one mine, seven workers were given jobs as assistant managers to circumvent the new rule." Id.
How else might this principle be applied?
Professorial humility. At one point I applied it to myself. I'm not a good foreign language student. Oh, I manage to learn and use a few expressions in the native language of all the countries where I travel. But the portion of the brain that seemingly enables some individuals to master a foreign language on a single hearing never fully developed for me. Besides, most of the people I was dealing with abroad were fluent English language speakers.
But a time arrived when it looked like I was really going to need more than a few expressions in Russian. So I took a Russian class with about six other students, many of whom were simultaneously studying Japanese and Chinese. That should have been a clue. I spent time in the language lab; I did the exercises in the book. But there was no way I could master the language as thoroughly and quickly as the others.
Now it's undoubtedly true that there are undergraduates and law students who do not do well in class, and on exams, because of binge drinking, other partying, or a lackadaisical attitude generally. But what I learned from my experience -- deliberately taking a class that I knew would be exceedingly difficult for me -- is that there are also students who are not doing well in spite of really making the effort and logging the time.
It was a lesson that has served me well in the years since. Indeed, I recommend it to teachers at all levels. What are the subjects, the intellectual challenges, at which you have the least aptitude -- advanced math, physics, spoken and written Chinese, philosophy, memorization of historical facts and dates? Take a course in one of those subjects. Feel the pain. It will make you a more sympathetic and effective teacher.
Employing minimum wage workers? Lobby in opposition to raising their pay? Take a page out of Barbara Ehrenreich's book; literally. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (Henry Holt, 2001).
As an absolute minimum, all such individuals ought to at least be required to read and reflect on her report of the consequences of such pay for those who have and hold a job, go to work every day, and play by the rules. The conditions confronting America's "working poor" put all of us -- and our elected representatives -- to shame.
Working conditions. In 1974, when I was running for Congress with UAW support, I was talking to some factory workers about their working conditions. What's a fair wage for working in a foundry, in temperatures often in excess of 100 degrees, around machinery that could remove a limb, and next to vats of molten metal that would instantly kill if one misstep caused you to fall in?
It occurred to me one measure might be to ask the CEO what he would require as a fair wage were he to be doing that work. How much better, I now realize in light of the Chinese practice, if he were required to work there every day for at least a couple of weeks before answering that question.
Similarly the foundry workers could take turns sitting at his desk, with carpet up to their ankles, playing golf one or two afternoons a week, following which they would have to indicate the minimum income they would find acceptable for doing his job.
Other. There are no limits to this approach. School superintendents could be required to eat lunch in the school cafeteria every day for a couple of months, rather than in the swanky restaurants their salaries make possible. Doctors could experience the joys of emptying bed pans in a hospital for a week or so. Hotel managers could try to change the linen, make the beds, replace the towels, and clean the rooms in the time they allow their cleaning crews. University presidents could try to personally figure out the building maintenance challenges that daily confront employees, or work along side a night shift cleaning crew trying to do the job with half the personnel they had not that many years ago. Auto manufacturing CEOs would have to figure out how to get at an engine part needing repair that is seemingly impossible to reach. Airline executives could be assigned to serving all the passengers on a short flight with a full plane -- including how to get those carts in and out of the galley.
Stuff like that. Use your imagination. The Chinese used theirs, and it's saving lives. It would be a better world.
"Dark as a Dungeon"
Where it's dark as a dungeon
And damp as the dew
Where the danger is doubled
And the pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls
And the sun never shines
Oh it's dark as a dungeon
Way down in the mine
Now here's Johnny Cash singing it to you.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
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July 16, 2010, 9:00 a.m.
[For BP disaster see, "Uncanny Prediction of BP Disaster & Response," June 10, 2010; "BP's Commercial: Shame on Media," June 9; "Big Oil: Calling Shots, Corrupting Government," May 26, 2010; "Obama As Finger-Pointer-In-Chief," May 18, 2010; "Big Oil + Big Corruption = Big Mess," May 10, 2010; "P&L: Public Loss From Private Profit," May 3, 2010.]
Corporate Risk Assessment and Inevitable Disaster
(bought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Sat next to a business consultant on a recent flight. Got to talking about Massey and BP. His contention: It's all just about risk assessment. However conscious and precise we may be about the process (whether we're driving a car or drilling miles beneath the ocean's surface), it goes something like this: What are the potential rewards from our risky behavior? What are those risks? How serious would it be if the worst occurred? What is the likelihood it will occur? (Perception of risk -- or more often mis-perception -- is another matter, as when someone fears flying (despite the relatively slight risk) but continues smoking (despite its almost inevitable risks).) Anyone in business is under enormous pressure to both increase profits and decrease costs; in other words to gradually assume ever increasing risks of harm -- to employees, customers, the environment, or the global economy -- until the inevitable disaster occurs.
Goldman Sachs. "Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $550 million to settle federal claims that it misled investors in a subprime mortgage product as the housing market began to collapse . . .." Notwithstanding the payment, "Goldman did not formally admit to the S.E.C.’s allegations . . .." Now, how credible is that stance? You don't admit to any wrongdoing, but you pay the $550 million fine anyway? Even if you earned over $13 billion, $550 million is a little more than one normally pays to settle a nuisance suit. Moreover, Goldman Sachs "agreed to a judicial order barring it from committing intentional fraud in the future . . .." What a concession from a Wall Street firm! That really stings, and should substantially cut into their future profits. Wow, agreeing to forgo the ability to engage in "intentional fraud." Sewell Chan and Louise Story, "S.E.C. Settling Its Complaints With Goldman," New York Times, January 16, 2010, p. A1.
When grief or anger become seemingly unbearable, we sometimes redirect it into humor. So it is with Harry Shearer's catchy, bouncy, "Mr. Goldman and Mr. Sachs" ("spinning gold out of flax, Mr. Goldman and Mr. Sachs"). Give it a listen; available from Amazon and iTunes.
Massey Coal. It's now come to light that Massey Coal (in whose mine 29 miners died last April) has deliberately applied its risk assessment analysis to miners' safety.
An NPR News investigation has documented a dangerous and potentially illegal act at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia two months before a massive April explosion killed 29 mine workers.
On Feb. 13, an electrician deliberately disabled a methane gas monitor on a continuous mining machine because the monitor repeatedly shut down the machine.
Three witnesses say the electrician was ordered by a mine supervisor to "bridge" the automatic shutoff mechanism in the monitor.
Methane monitors are mounted on the massive, 30-foot-long continuous miners because explosive gas can collect in pockets near the roofs of mines. Methane can be released as the machine cuts into rock and coal. The spinning carbide teeth that do the cutting send sparks flying when they cut into rock. The sparks and the gas are an explosive mix, so the methane monitor is designed to signal a warning and automatically shut down the machine when gas approaches dangerous concentrations.
Howard Berkes, "Massey Mine Workers Disabled Safety Monitor," NPR, July 15, 2010.
There was a risk. But it would result in greater production -- and profits. A worst case scenario was possible, but not inevitable. Sometimes they got away with it. This time they didn't.
BP. BP didn't get away with its cost-saving risk either. By now, everyone's familiar with BP's risk assessment process. The prior blog entries on that one are linked at the top of this blog entry. That company has so often weighted potential cost savings over risks to worker safety and environmental disaster that it amasses hundreds of safety violations (including the Artic spill and Texas City) when other oil companies have less than a handful.
GlaxoSmithKline's Avandia (rosiglitazone). Public Citizen's Health Research Group reports,
3.1 million prescriptions [for Avandia] were filled in 2008. But Avandia is associated with heart failure, heart attacks, liver toxicity, bone fractures, low red blood cell count and macular (retinal) edema with vision loss.
Public Citizen petitioned the FDA to revise the labeling for Avandia due to multiple safety issues in 2000. In 2007 a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine associated the drug with a 43 percent increase in the risk of heart attacks.
"Avandia," Public Citizen Health Research Group.
As an indication of the ties between the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry, as well as the complexities of risk assessment, an FDA advisory panel recently voted 20 to 12 to recommend that GlaxoSmithKline should be permitted to continue to profit from the millions of pills. A vote of 20-12 on such a death risk reminds me of my days on the seven-person FCC, when we would vote 4 to 3 to send a colleague a get-well card. Bear in mind, this same FDA committee, by a vote of 21 to 4, agreed not only that Avandia carries a risk of death from heart attack, but that the risk is much higher from Avandia than from alternative medicines that could be used instead. Matthew Perrone, "FDA Panel Votes to Keep Avandia On the Market," AP/MSNBC, July 14, 2010.
Have you seen the latest commercial for Avandia? The list of side effects goes on seemingly forever. I don't think a diabetic should "ask your doctor if Avandia is right for you," I think if a doctor recommends it diabetics should "ask yourself if your doctor is right for you."
Other examples. These are only the most recent examples. There are hundreds of others. A couple that spring immediately to mind are Bhopal (Union Carbide chemical spill; 500,000 exposed, 15,000 killed) and Three Mile Island (partial core meltdown of Babcock & Wilcox nuclear reactor).
That the U.S. electric utilities chose to save money by managing the nation's electric grid through the Internet, rather than a more secure system, is a monumental calamity just waiting to happen. Siobahn Gorman, "Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated by Spies," Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2009, ("Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials.").
And see generally, Nicholas Johnson, "'The Corporation' and the Search for Agreement," October 1, 2004 (a commentary prompted by the film "The Corporation").
Obama as "socialist."
Meanwhile, the Tea Party has TPed a Mason City billboard as the organization's own Mount Rushmore, likening President Obama to Hitler and Lenin and indicting the three of them as socialists. Jennifer Jacobs, "Iowa Politics Insider: More Fallout From Obama/Hitler Tea Party Billboard," Des Moines Register, July 15, 2010.
As for "Leaders Prey on the Fearful & Naive" slug at the bottom of their billboard, I'd suggest the TP folks take a look in the mirror, and a second look at those they follow on radio and TV, and as speakers at their rallies.
I won't write at length about the TP's choice and characterization of Hitler and Lenin. Obviously, they have been chosen as characters to despise, in the Republican/TP's efforts to do everything they can to make Obama fail (as they have openly acknowledged). Never mind that if he fails, America fails.
Frankly, each of the disasters noted above have involved not socialism -- government ownership of means of production -- but a form of fascism, fascist corporatism, or more simply put, political corruption, the domination of political and regulatory institutions by large corporations. "Agency capture," to a lesser or greater degree, was a factor in each of the noted disasters.
Indeed, if only Obama were a socialist we would have long since clawed our way out of the global economic collapse brought on by Goldman Sachs and others. When 80 percent of our economy is driven by consumer spending, unemployment (including that which is not reported) runs closer to 20 than 10 percent, and consumers are, not irrationally, saving rather than spending, you can't create an economic turn-around by giving money to corporate executives and calling it a "jobs program."
Darkening consumer confidence and plunging prices combined with a generally dismal outlook to dampen hopes for a quick economic recovery. . . . "Consumers are facing three major hurdles," Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Jefferies & Co., said in an interview. "They are paying down their debt, their houses are not worth as much as they were two years ago and they're staring down the barrel of 10 percent unemployment." . . . Taken together, the week's economic data suggest that a global recovery will be staggered and sluggish in getting off the ground. Consumers -- the engine of the U.S. economy -- are catching few breaks.
Frank Ahrens, "Drops in Consumer Confidence, Prices Temper Recovery," Washington Post, July 15, 2010.
Businesses won't provide additional employment until they see a reason to increse production. There's no reason to increase production unless consumers are going to spend. Consumers aren't going to spend if they're concerned they, too, may soon be unemployed.
"Trickle down" never works, but especially not at this time. What we need is trickle up.
If Obama were a socialist he would have created a federal, employer-of-last-resort, jobs program that would have immediately (FDR's programs were in place in a month) put everyone on a payroll. Give the unemployed a job, the confidence they won't be fired, and the money that goes with it, and they'll use the money to buy stuff they need, not increase their savings accounts. Their purchases will require increased production; increased production will increase private sector employment. Gradually those on the federal payroll will be picked up by private employers.
Now that's a real jobs program. Recession reversed; global economic collapse averted. Corporations profiting from their business sense, not their political dollars -- and our taxpayer bailouts of the wealthy. See generally, "Unemployment Answer is Jobs Not Bailouts," February 6, 2010.
What the TPers ought to get angry about (and, in fairness, to some extent do) is a "capitalism" in which successful businesses keep all of their profits, and unsuccessful businesses pass their losses on to the taxpayer. "Heads I win, tails you lose."
"Socialism" is the Interstate highway system, public schools, libraries, museums, local police and fire protection, the military, and a national, state and local system of parks. I kind of like that socialism, and feel that it often provides me a greater return on my investment of taxes than what I sometimes end up with from the capitalists.
How ironic that the TPers would choose "socialist" as one of their favorite pejoratives for Obama, when he is, apparently, one of the few Americans who appears to be even more frightened of the word than they are.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
# # #
May 3, 2010, 7:30a.m.
[If you're looking for the 12 prior blog entries about the ICCSD superintendent search see, "The Beat Goes On, But Music's Out of Tune," May 1, 2010, and 11 items linked from "Superintendent Murley's Calm Seas, Smooth Sailing," April 29, 2010.]
Capitalism Pours More Than Oil on Troubled Waters
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
And see the more recent, related, "Big Oil + Big Corruption = Big Mess," May 10, 2010.
A series of national disasters, legislative and otherwise, but all with ties to Washington, have caused me to realize that there's more than oil creating America's troubled waters.
On March 31 of this year the President went to Andrews Air Force Base to announce:
[A]s we transition to cleaner energy sources, we’ve still got to make some tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development in ways that protect communities and protect coastlines. . . .
[T]he bottom line is this: Given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we are going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy.
So today we’re announcing the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration, but in ways that balance the need to harness domestic energy resources and the need to protect America’s natural resources. Under the leadership of Secretary Salazar, we’ll employ new technologies that reduce the impact of oil exploration. We’ll protect areas that are vital to tourism, the environment, and our national security. And we’ll be guided not by political ideology, but by scientific evidence.
"Remarks by The President on Energy Security at Andrews Air Force Base," March 21, 2010.
So, oil industry executives, Republican "drill-baby-drill" cheerleaders, oil-funded Democrats -- oh, and you, Mr. President -- how's that scientific protection of tourism and the environment working out for you? Because it's not working worth a damn for the rest of us. We haven't seen much of BP's $5.6 billion in first quarter profits (an annual rate over $22 billion) trickling down to us so far, any more than we did from those of our dollars you gave to Wall Street. And it looks like this "we" to which you refer, you and BP, are on the verge of wiping out a significant portion of the economy of at least three southern states.
The disaster was predictable -- even if no one predicted it would come as soon as a month after the President's repetition of BP's reassuring words regarding its commitment to "reduce the impact of oil exploration" and protection of "areas that are vital to tourism [and] the environment . . .."
Why predictable? Consider the record:
The 2005 explosion at a refinery in Texas City, Tex., killed 15 workers and injured hundreds more. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined BP a record $87 million for neglecting to correct safety violations.
Only a year later, a leaky BP oil pipeline in Alaska forced the shutdown of one of the nation’s biggest oil fields. BP was fined $20 million in criminal penalties after prosecutors said the company had neglected corroding pipelines. . . .
Last year, when the federal Minerals Management Service proposed a rule that would have required companies to have their safety and environmental management programs audited once every three years, BP and other companies objected. The agency is also investigating charges by a whistle-blower that the company discarded important records from its Atlantis Gulf platform.
Clifford Krauss, "Oil Spill’s Blow to BP’s Image May Eclipse Costs," New York Times, April 30, 2010.
It's just another example of the consequences of the partnership and interlocking ties between corporate capitalism and Congress, known as a "corporatist" form of government (or that, in another time and place, were known as Italian fascism). Because, even if you happen to be a fan of fascism (which I am not), in its American incarnation the allocation of power and control is grossly out of balance in terms of the disproportionate influence of the capitalists on what ultimately emerges as "government policy." And while the Republicans are thought by some to be the party of big business, that is only because the Democrats were initially somewhat slow and clumsy in figuring out that "business is our friend." After all, the "self-regulation" of offshore drilling began under President Clinton and his pro-business Democratic Leadership Council -- including the regulation of those causes of disasters that are not "acts of God," or failures of technology, but rather the failures of top management.
"We are not supportive of the extensive, prescriptive regulations as proposed in this rule," wrote Richard Morrison, BP's vice president for Gulf of Mexico production. "We believe industry's current safety and environmental statistics demonstrate that the voluntary programs implemented since the adoption of [voluntary standards] have been and continue to be very successful." . . .
But when it proposed the rules, MMS said most accidents and spills can be traced to human error or organizational failures and said companies need to ensure safe and environmentally sound operating practices (Greenwire, June 16, 2009).
MMS regulations historically have focused on proper equipment operation, but the agency said at the time that equipment failure is rarely the primary cause of incidents.
An MMS review last year found 41 deaths and 302 injuries out of 1,443 oil-rig accidents from 2001 to 2007. The agency's analysis found a lack of communication between the operator and contractors, a lack of written procedures, a failure to enforce existing procedures and other problems.
"The MMS believes that if OCS [outer continental shelf] oil and gas operations are better planned and organized, then the likelihood of injury to workers and the risk of environmental pollution will be further reduced," the proposed rule said.
The voluntary approach was adopted in 1994 during the Clinton administration.
Mike Soraghan, "BP, Other Oil Companies Opposed Effort to Stiffen Environmental, Safety Rules for Offshore Drilling," Greenwire/New York Times, April 27, 2010.
. Regulators make strange bedfellows You do recall the Minerals Management Service don't you? "Government officials in charge of collecting billions of dollars worth of royalties from oil and gas companies accepted gifts, steered contracts to favored clients and engaged in drug use and illicit sex with employees of the energy firms, federal investigators reported yesterday." Derek Kravitz and Mary Pat Flaherty, "Report Says Oil Agency Ran Amok; Interior Dept. Inquiry Finds Sex, Corruption," Washington Post, September 11, 2008. Noelle Straub, "GAO Audit: MMS Withheld Offshore Drilling Data, Hindered Risk Analyses in Alaska," New York Times/Greenwire, April 7, 2010 -- roughly three weeks before the current disaster.
. Moreover, "The [Department of the Interior] inspector general said that these relationships have cost taxpayers $4.4 million in lapsed collection fees, but due to the sloppy administration at MMS, the real cost may go undiscovered. In a separate report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that MMS is plagued by inefficiency in collecting royalties, and that there is no way to backtrack and figure out how much has actually been lost. Currently, oil companies submit their own data and MMS simply takes them at their word, rather than independently confirming that the numbers are correct — what the inspector general has referred to in a letter to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne as a “Band-Aid approach to holding together one of the federal government's largest revenue producing operations.” A separate GAO report found that the United States is not collecting fair market price for royalties on public resources — which may be seriously limiting the amount of money taken in by MMS, and hence, the taxpayers." "Broken Government," Center for Public Integrity.
Apparently no one knows precisely how much oil is now flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. Originally estimated at 1000 barrels a day, then 5000, some are now saying 25,000.
So how much total oil are we talking about? Two of BP's underwater fields in the Gulf are estimated to hold over 3 billion barrels of oil equivalent -- each. Clifford Krauss, "BP Finds Giant Oil Field Deep in Gulf of Mexico," New York Times, September 3, 2009.
How can we put this daily flow into an understandable perspective? Try this: Have you ever held a can of oil while it slowly drained into your car? Let's split the 5000-to-25,000 barrels a day into a conservative 10,000 barrels a day, OK? A barrel contains 42 gallons. A gallon contains four quarts of oil. So 10,000 barrels is 1,680,000 quarts of oil. There are 86,400 seconds in 24 hours of 60 minutes each. Let's say it takes 10 seconds to drain a quart of oil; that would mean one person, working continuously, with no breaks, 24 hours a day, could drain 8,640 quarts a day. At that rate, it would take 195 people on a large boat, filled with quarts of oil, working round the clock, each emptying a quart of oil into the Gulf every 10 seconds, to equal the 1,680,000 quarts of oil BP is dumping into the Gulf every day.
So the 11 lives lost on the offshore drilling rig explosion and fire very likely could have been avoided if government had not given in to the notion of "self-regulation." The impact on the coastal economy and environment and wild life could have been prevented. The economic cost of the clean up would have been saved. And hopefully someone will follow up by reviewing the accounting after this all is over to see if the President's reassurance that BP is going to pay for it all -- including the taxpayers' share of the massive government expenses on BP's behalf -- ever happens.
Coal
Meanwhile, an almost idential story played out in a West Virginia coal mine less than a month earlier.
[T]he explosion of the Upper Big Branch mine two weeks ago, a disaster that killed 29 miners, rattled West Virginia and, once again, raised questions about Massey’s safety practices . . . with federal investigators saying they suspect that a buildup of methane and coal dust led to the explosion . . ..
Four years ago, in another southern West Virginia coal mine owned by a Massey subsidiary, a preventable fire broke out two miles below the surface. A faulty conveyor belt that should have been better maintained ignited some coal spillage that should not have been allowed to accumulate, federal investigators found in a report compiled after the incident.
One of the miners hurriedly tried to connect a fire hose to a nearby water valve, but this was futile; the threads of the coupling and the outlet were not compatible. The miner then tried to open the valve — just to get water on the fire — but the line was dry. And things only got worse.
The miner belonged to a crew working in Massey’s Aracoma Alma mine. In a memorandum issued three months before this fire and widely disseminated in 2006, Mr. Blankenship, the company’s chief executive, ordered subordinates to run coal and ignore everything else.
Dan Barry, Ian Urbina and Clifford Krauss, "2 Mines Show How Safety Practices Vary Widely," New York Times, April 23, 2010.
Here is a company that had been written up literally dozens of times for safety violations, and did little if anything to remedy its miners' working conditions. The regulatory agency had the power to shut down such mines, but refused to do so.
A systemic problem
Chris Mathews has a feature he calls "Tell me something I don't know," on his MSNBC program "Hardball." My guess is that if you're a regular reader of this blog you already know what I'm about to tell you. But it bears repeating from time to time anyway.
We've recently seen the consequences -- in human life and the environment -- from the disproportionate allocation to corporations of the business-government partnership of power. These examples happened to involve corporations in the oil and coal industries. But the problems they illustrate are systemic.
Consider unsafe workplace deaths and injuries alone:
In recent weeks and months there have been a series of workplace tragedies that have heightened concerns—the coal mine disaster at the Massey Energy Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia that killed 29 miners, an explosion a few days earlier at the Tesoro Refinery in Washington State that killed six workers, and the explosion at the Kleen Energy Plant in Connecticut in February that also claimed the lives of six workers.
In 2008, 5,214 workers were killed on the job—an average of 14 workers every day—and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases. More than 4.6 million work-related injuries were reported . . ..
Federal OSHA can inspect workplaces on average once every 137 years; the state OSHA plans once every 63 years. The current level of federal and state OSHA inspectors provides one inspector for every 60,723 workers. OSHA penalties are too low to deter violations. The average penalty for a serious violation of the law in FY 2009 was $965 for federal OSHA . . ..
Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect, April 2010.
But the adverse impact of our corporatist form of government on our citizens is not limited to their preventable injuries and death.
Healthcare It's the reason that "universal, single-payer health care," the care provided most of the world's people lucky enough to live in progressive, industrialized countries, and provided at significantly less cost than here, could not even make it onto any table in Washington. It's the reason that the "public option" was quickly shoved off the table, fell to the floor, was swept up and thrown in the trash. It's the reason the pharmaceutical companies got a secret closed door meeting at the White House -- and promises they could continue to gouge America's ill. It's the reason "health care" was quickly redefined as "health insurance" -- essentially a subsidy for the health insurance industry. And it's the reason why the lessons Atul Gawande taught us were ignored: how it is that some cities in America have higher quality medicine than others -- at half the cost. Atul Gawande, "Annals of Medicine: The Cost Conundrum; What a Texas town can teach us about health care," The New Yorker, June 1, 2009.
Financial regulation There are two obvious first steps, whatever else we may do, to bring common sense to Wall Street. One is what we did during the 1930s, and then repealed during the Clinton Administration: the Glass-Steagall Act (Banking Act of 1933). Glass-Steagall Act, Wikipedia ("The Banking Act of 1933 . . . introduced banking reforms, some of which were designed to control speculation. . . . Provisions that prohibit a bank holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed on November 12, 1999, by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act."). The other is to break up the biggest, multi-trillion-dollar banks into banks with assets of $100 billion or less. This is not an antitrust issue; there may or may not be antitrust problems associated with the biggest banks (many economists say there are not). This is simply the smartest response to the "too big to fail, taxpayer bailout problem." You don't try to "regulate" to prevent the most obvious risks -- especially when that "regulation" will quickly come under the control of the regulated anyway -- you simply eliminate any possibility of the "too big" problem by making them smaller.
Sadly, like universal, single-payer health care, neither is even on the table, as Congress pretends to fashion regulations of derivatives and other creative casino games, regulations that will be creatively worked around by Wall Street's "masters of the universe" just as quickly as music-loving computer geeks create new ways to share copyrighted music illegally.
National Broadband Plan The FCC, commendably, wants more Americans to have access to broadband Internet connections at faster rates and lower prices. We need to be more competitive with other countries in the world. But once again, it looks like the cable television and telephone company influence in Congress may prevent the one thing that has enabled other countries to provide more of their citizens a faster service at significantly cheaper rates than American companies make available. It's called "open access" and "net neutrality" -- in other words, "competition" -- something heralded in a corporatist state only up to the point where it threatens to move in next door.
Nutrition Two generals who were former chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are now telling us that Americans' obesity has reached not only epidemic proportions, it has become a threat to our national security. John M. Shalikashvili and Hugh Shelton, "The Latest National Security Threat: Obesity," Washington Post, April 30, 2010 ("Are we becoming a nation too fat to defend ourselves? It seems incredible, but these are the facts: As of 2005, at least 9 million young adults -- 27 percent of all Americans ages 17 to 24 -- were too overweight to serve in the military, according to the Army's analysis of national data. And since then, these high numbers have remained largely unchanged.").
Once again, any remedies must confront the money to be made, and the political ties it creates, from selling sugar-sweetened sodas in schools' vending machines, "sweet-grease-salty-grease" in fast food dispensaries, and pushing tobacco and alcohol addiction on our teenagers.
The Remedies
Why do we call the money corporations give to government officials a "bribe" when it's done in other countries, and a "campaign contribution" when it's done here?
The costs of running for office are a personal expense -- as are the upfront costs of establishing any other kind of business (which a seat in Congress certainly is). If you want to run you have to pay to do it. You have to pay for your food, clothing, housing and transportation while you're running. And you have to pay as many campaign advisers, workers, and media consultants as you think you can afford. Money is fungible. If you will pay for all of my food during the campaign there will be more of my personal income I can spend on the campaign. If you will pay some of my campaign costs I may be able to send my kid to a more expensive college. The super-wealthy do end up paying for a larger percentage of their personal campaign costs. It's certainly a personal expense for them. And it's also a personal expense for those candidates who beg for bribes from the corporate representatives who seek their votes.
How much money are we talking about? Try $5.3 billion -- for federal elections alone in 2008. "U.S. Election Will Cost $5.3 Billion, Center for Responsive Politics Predicts," Open Secrets Blog, October 22, 2008 ("The 2008 election for president and Congress is not only one of the most closely watched U.S. elections in years; it's also the most expensive in history. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics estimates that more than $5.3 billion will go toward financing the federal contests upcoming on Nov. 4."). And that figure, of course, excludes the additional costs of lobbyists, said to run as much as a million dollars a day for Wall Street alone in its current efforts to block any meaningful reforms.
And what do the contributors get in return? Can you multiply $80-a-barrel oil times a 3-billion-barrel field?
Fourteen years ago I did the math -- not just for oil, but for a variety of industries. It turns out that bribing members of Congress pays even greater returns than Wall Street cons. The payback runs something between 1000-to-one and 2000-to-one. Give a million, you'll end up a billion dollars richer in return. Nicholas Johnson, "Campaigns: You Pay $4 or $4000," Des Moines Register, July 21, 1996, p. C2.
The payback can take a variety of forms: a tax break, price supports, defense contract, bank bailouts, tariff protection, subsidies, pet project earmarks -- or, as we've recently seen, permission to drill in formerly forbidden multi-billion-dollar offshore oil reserves, notwithstanding the economic and other risks to others and the relatively slight impact on our insatiable and wasteful demands for environmentally destructive energy.
As pointed out in the headline on that column, public financing of campaigns might cost every American $4. But with the 1000-to-one return the contributors are now getting that might be one of the best bargains we've ever been offered.
Because it is we who end up paying for the campaigns now. How? We pay as both taxpayers and as consumers. It's the excess taxes we pay to fund the weapons manufacturers' profits from weapons we do not need, and other transfers of taxpayers' money to corporations. And it's in the increased prices we pay those who have made the contributions, in the cost of everything from automobiles, to pharmaceuticals, to airline fares, to gasoline, to food -- in total, probably well over the $4000 I predicted.
What we've learned this past month is that we pay in other ways as well: those who provide our seafood who have lost their way of life as well as their source of income, those who enjoy the Gulf beaches who have lost their favorite vacation spot, those who've lost their homes, all of us who have lost the wetlands and wildlife they sustain -- and let us not forget the 11 BP employees and 29 Massey Coal employees whose loss was that of life itself.
Capitalism may have its virtues, but when it dictates public policy as well, the price it exacts from all of us is enormous.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
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