Where is MSHA in the Upshur Mining Accident?

Granted, it's a bigger story in a way that the media got it so wrong about whether the majority of the miners were alive or dead.

But that's just the surface story.

Much more important is the fact that this story was largely managed and communicated solely by the owners and top level management of the mine, International Coal Group. Yet we pay taxes for the Mine Safety and Health Administration, a federal group that is SUPPOSED to act as a watchdog.

Where was MSHA to tell us that this particular mine had more than 200 violations, almost all grave ones, in the last few years? Instead, the company people fielded questions and the only answer they really gave about the violations was, "Well, that was a different management."

No journalist who made it to TV ever said that ICG has continued those violations, or that new management is often a way to sugar coat prior problems. See, a new management team gets a few years' grace during which we seemingly can't blame them for past misdeeds. Many corporations have new management teams for problem units every few years, and I can't think it's just coincidence that this is the same length of time as the grace period we grant them.

As journalists and mining experts on Democracy Now this morning indicated, MSHA under Bush is a joke. MSHA is there to support the mine owners rather than employees going down into the mines. MSHA employees who try to whistle blow are marginalized or "downsized". Indeed, under Bush, MSHA has lost something like 1,700 positions. OK, if they can't do their jobs, I suppose we don't need so large an organization, but it's the people who DO monitor, who do demand changes, who get canned.