http://www.vpap.org/lobbyists/new_registrations .
So people of VA if you think the EPA, NRC or the state of VA will be looking out for our health if uranium mining is approved, well think again, greed is the bottom line and not people's health! No to uranium mining!
Arianna Huffington
Posted: April 12, 2010 06:40
Officials say it's too soon to pinpoint the exact cause of the tragic explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia that took the lives of 29 miners, but we certainly know enough to identify the root cause. It's the same cause that led to the 2007 Crandall Canyon mine disaster in Utah that killed six miners and three rescue workers. It's the same cause that led to the 2006 Sago mine disaster in West Virginia that killed 12 miners. And it's also the same cause that led to the Lehman Brothers disaster, the Citigroup disaster, the bursting of the housing bubble, and the implosion of our financial system: a badly broken regulatory system.
The loss of life at Upper Big Branch happened in one horrific instant.
The economic collapse has not killed people, but it has gradually destroyed millions of lives.
Both calamities occurred because elected officials who should have been creating a regulatory system that protects working families instead created a system that protects the corporations it was meant to watch over.
The agency "remains fundamentally weak in several areas, and it does not always use the powers it has."
"The fines it levies are relatively small, and many go uncollected for years."
"It lacks subpoena power, a basic investigatory tool."
"Its investigators are not technically law enforcement officers."
"Its criminal sanctions are weak."
"Fines remain so low that they are mere rounding errors on the bottom lines" of the companies being regulated.
It shows a "reluctance to flex all of its powers."
The "fundamentally weak" state of America's watchdogs is the deliberate end product of massive amounts of corporate lobbying.
In the case of the mining industry, the amount spent by mine owners on lobbyists intent on weakening regulations and widening loopholes has skyrocketed from under $2.5 million in 2003 to $14 million today, with predictable results: profits up; dead miners up.
The problem isn't a shortage of regulators.
It's the way we've allowed the regulated to game the system.
The federal government has an entire agency, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), dedicated to overseeing the mining industry.
Indeed, a federal inspector was at the Upper Big Branch mine hours before it blew up.
Regulations are "very difficult to comply with," and "so many of the laws" are "nonsensical." Those are the words of Don Blankenship, the CEO of Massey Energy, the company that owns the Upper Big Branch mine and has a grotesque history of safety violations.
Something else the mining and financial industries share: the revolving door between regulators and those they're supposed to be regulating.
Former Massey COO Stanley Suboleski was appointed to be a commissioner of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission in 2003 and four years later he was nominated to run the Office of Fossil Energy in the Energy Department. Today, he's back on Massey's board. And Massey exec Richard Stickler was made the head of the MSHA by President Bush in 2006.
Talk about hiring the foxes to guard the hen house.
Massey has also mastered the D.C. art of buying friends in high places.
Back in 2000, Massey was responsible for a coal slurry spill in Kentucky that was three times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill.
Massey's PAC donated $100,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which was chaired by McConnell. And Massey's CEO Don Blankenship has personally donated millions to the campaigns of judges and politicians.
And if you're looking for the poster child for the phrase "pattern of violations," it's Massey Energy.
In 2009, the Upper Big Branch mine was ordered to be temporarily closed over 60 times.
So how did Massey escape greater oversight for having a pattern of violations? It turns out that a loophole written into the law says that if a company contests a violation, while that violation is being contested it can't count toward the establishment of a pattern. Massey is currently contesting 352 violations at the Upper Big Branch mine alone.
There is no sense of urgency in Washington about making sure these corporations play by the rules.
In 2007, after the Utah mining disaster, we got angry, we held hearings, we supposedly fixed things, then we moved on. Three years later, 29 miners die. And the cycle starts again.
Disasters -- both mining and financial -- are going to keep happening until we reevaluate our priorities, and force our elected officials -- and the regulators they pick -- to put the public interest above the special interests and their lobbyists in Washington.
The lives of hardworking Americans have to take precedence over the bottom line at Massey Energy and on Wall Street.
This isn't a matter of right vs. left. It's a matter of right vs. wrong.
Read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-west-virginia-mining_b_534665.html
