>The awful, tragic mining accident in West Viriginia and the erroneous media response brings something into high relief.
>
>Why is it "a miracle" if they are saved, and not a whisper on the opposite idea?
>http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/that_curious_religious_asymmetry/

Alex, i'll avoid commenting on the religious point of your post. But i find it amazing that the mine can stay open, and be fined so little, with all of those safety violations. Here's a somewhat related article... from "When a flood of toxic mining sludge wreaked havoc in Appalachia, how did the White House respond? By letting the coal company off the hook and firing the whistleblower."

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0501.bingham.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/01/60minutes/main609889.shtml

Jack Spadaro, head of MSHA's Mine Safety Institute was investigating the Inez, KY coal-waste reservoir spill were "300 million gallons of thick sludge had flooded out of the Big Branch Refuse ...Ten days later, an inky plume appeared in the Ohio River. On its 75-mile path of destruction, the sludge obliterated wildlife, killed 1.6 million fish, ransacked property, washed away roads and bridges, and contaminated the water systems of 27,623 people. ...the EPA declared the spill the largest environmental catastrophe in the history of the southeastern United States...The Inez disaster was almost 30 times larger than the infamous Exxon Valdez tanker spill."

During the investigation carried out by Spadaro and his colleagues, it came out that there had been a previous spill in 1994 at the same impoundment. The mining company claimed it had taken measures to make sure it wouldn't happen again, but an engineer working for the company said the problem had not been fixed, and that both he and the company knew another spill was virtually inevitable.

Quoting from an Atlantic monthly article... "two days before President Bush's inauguration, Spadaro and his team were abruptly assigned a new boss to lead the investigation. Immediately after taking charge, Thompson told Spadaro's team that they had one week to conclude the investigation. ....Spadaro...had counted on having four or five more months to complete their work."

"The new head of MSHA, a Bush appointee named Dave Lauriski, was a former mining industry mining executive ,..Spadaro says Lauriski came into his office one day, and insisted he sign a watered down version of the report -- a version that virtually let the coal company and MSHA off the hook.

"He said , `I'm in a hard spot here and I need you to sign this report," recalls Spadaro. "I said, `You'd best take my name off that report because I'm never going to sign that report.'" ... in the end, Massey Energy was only cited for two violations, and had to pay approximately $110,000."

Spadaro, for complaining publicly about the whitewash, and starting an IG investigation of no-bid MSHA contacts given to Lauriski cronies , was harassed and then railroaded out of the agency over a disputed $22.50 in Cash advance fees on his government issued credit cards.

Massey Energy, Martin County Coal's parent company, gained a front-row seat to the new Bush administration when it invited James H. "Buck" Harless to join its board in 2001. Harless, a West Virginia coal and timber baron, had raised $275,000 for Bush's 2000 campaign, given $5,000 for the Florida recount, and contributed $100,000 to the president's inaugural fund. Bush nicknamed Harless "Big Buck" and invited him to join the administration's transition task force on energy. "We were looking for friends, and we found one in George W. Bush," Harless told The Wall Street Journal.

Coal executives....raised a record $3.8 million dollars for the 2000 federal election, 88 percent went to the GOP. At the annual meeting of the West Virginia Coal Association a few months after Bush's inauguration, the group's director told 150 industry executives, "You did everything you could to elect a Republican president. [Now] you are already seeing in his actions the payback."