{"id":545974,"date":"2010-04-28T11:19:43","date_gmt":"2010-04-28T15:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=83381"},"modified":"2010-04-28T11:19:43","modified_gmt":"2010-04-28T15:19:43","slug":"massey-rips-senate-lawmakers-for-%e2%80%98political-grandstanding%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/545974","title":{"rendered":"Massey Rips Senate Lawmakers for \u2018Political Grandstanding\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Massey Energy, the coal giant that owns the West Virginia mine where 29 miners were killed in a blast April 5, might be racking up thousands of safety violations<\/a> at other projects since the explosion; it might have former workers decrying its safety policies<\/a>; and it might be contesting more citations<\/a> than any other mining company in the nation.<\/p>\n

But that, the company said<\/a> Tuesday, doesn’t give lawmakers free license to attack its safety record. Responding to yesterday’s Senate HELP Committee hearing<\/a> on mine safety, Massey said it’s “disappointed” that the discussion “degenerated into political grandstanding.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“Unfortunately, all the sound bites in the world will not improve the safety of a single miner in America,” the statement reads, adding that overzealous federal regulators — not the industry — are responsible for the enormous backlog of citation appeals.<\/p>\n

\n

In 2006, according to MSHA records, MSHA assessed violations against the coal industry totaling $35.1 million. By 2008, this had grown to $194.2 million. The fines levied increased 5.5 times. With the number of violations much higher and the fines per violation much higher, it is not surprising that the number of contests increased.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of note, Democrats declined to invite anyone from Massey to testify at Tuesday’s hearing. A Senate aide said that lawmakers didn’t want to interfere with the current probe into the cause of the deadly blast at the Upper Big Branch.<\/p>\n

But that’s a curious argument, particularly in light of the fact that the other high-profile hearing<\/a> on Capitol Hill yesterday — featuring executives from Goldman Sachs called to defend their investments prior to the recent global economic meltdown — came even as the S.E.C. has filed civil charges against the company, charges that didn’t prevent Senate lawmakers from grilling those executives for 11 hours<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Massey Energy, the coal giant that owns the West Virginia mine where 29 miners were killed in a blast April 5, might be racking up thousands of safety violations at other projects since the explosion; it might have former workers decrying its safety policies; and it might be contesting more citations than any other mining […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4315,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-545974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}