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PROOF: Obama IS the end of the free world
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 12:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here's the kind of people that mrgybe doesn't hold to task--what is the real record of Massey, and what did the Bush administration do about them:

Meet Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy Company. Blankenship is also on the Board of Directors of the US Chamber of Commerce. In this speech above, he denies climate change, derisively refers to Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, and others as "greeniacs", and calls them all crazy. Watch the speech, you'll see. In his mind, "the greeniacs are taking over the world."

Massey Energy Company, Blankenship's highly successful strip-mining and mountaintop removal operation is the parent company of Performance Coal Co, where a tragic explosion occurred on April 5th. As of this writing, 25 miners have died and 4 more are still missing. Twenty-five families are without a loved one. Four more may discover they have lost someone they love too. 29 families in all, forever changed by one single, violent event in a coal mine. One single violent event in a coal mine run by a company so obsessed with profit it runs roughshod over employees' and neighbors' health and safety.

Here's something else about Don Blankenship and Massey Energy Company: Blankenship spent over $1 million dollars along with other US Chamber buddies like Verizon to sponsor last year's Labor Day Tea Party, also known as the "Friends of America Rally." Here's Massey's pitch. Note how he makes it sound like he isn't one of the corporate enemies of America.

The Friends of America Rally featured such notables as Sean Hannity, Ted Nugent, and Hank Williams, Jr., and was graced by Blankenship himself going off on a diatribe that seemed strange at the time, but has come to be commonplace these days. It concerned President Obama, Democrats, and any one who doesn't salute God, coal, and apple pie. Oh, and we're also going to 'steal their jobs,' if Hannity is to be believed.

This is the same mine where the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently ruled that Spartan Mining illegally discriminated against 82 UMWA members by refusing to hire them because of their union membership status.

“This settlement highlights yet again the treacherous and backhanded manner Massey treated the miners who had worked at the Cannelton mine for decades,” UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts said. “While it was discriminating against these experienced miners because of their age or union status, the company was at the same time publicly crying about the lack of experienced miners in the coalfields.

“But it wasn’t that Massey couldn’t find experienced miners,” Roberts said. “They were there all along and wanted to work. It was that the company would rather break the law than allow its employees to have a strong voice at work and the tremendous benefits of a union contract.

and on their safety record:

Since 1995, Massey's Upper Big Branch-South Mine has been cited for 3,007 safety violations. Massey is contesting 353 violations, and 127 are delinquent. [MSHA]
Massey is contesting over a third (34.7 percent) of the 516 safety citations the Upper Big Branch-South Mine received in 2009, its greatest count in the last 15 years. [MSHA]
In March 2010, 53 new safety citations were issued for Massey's Upper Big Branch-South Mine, including violations of its mine ventilation plan. [MSHA]

and on the ties between the coal industry and the Bush administration, and the latter's failure to enforce safety regulations vigorously:

In 2002, President George W. Bush “named former Massey Energy official Stanley Suboleski to the MSHA review commission that decides all legal matters under the Federal Mine Act,” and cut 170 positions from MSHA. Bush’s MSHA chief, Dick Stickler, was a former manager of Beth Energy mines, which “incurred injury rates double the national average.” On October 21, 2009, the Senate confirmed President Barack Obama’s choice to replace Stickler, Joe Main, a “career union official and mine safety expert.” Massey’s Suboleski is still an active review commissioner

But if you can't debate on the real grounds of safety and air pollution, change the subject to the carbon footprint of a conference. Maybe we should look at the carbon footprint of the Republican National Committee attending strip clubs.
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mrgybe



Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180

PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 1:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mac wrote:
Here's the kind of people that mrgybe doesn't hold to task--


It seems that in your rush to get to Wikipedia you didn't read my last post thoroughly.

"Most companies have stellar safety procedures, others don't and need to be punished for their failures. Any death or serious on the job injury is unacceptable."

mac wrote:
But if you can't debate on the real grounds of safety and air pollution, change the subject to the carbon footprint of a conference.


As usual, you miss the point. Any serious move to combat global warming will require heavy public support. The increasing public perception is that the people running the global warming show are exaggerating, are not competent and are telling us what we need to do while they do something entirely different. The great unwashed also sees that any legitimate argument which counters the global warming gospel is dismissed out of hand.......as you did when you dismissed the Times article as right wing "talking points".
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keycocker



Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598

PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 1:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"---As usual, you miss the point.-----
I am curious why such a educated man peppers his posts with insulting remarks. We only read this stuff for fun.
Please don't say Bobby didit or why aren't you complaining about so and so, leave that for those with a grade school mentality. You strike me as a cut above the usual around here.
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boggsman1



Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9110
Location: at a computer

PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 1:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

keycocker wrote:
"---As usual, you miss the point.-----
I am curious why such a educated man peppers his posts with insulting remarks. We only read this stuff for fun.
Please don't say Bobby didit or why aren't you complaining about so and so, leave that for those with a grade school mentality. You strike me as a cut above the usual around here.

I think Mr G is an English chap. They are smarter, sharper, and funnier than us ugly Americans. You've seen the Geico commercials havent you?
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 2:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

As usual, mrgybe, you missed the point. Rather than give the energy companies the "day off" from criticism, I looked up the safety record of Massey. Not so good. Anti-union, but was appointed to the mine safety board under Bush. Gave a million to the famous "grass roots" tea party movement. Cut off mountaintops with active support from the Bush administration, who quashed any effort to regulate discharge of mining waste into streams, or cutting off mountain tops. Sounds like maybe they aren't one of the good ones, but I'm not sure which ones you think are better.

You said that you preferred Bush to Gore, Kerry, or Obama, and you are decidely hostile to regulations. If you don't want to be seen as an apologist for the carbon industry, you need to stop typing like one.
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swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 2:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's my understanding that the gecko on Geico commercials is cast, at least in speech, as Australian.

Regarding the mac/mrgybe interplays, I think both are very sharp characters, but I often wonder about their tone towards each other. I guess it reflects much of the strong polarization today, to include some of the darkness that seems to go with it.
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boggsman1



Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9110
Location: at a computer

PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 2:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mac...You have got to see "Enron, the smartest guys in the room". It seems that in capitalism, whether its energy, Wall Street, food, insurance, anything...its very tough to stand between man and profit. In my 19 years doing work analyzing America's companies, with a short sellers view, most companies would go the route of Massey, or Enron, and the ones that didnt just hid it better.
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feuser



Joined: 29 Oct 2002
Posts: 1508

PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 2:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mrgybe wrote:
mac wrote:
Here's the kind of people that mrgybe doesn't hold to task--


It seems that in your rush to get to Wikipedia you didn't read my last post thoroughly.

"Most companies have stellar safety procedures, others don't and need to be punished for their failures. Any death or serious on the job injury is unacceptable."

mac wrote:
But if you can't debate on the real grounds of safety and air pollution, change the subject to the carbon footprint of a conference.


As usual, you miss the point. Any serious move to combat global warming will require heavy public support. The increasing public perception is that the people running the global warming show are exaggerating, are not competent and are telling us what we need to do while they do something entirely different. The great unwashed also sees that any legitimate argument which counters the global warming gospel is dismissed out of hand.......as you did when you dismissed the Times article as right wing "talking points".


The public perception may be that, for the time being, most notably since the attention of the public was successfully diverted from the core facts.

We are releasing carbon into the atmosphere at a rate of a many thousand times faster than it was photosynthesized, metabolized and fossilized.

The question that only half of us seem to be asking at all is, What is that doing to our environment?

"Drill baby drill" is an expression of the deep discomfort of the right to even ask that kind of question. No wonder most efforts are aimed at turning the discussion into a soap opera for the sole purpose of discrediting individuals in the opposite camp. It's working - congrats.

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florian - ny22

http://www.windsurfing.kasail.com/
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mrgybe



Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180

PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 4:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

boggsman1 wrote:
I think Mr G is an English chap. They are smarter, sharper, and funnier than us ugly Americans. You've seen the Geico commercials havent you?


I'm American.
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mrgybe



Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180

PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 4:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

swchandler wrote:
It's my understanding that the gecko on Geico commercials is cast, at least in speech, as Australian.


He (it?) has a cockney accent........East London.
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