Over 700 men died of silicosis contracted by digging the Hawk's Nest Tunnel in 1930. The air quality in the tunnel was so bad that some of them were showing signs of silicosis in as little as six weeks.
"Excavation of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel lead to the greatest death toll ever from silicosis in the United States. Of the approximately 5,000 men that worked on the project, an estimated 2,900 worked inside the tunnel. Of these men, silicosis claimed the lives of at least 764 workers. A majority of the dead were African Americans. In the years after the project was completed, many more would die due to their exposure to silica dust while working in the tunnel." (https://www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/the-hawks-nest-tunnel-disaster-summersville-wv.htm)
A long but excellent article about a Department of Labor employee who worked all his life to find innovative ways to make coal mines safer. (Not paywalled.)
So Trump is discussing a commission on review of government rules and regulations, headed by Elon Musk. Which will make coal mining just as unsafe as it was in 1867. And do the same for every other industry. Along with poisoning the air, land, and water as Musk and the Supreme Court gut every environmental regulation. All so corporations can be even more profitable and pay less tax.
These events are what infuriate me when I go back home to Northeastern PA and have to listen to the same old schmucks saying how they're voting for TFG because "he's gonna reopen the mines, and we'll have good jobs again!" Of course THEY would never work in them, and they sure as shit don't want their own kids to work in them. Guess they just expect all those Hispanic immigrants to work in them, while pissing and moaning that "they're takin' all dem dere good jobs, haina or no?*"
Northeastern PA - where the grandchildren of immigrants hate other immigrants.
* local term, equal to "isn't it?" in literate regions of the US
And ninety years later the Knox mine disaster just north of Wilkes-Barre put an end to anthracite mining in the Wyoming Valley when the Susquehanna River broke through and flooded the warren of tunnels between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. Twelve miners were lost. There are iconic photos of rail cars being pushed into the river to try to stop the flooding; didn't work.
Caused by the mine owners' greed in digging coal and "robbing the posts" from underneath the river. And worse yet, the local union's leader was on the company's board and allowed the disaster to happen.
Donald Trump took a question at the New York Economic Club:
QUESTIONER: If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable? And if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?
TRUMP: Well, I would do that. And we’re sitting down—you know, I was—somebody we had, Sen. Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that—because, look, childcare is childcare, it couldn’t—you know, there’s something—you have to have it. In this country you have to have it.
But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including childcare, that it’s gonna take care. We’re gonna have, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time. Coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with childcare. I want to stay with childcare. But those numbers are small, relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth—but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about.
We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as childcare is talked about as being expensive, it’s relatively speaking not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about Make America Great Again. We have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation, so we’ll take care of it. Thank you.
If he blathers like that on Tuesday, I hope to Ahura-Mazda that Kamala doesn't just let it go by and pretend it's anything close to a coherent answer. She needs to wrinkle her nose, hold her hands up, and say some slightly more polite version of "what the *fuck* did he just say?"
Like many women in the town, my great-grandmother lost every adult male in her family, and "adult" went as low as twelve years old. That included her first husband -- she'd later remarry a well-respected man in town who was a barber and state legislator who would become my great-grandfather. I'm told he was something of a liberal for that time and area, and my grandparents thought I "have a lot of him in me."
If you read the Wikipedia article, you can see that some of the miners were trapped and were able to write final messages to their families, and they're heart-breaking. (I've read elsewhere that some of them were illiterate, and their final letters were written for them.)
Ironically, it was considered one of the better mines to work in -- they paid good wages, in cash, not scrip, and was thought to be safer.
Over 700 men died of silicosis contracted by digging the Hawk's Nest Tunnel in 1930. The air quality in the tunnel was so bad that some of them were showing signs of silicosis in as little as six weeks.
"Excavation of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel lead to the greatest death toll ever from silicosis in the United States. Of the approximately 5,000 men that worked on the project, an estimated 2,900 worked inside the tunnel. Of these men, silicosis claimed the lives of at least 764 workers. A majority of the dead were African Americans. In the years after the project was completed, many more would die due to their exposure to silica dust while working in the tunnel." (https://www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/the-hawks-nest-tunnel-disaster-summersville-wv.htm)
Ta, Erik. I recommend Barbara Kingsolver's Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983. Solidarity forever.
A cromulent song:
Lydia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qhUtHqRbJk
A long but excellent article about a Department of Labor employee who worked all his life to find innovative ways to make coal mines safer. (Not paywalled.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/michael-lewis-chris-marks-the-canary-who-is-government/
"an age when American leaders and employers deified profit" and still do.
This might be apropos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ5i_XG_aC8
Damn, I forgot how much I loved this album.
So Trump is discussing a commission on review of government rules and regulations, headed by Elon Musk. Which will make coal mining just as unsafe as it was in 1867. And do the same for every other industry. Along with poisoning the air, land, and water as Musk and the Supreme Court gut every environmental regulation. All so corporations can be even more profitable and pay less tax.
These events are what infuriate me when I go back home to Northeastern PA and have to listen to the same old schmucks saying how they're voting for TFG because "he's gonna reopen the mines, and we'll have good jobs again!" Of course THEY would never work in them, and they sure as shit don't want their own kids to work in them. Guess they just expect all those Hispanic immigrants to work in them, while pissing and moaning that "they're takin' all dem dere good jobs, haina or no?*"
Northeastern PA - where the grandchildren of immigrants hate other immigrants.
* local term, equal to "isn't it?" in literate regions of the US
'... inherently unsafe in an age when American leaders deified profit.'
That age hasn't ended yet.
And ninety years later the Knox mine disaster just north of Wilkes-Barre put an end to anthracite mining in the Wyoming Valley when the Susquehanna River broke through and flooded the warren of tunnels between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. Twelve miners were lost. There are iconic photos of rail cars being pushed into the river to try to stop the flooding; didn't work.
Caused by the mine owners' greed in digging coal and "robbing the posts" from underneath the river. And worse yet, the local union's leader was on the company's board and allowed the disaster to happen.
Can't say that comes as a great surprise...`
Don Blankenshit™
Republicans would like to go back to those days, please,
As long as they're not the ones in the mines.
The wealthy ones. They're happy to send the ones who voted for them down the holes.
Can't wait for the debate:
Donald Trump took a question at the New York Economic Club:
QUESTIONER: If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable? And if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?
TRUMP: Well, I would do that. And we’re sitting down—you know, I was—somebody we had, Sen. Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that—because, look, childcare is childcare, it couldn’t—you know, there’s something—you have to have it. In this country you have to have it.
But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including childcare, that it’s gonna take care. We’re gonna have, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time. Coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with childcare. I want to stay with childcare. But those numbers are small, relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth—but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about.
We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as childcare is talked about as being expensive, it’s relatively speaking not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about Make America Great Again. We have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation, so we’ll take care of it. Thank you.
Took a question and wiped his ass with it.
Daniel?
huh?
Was that AI? Because it seems like the sort of fractally wrong nonsense AI produces.
Nope. It's NLI.*
*Natural Lack of Intelligence.
If he blathers like that on Tuesday, I hope to Ahura-Mazda that Kamala doesn't just let it go by and pretend it's anything close to a coherent answer. She needs to wrinkle her nose, hold her hands up, and say some slightly more polite version of "what the *fuck* did he just say?"
She needs to be like Karine Jean-Pierre with Steve Deucy.
If you can’t blind them with policy, baffle them with bullshit?
It will be an exercise in incoherence insofar as the Deposed Despot is concerned.
I feel like I don’t understand the English language at all after trying to decipher that.
Don't worry, it wasn't English.
Just total gibberish.
Not even the frontier kind.
you need to put Caesar dressing and croutons on that word salad to make it partially comprehendible.
I have ancestors who were killed in the Fraterville Mine Disaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraterville_Mine_disaster
Like many women in the town, my great-grandmother lost every adult male in her family, and "adult" went as low as twelve years old. That included her first husband -- she'd later remarry a well-respected man in town who was a barber and state legislator who would become my great-grandfather. I'm told he was something of a liberal for that time and area, and my grandparents thought I "have a lot of him in me."
If you read the Wikipedia article, you can see that some of the miners were trapped and were able to write final messages to their families, and they're heart-breaking. (I've read elsewhere that some of them were illiterate, and their final letters were written for them.)
Ironically, it was considered one of the better mines to work in -- they paid good wages, in cash, not scrip, and was thought to be safer.
It's a horrible, brutal industry.
Trump plans to solve mine safety issues with tariffs.
I'm from WV. We know mine disasters, and it boils down to indifference 90% of the time.