John Merline of TCS Daily on the Reality of Mine Safety
Though I have little time to comment, John Merline of TCS Daily nails it. Go there.
First three grafs (I wish I would have thought up the first sentence):
Here’s a headline you aren’t likely to see: “Sago mine tragedy defies improved mine safety trend under the Bush administration.â€
Yet, the facts support it.
Mining fatalities have dropped every year President Bush has been in the White House, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Since 2001, mining deaths averaged 63 a year, which is 30% lower than during the Clinton administration. The fatality rate has dropped as well — it was 31% lower in 2004 than it was in the last year of the Clinton administration.
Note that Merline is looking at ALL mining–not just coal, which has been the focus of the two key BizzyBlog posts (here and here).
Also, Merline’s coal mining fatality figures in his graph (the darker bars at the link) are higher than the MHSA figures used for my post. The difference, as I understand it, is that the rest don’t relate to the actual work of pulling coal out of the ground or onsite supervision of that effort, but are other deaths that happened to occur at coal sites. One example might be office worker heart attacks in the office. E-mail me if you have a succinct explanation of the difference.
Very nice job by Merline. Sago, even in the worst-case scenario of investigative results, is the exception and not the rule.
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UPDATE: Shrinkwrapped ties the mine tragedy into the obsessive and litigious desire by some to create risk-free world. Trouble risk-free also means progress-free, and, taken to its extreme, total inertia. His first two commenters suggested phrases that ought to have more currency: “truth-telling love” (good) and “idiot compassion” (bad).
UPDATE 2: Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics updates his thoughts, and catches Joe Conason at the NY Observer in what delayed-effect hackery — according to Conason, it must take FOUR YEARS for lax safety standards and inspections to be reflected in higher fatalities and accidents.
