(Promoting for comments on the new developments in Michigan and Florida. Maybe I’ll have time to update this tonight. – promoted by Jack McCullough)

The Democratic National Committee has told Florida that it won't get any delegates to next year's national convention unless they back down from their calendar move, which puts the Florida presidential primary ahead of New Hampshire and other annointed states in the presidential race next year.

 The committee gave Florida Democrats 30 days to propose a primary date that conformed with Democratic rules prohibiting all but four states from holding their primaries or caucuses before Feb. 5. But Florida leaders, who seemed stunned by a near-unanimous vote and the severity of the punishment, said they were doubtful they could come up with an alternative.

This is something that's bugged me for some time. Not just the random fact that New Hampshire and Iowa have such a disproportionate role in the selection of presidential candidates, but more importantly, the obvious sense of entitlement that the residents of those two states, and especially New Hampshire, have, and the supine attitude of the parties in the face of this sense of entitlement. 

This year the rest of the country is catching up with this, and other states who have in prior years been deprived of any say in who the presidential candidates will be are trying to get in the game, but our party, which ought by nature to be the voice of the people, is trying to squelch these efforts.

There are two good alternatives to the current system, either of which would be immeasurably better than the current system. Probably the best known is a proposal for rotating regional primaries. Even though Holy Joe supports the idea, it makes a lot of sense, by creating regional primaries that will spread the primary voting over time and take away the advantage that the early winners in insignificant states now have.

Another appealing idea is called the American Plan, and it front loads the smallest states, so that candidates get started early and have to ask the voters of small states for their support before they get to the big states that will put them over the top. 

The American Plan is intended to correct these faults. First, it introduces a random element into scheduling while preserving the door-to-door politicking needed early in the race. Second, it arranges the schedule so that large “block” primaries take place at the end of the calendar, not the beginning. Finally, it condenses the schedule into a time span of 20 weeks that culminates with a large primary of both small and large states.

 

Here's how it works: The American Plan is designed to begin with primaries in smaller states, and grow progressively larger and more challenging as the nominating process advances. The schedule consists of 10 multi-state primaries evenly spaced over twenty weeks. The first primary would take place in a randomly selected group of states whose Congressional Districts total exactly 8 – for example, Alaska (1 CD), South Carolina (6 CDs), and Delaware (1 CD). The succeeding primaries would grow progressively larger – 16, 24, 36, etc. – up to the 10th primary, which would cover 80 CDs. A hypothetical sample schedule can be viewed here.

Both of these choices are obvious responses to the Super Tuesday system we have now, which has largely done what it was intended to do: advance conservative Democratic candidates (see, e.g., Carter, Clinton) 

Either choice makes more sense than we have now, and either choice would hopefully protect us from more news stories about some geezer in New Hampshire who's decided that nobody who hasn't slogged up to his general store and listened to his hilarious outhouse story is qualified to be president.

So come on, DNC. Let's get off this infatuation with New Hampshire and Iowa and move to a system that actually makes sense. 

Here's a doozy. Bush-supported Iraqi Prime Minister (such as the position is) Al-Maliki is bristling at criticism that he's inneffective and irrelevant – particularly the recent calls (from people like Hillary Clinton, Carl Levin and a bunch of Republicans) that he step down.

“There are American officials who consider Iraq as if it were one of their villages”

Okay, so far so good…

“for example Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin,”

Hm. Leaving out someone a little more obvious, aren't we?

But here's the payoff quote. Why should the criticism of Maliki stop? Because… 

“This is severe interference in our domestic affairs.”

Now just think about that one for a few minutes. 

From today's Times Argus/Rutland Herald: 

Lincoln vs. Douglas. Ali vs. Frazier. McKibben vs. McClaughry?

Ripton environmentalist Bill McKibben and Kirby economic commentator John McClaughry may not be household names in popular culture, but Vermonters clued into climate change know the two men for their ongoing debate over global warming.

 Right wing blather and bluster vs. reason and evidence from our own gubernatorial draftee. 

(crossposted on five before chaos)

It's not easy being a right-winger in Vermont. They're a real minority,  especially the far right-wing variety, such as WDEV's blowhard crybaby  hatemonger Paul Beaudry, or corporate apologist “anything for the almighty  dollar” John McLaughry, both great cases of “reality-challenged” people if I've  ever seen any.

And that's not likely to change anytime soon. The neo-con agenda is about as  popular as spring-thaw dogshit, as is its President, the healthcare crisis is  getting out-of-hand, there's that disastrous war of choice, and many people are  slowly waking up to the fact that the private sector doesn't always do certain  things better than the public sector (yeah, I know, there's a million other  things, but if youre' reading a political blog you know about them already). And  it's becoming very apparent that when you have people in charge who feel that  the government should be doing as little as possible, well, that's what  happens. They do as little as possible, not a good thing when  you have disasters such as Katrina or ever-increasing numbers of children who  don't have access to quality healthcare. You can only sing the praises of “the  market” so much before people start figuring out that “the market' could really  care less about them in any way except as a dollar sign, and the hell with their  well-being if it doesn't make someone some money somewhere.

But that's not stopping the downtrodden few in Vermont who like to think of  themselves as the “right-wing intellectuals” of the state. C'mon, don't laugh,  that's mean. There's a new Vermont right-wing think tank out there, the Lyceum Society of  Vermont. What's this all about? Jump below the fold for more.

From the front page of the Lyceum Society:

The Lyceum Society of Vermont is an intellectual forum founded in  2007 which  is dedicated to providing an exchange of ideas among  traditionalists,  paleoconservatives, classical liberals, libertarians,  neoconservatives, the New  Right, and others devoted to a philosophy of ordered  liberty…

The mission of the Lyceum Society is to promote the intellectual  discussion  of principles and ideas essential to the preservation of traditional  culture and  human liberty, the creation of abundance, and achieving a good and  just society. 

So it seems like it's trying to unite conservatives of all stripes together.  This is even more clear in their links page, where you can see a rogues' gallery  of the various stripes of what is known as conservatism, in all its shades of  turd-brown. There's everything from the well-known libertarian Cato  Institute, chickenhawk and perpetual liar Bill Kristol's The Weekly  Standard, and a host of other known and not-so well known organizations.  I'm having a really hard time seeing how the society's aim of a “good  and just society” fits in with groups like The Christian  Coalition and hate groups such as  Tony Perkins' American Family  Association, or the Traditional Values Coalition, which boasts  such headlines as Pro-Homosexual/Drag  Queen Bills Coming Back In  September! and Planned Parenthood’s Child Molester Cover Up  EXPOSED!  What? No link to Worldnut Daily? There's even VT  Commons on there, those people who didn't know about the racists in the  secession movement, and quite frankly, didn't care, according to VTC's Rob  Williams.

It's a really big tent, I guess. Even though the various factions are really  diametrically opposed to each other in many ways (like how the corporatist wing  exploits of the oft-poorer and less educated theocratic wing) you gotta give 'em  props for trying. 

Now, I'm not judging it soley on the content of its links page. Its intention  is to bring together cons of all stripes, and it shows in the links page, so I  can't fault them for that. But who's behind all this, you ask? Again, from the  Lyceum site:

In 2007 John McClaughry of the Ethan Allen Institute and former congressional  campaign staffer N. P. West envisioned the creation of a forum for the  intellectual Right in Vermont and the Lyceum Society of Vermont was  born.

Ah, shoulda known. We all know John McLaughry, from his curmudgeonly op-eds  praising the virtues of the mythical “free-market” in local newspapers and VPR,  where he rails against anything that might keep someone, somewhere,  from making a buck. In the last year or so, he's been on this big global warming  denial kick (because, you know, certain people might make less money if  we had to do something about it), where he often quotes  questionable and/or thoroughly discredited scientific reports to make his  case. 

Having one think tank that nobody listens to or takes seriously wasn't enough  for John, so one night, after his eighth snifter of Hennessy, instead of  rambling for the umpteenth time to the portrait of Ethan Allen hanging over the  fireplace in his den about how wealthy businessmen just can't ever seem to get a  fair shake, he got a brilliant idea: form another think tank that  nobody cares about or takes seriously.

And who's the new sidekick, this N.P. West?

He was a volunteer for the gubernatorial campaigns of former State Rep. Ruth  Dwyer (Ret.) (1998, 2000) and has served on the congressional campaigns of  attorney Bill Meub (2002), Lt. Col. Greg Parke, USAF (Ret.) (2004), and former  State Sen. Mark Shepard (Ret.) (2006).  His writings have appeared on  TrueNorthRadio.com and he maintains a web log, the Vermont  Traditionalist.  

Whoa, that's quite the resume, eh? Ruthless Ruth Dwyer? The gay-obsessed Mark  Shepard? Bill Meub? I'd completely forgotten about that guy. It's like a who's  who of Vermont political losers. He's quite the poli-sci wonk too, not a bad  thing by any means, but it might be a problem when reaching out to some of those  on the right who speak in monosyllabic words or consider the writings of Ann  Coulter as an example of literary genius. Or the majority of people on all sides  who could care less about the nuances of agrarian distributism and just want you  to tell them what you're going to do and what you stand for in less than a  book-length diatribe.

So we now have another right-wing think tank, heavily involved with the guy  who has the other right-wing think tank. And if you sign up and pay  your dues to the Lyceum Society, you get a complimentary membership to  that other think tank, the Ethan Allen Institute. McLaughry's so desperate, he's  giving them away! Like the EAI, its real effects will be hardly noticed in the  political landscape, but now when VPR or the Times Argus needs a token  conservative to write an op-ed, at least they have another choice.

From the “methinks thou dost protest too much” department…

I find it interesting that the Republicans are pushing so hard to give Democrats a black eye over the fact that the law has unexpectedly provided an opportunity for shady operators to access the personal financial information of Vermont taxpayers through Town Offices. Consider some of those shady operators who are swooping in, doing that vulture-thing (from VPR, emphasis mine):

 

There's disagreement among town clerks – and among state officials – about whether the income adjustment information should be public.
 
Secretary of State Deb Markowitz has said it should be kept private.
 
But Montpelier's clerk relied on advice from the (Douglas) Tax Department. So she released 24 pages of data to two individuals who asked for it. One of the requests came from the state Republican Party.
 

Uh-huh. I guess they were for it before they were against it (before they were for it, since the changes in the law that created the privacy loophole were approved with a bipartisan majority). Or maybe they want to exploit the privacy hole themselves and close it up behind them as soon as possible.

Real class act, the Vermont GOP… 

We need to really push right now on lack of faith in Vermont Yankee and its ability to maintain core safety standard.  One way we can do this is to start pushing the Democratic/Progressive majority’s energy plan NOW, before the legislature even gets back in session, to make it a top priority and make it politically difficult for Douglas to veto it again. 

We need to start blanketing our papers with letters, not only talking about the dangers of nuclear power, but tying them in to three things:

• The energy bill that Douglas vetoed and why it’s more important to refocus our work on safe, clean and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power;
• local economy and how when people are invested in their own community, they don’t have  to worry about their safety being in the hands of large corporations which see the surrounding communities in terms of profit and loss and little else;
• that lack of regulation and supervision is a dangerous thing and if we can’t adequately insure that VY is up to the task of maintaining their own equipment (be sure to mention the recent incident, the fire and the rods that they just couldn’t find one day).
  

This is a big deal.  We need to write letters about it.  We need to make phone calls about it.

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

You know the saying that one picture is worth a thousand words? Here's a case where that is true.

You've probably heard the stories about Vermont Yankee having to reduce power, and you've seen the press reports that it was caused by “problems” in the cooling towers.  Wooden components and piping had failed in one of the towers, said Sheehan and Robert Williams, spokesman for plant owner Entergy Nuclear.

What you probably haven't seen or heard are descriptions of the cause of the problems or pictures of what the damage really entails. According to a filing yesterday by VPIRG, Arnie Gunderson, an expert  on cooling towers, 

 

 the current damage and derate shares causes identical with the June/July 2004 fire, outage, and derate. Those identical shared causes are poor maintenance, lack of attention to detail in engineering, failure of aging management, and the impacts of extended power uprate (“EPU”).

 

  VPIRG's filing also shows photographs of the failed cooling tower. The photos depict the wooden and metal wreckage of the cooling tower, with water flooding out of a huge broken pipe. It's pretty dramatic, and it certainly gives one pause about whether the MSM coverage has been enough to convey the scope of this problem.

Here's the most dramatic picture in the group:

 Maybe, the next time we hear conservatives in the Douglas Administration bragging about Vermont's “clean” power portfolio, we should remind them of the costs of this “clean” power.

Well the press may not be taking this seriously (click here for the pictures, – they are pretty shocking – or just scroll down) but at least somebody is:

August 23, 2007

The Honorable Dale Klein
Chairman
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001

Dear Chairman Klein:

We are writing in response to the alarming events that occurred at Vermont Yankee power plant on August 21, 2007.  It is our understanding that a non-safety related portion of one cooling tower cell at the plant collapsed.  We further understand from your staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that there was no threat to the public's health with this accident and that the plant began to power down to 40% immediately following the accident. 

We are concerned about the cause of this structural failure, especially about the implications for the cooling tower cell(s) that are related to the safe operation of the plant.  We understand from your staff that the licensee, Entergy Vermont Yankee, is currently examining this accident to determine the cause of the collapsed tower and whether there was any evidence of structural deficiencies prior to the collapse.  However, the NRC, has not yet committed to undertaking a thorough investigation of the safety related cooling towers cell(s) that are located on the same site and could potentially have similar structural issues.  We find this extremely troubling.     

We therefore request you undertake an immediate and thorough investigation to determine if there are similar structural deficiencies in any and all portions of the safety related cooling towers cell(s) at the facility.  Furthermore, we ask you to examine the structural integrity of the remaining towers and institute any additional precautions to prevent other collapses that would jeopardize the safety of the cooling towers and that could present a risk to the public's health or safe operation of the facility.  Finally we request an evaluation of any preventive actions that the licensee and/or NRC took in the past related to the safe and efficient operation of all of the cooling towers at the facility.

Please continue to keep us thoroughly informed as more information becomes available. We are committed to assisting Vermont and the NRC to ensure the safety at Vermont Yankee. We appreciate your timely attention to this issue. 

PATRICK LEAHY        BERNARD SANDERS              PETER WELCH

(Astonishing amount of damage, given that – as VTArnie states in Julie’s original post about the incident, that “An NRC spokesman described the problems like so: ‘I don’t know if I’d characterize it as rotting, but more sagging, deformation in some of the wood.’…. wow…. what rose colored glasses the NRC wears!” – promoted by odum)

Photos (unauthenticated) of the ENVY cooling tower failure event.(Photos courtesy of the New England Coalition.)

To judge the size, note the pipe spewing water in photo 1 is 52'' in diameter.

This is called “deferred maintenance” in the nuclear industry.

A rumble a loud crack, like thunder, rocks, dirt and chocking dust rain down.
A rock fall is imminent. So what is a miner to do?
“You run for your life,” said Tim Miller, who toiled in Kentucky’s mines for more than two decades.

… The goal is to eliminate the coal industry. Of course the goal is to eliminate the coal industry. Coal is filthy. It destroys ecosystems to dig it up. It kills the people who work around it. Coal plants throw particulates in the air and causes respiratory ailments. They throw mercury in the water and causes birth defects. They throw CO2 into the atmosphere and cause global warming. The coal industry corrupts the political process. It lies to the public about global warming, and mine safety, and coal reserves, and everything else. It leeches money and opportunity out of the states where it is based.
The only reason we think of coal as “cheap” is that we don’t tally all those costs in the debit column.
From David Roberts Coal is the enemy of the human race…

During the winter of my fourteenth year I had a part time job. Every morning I would get up at 5 o”clock and walk up the hill to the ancient brick home of an elderly widow where I would descend to the dimly lit basement and remove the previous day’s supply of clinkers from the firebox of an equally ancient and frightening looking furnace, shovel in a supply of fresh coal and get a good fire roaring. That was it, home to shower and head to school. She payed me two dollars a day and in 1958 when a gallon of gas was a quarter, that was a good sum of money. That is also the sum total of my life’s experience with coal.

David Roberts wrote the brief but engaging piece quoted above earlier in the summer at Huff Post, he wrote his rant in reference to a coal industry mogul who for several months had been preaching to anyone who would listen about the evils that congress, in league with environmentalists, were plotting to perpetrate on the coal industry. I had heard the name of the subject of his rant before but at the time I didn’t recognize it.

It wasn’t until two weeks ago when a mine in central Utah’s Emery County in Crandall Canyon, one of the deepest coal mines in the country collapsed, burying six miners 1500 to 1800 feet below the surface and 3 1/2 miles from the entrance point, that the name and the reason the it rang a bell popped back into my mind.

Robert Murray. The name was familiar because I had read a Washington Post article about his testimony before a congressional committee in the spring in which he took congress to task over the Clean Air Act of 1990 and declaimed on the perils of listening to the purveyors of Global warming science, which he has since referred to as “global goofiness.” (as quoted below in the New York Sun)

“Some wealthy elitists in our country,” he told the audience, “who cannot tell fact from fiction, can afford an Olympian detachment from the impacts of draconian climate change policy. For them, the jobs and dreams destroyed as a result will be nothing more than statistics and the cares of other people. These consequences are abstractions to them, but they are not to me, as I can name many of the thousands of the American citizens whose lives will be destroyed by these elitists’ ill-conceived ‘global goofiness’ campaigns.”
2007 speech to the New York Coal Trade Association

Robert Murray is one of two people that you would recognize from the nearly non stop coverage of the aftermath of the cave in, the repeated rescue attempts, and the ensuing tragedy upon tragedy when the rescuers themselves were caught in another collapse killing three and injuring six others.

Murray, is the most recognizable, at times seen castigating the press or the unions, at others in the mine, pointer in hand, explaining the rescue operation to the media, or as seen below. Murray is the owner and CEO of Murray energy which is among the dozen largest coal mining companies in the country. He owns 19 mines in Ohio and Illinois including the Crandall Canyon mine and others in Utah. In general, Murray’s operations have a far less than stellar reputation for safety, having over the years, been cited thousands of times for safety violations and fined millions of dollars. Murray says that the safety violations were trivial and included violations such as not having enough toilet paper in the restroom.

Murray claims that the Crandall Canyon collapse was caused by an earthquake, seismologists dispute his claim saying that the seismic activity they recorded was the result of the collapsing mountain not the cause of it. The head of the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado said that an analysis of seismic waves that occurred in the area around the time the mine collapsed are consistent with what would be seen from a mine collapse, and, subsequent seismic activity that has been detected may have been related to energy being released in the aftermath of the collapse,

However its probably easy to guess which side of this question the insurance companies will land on.

If Murray has no love for environmentalists and federal regulation, he also has no love for unions and all but one of his mines are non union, a fact that probably is responsible, in large measure, for the dismal safety record. In a union atmosphere, union stewards and safety committees can report violations without fear of retaliation from management. In a non union mine reporting safety violations or unsafe practices and working conditions place the individual miner at risk of losing his job, or worse, for speaking out. This often results in an atmosphere of fear in which such conditions are overlooked, placing lives at risk.

Murray is also a serious donor to Republican candidates for office, having bequeathed over $150,000 to such notables as George Bush, Mitch McConnell, Katherine Harris and Sam Brownback among others, in the last couple of years through his Murray Energy PAC and other affiliates. This may help to explain the accommodating way he has been treated by federal regulators.

The coal in the Crandall Canyon mine is removed by what is called the room and pillar method where digging and removing coal creates a cavity or room and large pillars or columns of coal are left standing to hold up the roof which is further augmented by drilling and setting roof bolts. It is believed by many that at the time of the collapse the miners were engaged in retreat mining in which the pillars are removed and the roof is allowed to collapse as the workers retreat back to the entry.

Although considered to be a very dangerous undertaking, the mine had the necessary permits for performing retreat mining from Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) according to Robert Friend who told the Washington Post that the cause of the collapse had not yet been discovered but, “there was retreat mining where these miners are.” Asked about the conflict with Murray’s denials that the retreat method was in use he replied, “I can’t speculate as to what he meant.”
Some, including Utah’s Governor are calling for an investigation focusing on why those permits were granted in this instance and UMW says that the MSHA has been too cozy with the industry in recent years.

There are whispered reports (it’s a good idea to lower one’s voice when criticizing mine owners or their operations in central Utah) that the Crandall Canyon mine was unsafe when Murray bought it last year. Not wanting to leave behind any of the coal contained in the pillars they began the retreat mining operation. A spokesman for UMW, Phil Smith, said yesterday, “No one took the time to see that it was a recipe for disaster.

The graphic depicts retreat mining in a room and pillar operation like Crandall Canyon.
The pillars are mined from the farthest point towards the entry and the mine is allowed to collapse as it will.
Wanna try it? I’m sure the image above is a much more orderly depiction of the process than the reality.

Though it may seem strange to people outside the coal industry, generations of miners have been cutting away those pillars to increase coal production in a practice known as retreat mining. It’s legal and considered standard procedure. But it has claimed the lives of 17 coal miners in the past seven years.
In Kentucky alone, four miners have been crushed in rock falls during retreat mining in the last 14 months.
“You’re definitely playing Russian roulette,” said Miller, now an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, which spells out in its contract that members can withdraw from any section of mine they believe is unsafe. “You remove those pillars, the roof is coming down. It’s inevitable.”
Retreat Coal Mining Comes Under Scrutiny

Which brings us to the second recognizable figure from the coverage of these horrible events, Richard Stickler the Mine Safety and Health Administrator who waited two days after the mine collapsed before taking control of the rescue efforts, a delay that reminded some of “Brownie” and Katrina.

Stickler is a former mine executive and manager whose confirmation for the position was turned down twice by the Senate.

Richard Stickler

The injury rates at coal mines Stickler managed from 1989 to 1996 were double the national average, according to statistics assembled by the Mine Workers before Stickler’s appointment to head the Pennsylvania Bureau of Deep Mine Safety.

During his confirmation hearings, Stickler said he believed the then-current mine safety laws were adequate and did not need strengthening. This spring, when coal mine deaths stood at 33?at the time the highest number killed on the job in a full year since 2001. Congress passed legislation to strengthen and improve mine safety.
AFL_CIO Blog

In spite of fierce opposition from both Democrats and Republicans as well as the United Mine Workers, George Bush made the appointment last October during a congressional recess.

The Fox was now in charge of another regulatory chicken coop.

The federal government’s power to regulate the activities of business is among it’s most sacred duties to our citizenry. The regulation of the purity of our drugs and our food, the safety of our workplaces, the safety and reliability of manufactured products, ranging from what we wear to what we drive is a responsibility that is as critical to our social health and civil order as defense. In this area, as in so many others, this administration has not only dropped the ball, they have thrown it to the opposing team.

From a candlelight vigil held in Huntington last week, focused on the six coal miners trapped in the Crandall Canyon mine. Photo by Trent Nelson Salt Lake Tribune

“We are at the mercy of the officials in charge and their so-called experts.”
Sonny Olsen, Spokesperson for the families of the trapped miners”

As I was about finish and post this article I received this Email from John Sweeney, AFL-CIO President. The timing was spooky, but he wrote the perfect postscript to what I wanted to convey here. So I’m going to use his remarks as my close, Take it Mr Sweeney:

Dear Robert,

As you may already know, the underground rescue operation to save the six coal
miners trapped in the Crandall Canyon Mine has been halted. Tragically, the miners may be buried beneath the Utah mountain
forever.

At this difficult time, I ask you for your thoughts and prayers for the miners and their families, as well as for the families of the three rescue workers who gave their lives trying to save the missing.

I also thank you for being someone who cares enough to take action to improve life for working
families on many fronts.

Last year, after 12 coal miners died in the Sago Mine in West Virginia you helped convince Congress to pass the first major overhaul to mine safety laws in more than three decades, the MINER Act.

Since the Bush administration came into office, it has been systematically dismantling workplace safety protections. But you wouldn’t allow corporate greed and Bush administration neglect and indifference to go unchallenged.
That neglect and indifference haven’t been isolated to workplace safety. Just look at our economy workers’ paychecks are stagnant while our productivity goes up and up. Just think back to the
administration’s catastrophic response to Hurricane Katrina, the poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, our health care crisis; many, many people are wondering,What’s wrong with America?

Fortunately, in our democracy, every four years we have a chance to fix what’s wrong by electing
leaders, including a president, who put working families first. We have a very busy time ahead of us, fighting together for health care, good jobs and the freedom to form unions without employer interference and fighting for a government led by people committed to make America work for
working families.
Thank you for all that you’ve done so far in this fight and for all you will do in the months ahead.
In solidarity,
John Sweeney
President, AFL-CIO
P.S. What do you think the next president should do to make our workplaces safe and healthy? Please share your thoughts on our AFL-CIO Working Families Vote 2008Forum.

Related Stories and Links:
Columbus Dispatch
Two For The Money
The Salt Lake Tribune
Memo shows mine already had roof problems in March
I See Dead People
A sincere thank you to Marty Kaplan and David Roberts

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust