They Should Never Have Been Trapped in the First Place

This morning the irony meter exploded when Daniel Henninger and the Wall Street Journal proclaimed without any DU-style sarcasm tags that http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703673604575550322091167574.html">Capitalism Saved the Miners. I was pretty sure this was an http://theonion.com">Onion piece, especially when it began with the startling sentence:



:wtf:

Luckily for all of us who missed the chapter in Wealth of Nations where trapping 33 men 2,000 feet underground in an unsafe mine and then http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/01/chile-trapped-miners-owners-forgiveness">begging for forgiveness as the government oversees the rescue is a "smashing victory for free market capitalism", Bill Scherr sets the record straight in a great piece on the United Steelworkers (a group of folks who actually know something about mining) website entitled http://blog.usw.org/2010/10/14/they-should-never-have-been-trapped-in-the-first-place/">They Should Never Have Been Trapped in the First Place.



What a relief, at least the mine operators didn't have pesky unions or strong government agencies tying their hands and making them install that ladder. Well, at least not recently.



Weak Government, weak unions, weak safety regulations. Though Mr. Henninger would never have the cajones to come out and say it, this is his wet dream and the future that the ruling class envisions for workers worldwide. The fact is, of course, that the mining disaster itself, and not the government overseen rescue effort, is the outcome of free-market capitalism gone unchecked. Some "smashing victory".

Full Article at http://blog.usw.org/2010/10/14/they-should-never-have-been-trapped-in-the-first-place/

it's been there for awhile. This is the same guy who wrote that http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122714101083742715.html">atheists and secularists ruined the economy. I'd like to see him last an hour in a mine, especially a one "free" of unions or government regulations like his idealistic Chilean mine.

watched the rescue. Thrilling, moving, and probably preventable. If we cared about, listened to, honored and kept safe miners as much before accidents as after, we'd have a lot fewer and less catastrophic accidents to deal with.