Short Attention Span Theater

What is it about the American public and its short attention span? Remember when we were all fighting mad about the mosque everyone thought was going to be built at ground zero? Yeah, the mosque that turned out to be an Islamic community center that wasn’t going to be built on ground zero, but on the site of an abandoned Burlington coat factory four blocks away? Red hot only yesterday, but can’t get arrested today. We’ve moved on.



Closer to home, a mine explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, W Va. took the lives of 29 miners on April 5 of this year. No, I’m not suggesting that anyone close by has forgotten this, but you have to admit this hasn’t been in the news a lot lately. We don’t even hear much about the on-going investigation as to the cause of the explosion.



That disaster was followed up by the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20. This explosion took the lives of 11 workers and before it was over released an estimated 185,000,000 gallons of oil into the fragile ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico.



Despite the outcry from the public that demanded explanations and solutions, once the disasters were off the front page, the ardor surrounding them seems to have cooled as well. In the case of the biggest oil spill in the history of oil exploration, once that well was capped and the video cam of the leak disappeared from the internet, within a month’s time, you’d have sworn that the oil also disappeared, along with everyone’s desire to see Big Oil punished.



For instance, in the aftermath of his disaster, Rep. Joe Barton, R., Tx., a member of the House Energy Committee, actually apologized to the perceived perpetrator, British Petroleum, for what he termed a $20 billion shakedown by the Obama administration. Bipartisan outrage soon cooled, and that same Member of Congress will, in all likelihood, chair this committee, now that the GOP has been granted control of the House again by a forgetting and forgiving public.



Sadly, the same thing is true of the Montcoal disaster. Much about this has been forgotten, or is just not talked about. The first thing the public became aware of was the inordinate number of safety violations committed at that mine. And of course, everyone wanted to know was why the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) hadn’t more to insure the miners’ safety. Why wasn’t the mines operator, Massey Energy, held accountable for how they ran that mine?



Fast forward to November and we find that another Massey Mine, this one in Pike County, is also receiving an inordinate number of safety violations that, according to MSHA, could easily lead to a similar accident. Massey immediately responded with the following statement: "Massey does not believe the mine is unsafe."



So, of the two, MSHA or Massey, which of these has the longer attention span? From circumstantial evidence, it would seem to be MSHA. Instead of repeatedly citing Massey, this time it has signaled its intention to shut down this mine until it begins to operate safely.



Had this been done a little earlier, perhaps 29 miners would still be alive and still working at Upper Big Branch.