Coal Miners Lash Out At Rand Paul For Suggesting Government Shouldn't Meddle With Industry Safety

(AP) - Kentucky coal miners are criticizing Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul for suggesting that Congress shouldn't be making mine safety rules.

United Mine Workers members told reporters Tuesday that miners depend on federal regulations to prevent injuries and deaths.

Miner Bernie Alvey says mining catastrophes "always bring on new laws that keep the rest of us safe later on."

Paul's campaign responded that he doesn't want to exclude the federal government but wants more state and local control over mine safety.

Paul said in the August issue of Details magazine that since he's "not an expert," he shouldn't be given the "power in Washington to be making (mining) rules." Paul gave the interview in May before he won the Kentucky Republican primary.

Comments

[feed the enemy]

12:49 AM on 08/16/2010

Ayn Rand Paul should spend sometime working side by side with these miners doing the same job before he opens his pie hole again. Trade the silver spoon in for a shovel for a while.

[OrangeCountyInjuryLawyer]

03:47 PM on 08/06/2010

Safety standards have to be set in place. Paul's argument sounds like the same argument big business made prior to Congress mandating safety restraints in cars, airbag, etc.

-Edmond El Dabe

[hobo62]

08:55 AM on 08/06/2010

Somebody ask Rack and Ruin if he would be willing to take a job in one when he loses the election?

[farmilyman]

04:04 AM on 08/06/2010

Rand is a great example of ideology trumping intellect.

[Weirdwriter]

01:47 AM on 08/06/2010

If I recall correctly, that last hideous mine disaster was courtesy of completely local control.

[KataVideo]

11:46 PM on 08/05/2010

rand paul in the senate = dead coal miners. it's that simple.

[GetAbike]

02:43 PM on 08/05/2010

Aren't Libertarians great? All the yakity yak about the Constitution is null and void when we find out it is always ABOUT THE MONEY and their right to have it at everyone else's expense.
Read this Rand comment where he also said that the practice of mountaintop removal mining simply needs to be re-branded.
"I think they should name it something better," he says. "The top ends up flatter, but we're not talking about Mount Everest. We're talking about these little knobby hills that are everywhere out here. And I've seen the reclaimed lands. One of them is 800 acres, with a sports complex on it, elk roaming, covered in grass." Most people, he continues, "would say the land is of enhanced value, because now you can build on it."

PRICELESS!

[Telemachus]

02:33 PM on 08/05/2010

Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle" in 1906, blowing the whistle on workplace abuses and leading to the creation of safety regulations, wage and hour limitations, collective bargaining, and eventually to the establishment of the American industrial sector as an economic powerhouse and an example of success for the rest of the world to follow.

That once-proud edifice began to erode under Reagan and has been in a steady decline for 30 years. And now this ignorant pipsqueak wants to tear down what little is left of it, to return to the squalid brutality that Sinclair wrote about.

Why do we have to repeat these basic lessons over and over?

[Almondo]

10:33 PM on 08/14/2010

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Life of Reason - George Santayana

[educatedvagabond]

01:32 PM on 08/05/2010

Good for the coal miners! The West Virginia disaster could have been avoided if the company owning the mine had actually followed existing federal regulations. Coal miners have a dangerous profession, they deserve whatever help we can give them. Does Rand Paul really think we can trust the mining company to do what is in the best interest of their workers if they can save money by cutting safety corners? We've already learned the answer to that question!

[sj user1]

03:40 PM on 08/04/2010

The libertarian philosophy is that it is a workers choice to work at an unsafe mine. Once enough people have died at the mine, "free market forces" will convince people to stop working there and the company will have to change or go out of business. The widows and orphans will have to be consoled by the fact that their husbands and fathers chose to work in unsafe conditions to put food on their tables and then they can starve to death.

[Almondo]

10:56 PM on 08/14/2010

It seems that in essence you describe here that mining in the absence of coherent and enforced regulation equates to "A state of subjugation to an owner or master".

[ClassInSession]

03:29 PM on 08/04/2010

Jack Conway would be considered a hardline right-winger if he were running for office in my state.

[judesuper]

03:18 PM on 08/04/2010

Rand, why do you hate the miners?

[jussaying]

02:55 PM on 08/04/2010

We have seen how well the coal industry regulates itself and how much concern they have for their employees. The recent disaster in West Virginia should end with criminal charges against the owners and operators....but we all know pigs will fly before that happens. Same for the oil industry. Lack of regulation created the worst ecological disaster ever in the US. BP is not paying up, continues to downplay the incident, and cover their crimes. Government employees charged with enforcing the regulations on the book failed to do so and investigations are needed what they received as rewards for closing their eyes.

[guerline04]

02:51 PM on 08/04/2010

This guy is nuts. He'll probably win and that angle chick will probably win too. This is going to be a circus. If people vote for these nuts, they deserve what they'll get

[splinky]

03:02 PM on 08/04/2010

They will get what they deserve, but what about the rest of us?

[guerline04]

03:34 PM on 08/04/2010

The rest are screwed

[dc2nm]

03:26 AM on 08/06/2010

Angle - no. Rand - maybe.

[NativeSonKY]

02:06 PM on 08/04/2010

no - don't shift control to the "good-ol' Kentucky Politicians - you'll have an investigation about bribery and collusion when you're finished if you do! You don't think McConnell hasn't lived off the coal lobby? Check his record...

[Almondo]

10:46 PM on 08/14/2010

"and now onto the matters of environmental damage, clean water, clean air, clean soil, the chair yields to the distinguished chunk of smoking coal from Kentucky."...
http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r166/Funnyoldlife/coalminertakingbat3.jpg

[NativeSonKY]

11:24 PM on 08/14/2010

Good example of what miners look like at the end of a shift - fanned! And I SO hope McConnell gets voted out since he has lined his pockets with the coal companies money for all these many years, and still thinks mountain-top removal is the best thing since sliced bread! Mountain-top removal completely destroys the natural springs and streams where mountain folk get their water, and the soil won't ever be able to sustain plant life again, or for at least hundreds of years. It's unconscionable what they are doing to eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, but people are finally getting the message through that it has to stop!