John Sweeney: 'What's Wrong with America?'

[Sapphire Blue]

John Sweeney
'What's Wrong with America?'
Posted August 17, 2007 | 07:31 PM (EST)

Earlier this month, Steve Skvara, a disabled, retired steel worker who can't afford his wife's health care, shook the AFL-CIO's Presidential Candidates Forum by asking tearfully, "What's wrong with America?"

We should all be asking that question today.

We've got six coal miners trapped beneath more than 1,500 feet of Utah coal and rock, three brave men who struggled to rescue them are dead and six more are injured.

And it's not because of an act of God. It's because of the acts of man.

The disaster still unfolding at the Crandall Canyon mine did not have to happen...

(snip)

Safety concerns about the Crandall Canyon mine surfaced months ago, and safety experts warn of particular dangers in the "retreat mining" technique used there after it was approved by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration....

(snip)

No one should be surprised it was approved, though. The Bush administration has been systematically dismantling and cutting funding for workplace safety rules and oversight since it came into office.

(snip)

Something is deeply wrong with America today. Working men and women have lost their value to the people who have been running this country for too long. Ruthless CEOs wring working people dry and the neocon ideologues in the White House help them.

Our wages are stagnant, our benefits are disappearing, the middle class is shrinking and, for the first time, there's a good chance our children will not be better off than our generation. We're the most productive workers in the world but we have to work more hours, more jobs and send more family members into the workforce just to keep up.

The heroes who rushed to Ground Zero to save lives and who dug and sweated and struggled for months after Sept. 11, 2001, are suffering today from neglect and indifference. Neglect and indifference left thousands stranded on rooftops and in a dark convention center after Hurricane Katrina. Neglect and indifference meant deplorable conditions for veterans recovering at Walter Reed. Neglect and indifference kill far too many of us on the job.

There's a reason so many people who never will step foot in a coal mine are riveted by the story of the trapped, dead and injured miners. There's a reason Steve Skvara's comment at our presidential forum moved so many people. There's a reason candidates committed to improving the well-being of working men and women took back Congress last year and will take back the White House next year.

Working men and women--the great majority in this country--want to fix what's wrong with America.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-sweeney/whats-wrong-with-americ_b_60935.html

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Greed has replaced honor

Having money (no matter how it is obtained) appears to mean more than putting in an honest day's work. Personally, I don't admire dishonorable people, especially those who sell out anything and anyone to make a buck. Don't they understand that they can't take it with them? That reputation lives on?

When I was a kid, I knew a lot of honorable folks. They worked hard, and were respected for that work--a country doctor, a plumber, an electrician, a farmer, a printer. All are gone now, and yet their memory lives on in the people who knew them--knew that they always were willing to lend a helping hand to a neighbor, always had a smile and a word of encouragement to youngsters.

I think of my grandfather, the country doctor. He was never rich, just made enough to live comfortably--and when he died, his will forgave the debts of anyone who hadn't paid him for his services. During the Depression, he'd go out and stay at a farmhouse for days, if that's what it took, to see a patient through a medical crisis, a prolonged labor. No, he didn't make much money. But the whole danged town turned out for his funeral, and the eulogies went on and on. I went back to that little town twenty years later-and all I had to say was I was "Doc's Granddaughter", and the praise and stories started coming out. I was honored by the folks in the town not because of anything I had done, but because of the kind of man my grandfather was.

I think of this man Murray--the mine owner. He might have made a pile, but at the expense of the lives of his miners. There is blood on his hands and on his reputation. When he dies, what good words will be said at his funeral? What person, twenty years after his demise, will have a good word to say about him, if any words at all?

[whoneedstickets]

2. Greed Mining...

...retreat mining, pulling out the last ore bearing material -- THE SUPPORT PILLARS -- is the riskiest and greediest mining operation there is. These guys have died to pad someone's wallet just a bit thicker.