The Crandall Canyon Mining Disaster – Because The Squirrel Looked Him Square In The Eye!

It turns out, that Bob Murray the now infamous owner of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah is also a well known global warming denier. Geez what a shock huh. Murray has said . . . “I would describe Al Gore as the shaman of global goofiness and gloom and doom.” Now that’s rich, this rotund, greedy buffoon is calling Al Gore goofy? How’s this for goofy. The United Mine Worker's Of America Journal reported that according to Murray, he had just been let go in 1987 as CEO of North American Coal Company and was feeling extremely down about the whole situation. At home one day, Murray was sitting on his back porch, contemplating his future, when he was approached by a squirrel. Murray says the squirrel hopped up next to him, looked him square in the eye and said,

"Bob Murray, you should be operating your very own mines."

A SQUIRREL??? AT LEAST BUSH HAS GOD TALKING TO HIM!

(Couldn't make that up if I wanted to. A buck to your PayPal account to the first "investigative journalist" to produce a video of Murray and the squirrel)

Seriously, It's all just so sad isn't it, a horrific and senseless tragedy on every level and our hearts go out to the miners and their families. No one can imagine their pain.

Time and time again it’s the same old thing as corporate greed seems to take precedence over worker safety. The Crandall Canyon mine has had more than three hundred safety violations since 2004, with thirty safety violations in the past year alone according to CNN, including a recent one for not providing two required safety escape routes for each tunnel. Now gee I may be a little slow but I would imagine an additional escape route might cost Mr. Murray a few Big Macs huh?

John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO writing at the Huffington Post said . . .

“Safety concerns about the Crandall Canyon mine surfaced months ago, and experts warned of particular dangers in the “retreat mining” technique used there after it was approved by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. In retreat mining, coalminers essentially pull out roof-supporting pillars of coal as they work their way out of the mine. The retreat mining plan at Crandall Canyon, says United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts, appears to have been flawed, to say the least. In our opinion, that plan should never have been approved.

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”.

OK, so do we really need an “investigation” to know what happened here?

The rambling, obnoxious blowhard of a greedy owner Bob Murray is one for the ages. Did you see his initial press conference? He rambled on about God and not leaving the mine and then went into a diatribe against unions and global warming. Carol Costello, CNN anchor said afterwards “You know he didn't hold a news conference today. He had a conversation about God, mining and America.” Murray owns eleven mines and according to the Wall Street Journal, makes $800 million a year. Yet Murray has already started criticizing the media and has stated that an earthquake caused the initial collapse. Looks like Murray doesn’t need to wait for an investigation either. A few years back there were also rumors of alleged illegal anti-Union practices at Murray’s Crandall Canyon Mine as well as unsubstantiated complaints of alleged intimidation and threats when the mine employees were considering unionizing and reports of anonymous phone calls made to the USDC voter fraud hotline in 2006. They alleged that a letter from Bob Murray, read aloud to his employees on Election Day, stated that if it were found that they hadn’t voted Republican, they’d be fired.

L.U. 1360 president John Yemich said this six years ago about Murray,

"Bob Murray is so anti-union that he wants to bust us even after we kept him in business. He has exploited his workers. We must stop his efforts to cut our members out of work."

The Salt Lake Tribune also reported this past Sunday that,

“The mine experienced serious structural problems in March, and, that miners had abandoned work in part of it after pressures within the mountain caused coal pillars to burst, affecting roof conditions. The poor roof was thought to be 900 feet from where the six miners remain trapped.” Harley Benz the chief scientist of the National Earthquake Information Center said the Crandall Canyon mine collapse was not caused by an earthquake. “Our preliminary analysis of the data suggests that what we observed was a mine collapse. The signal that we recorded on all of the seismic stations in the area and throughout the western U.S. had characteristics that were not typical of a natural occurring earthquake.” Maybe it was a squirrel.