The Bright Side Of Sequestration.

       Do you remember the Upper Big Branch mine disaster of 2010? The owners of that mine was Massey Energy. They have since been bought by Alpha Natural Resources. My bet is that it's all owned by the same people, but I could be wrong. Well, as it turns out, Massey had received 1422 citations for safety violations of which they had contested one quarter.
       Not that they're alone. In fact the government had an average backlog of 10,400 citations, and that's just the cases that get contested. It's so bad that the Federal government, Congress, put together a taskforce of extra lawyers and judges to try to get the caseload down to the current 5500. But now, because of sequestration, that taskforce is being shuttered. The funding had to be cut. Happy Easter.
       I can see it now. The Massey family of West Virginia must be pulling out all the stops this year and celebrating with some special doings. Lets all hope they're taking a Carnival Cruise. Here's the thing, if they are found to be negligent in those contested cases, the fines for all their citations will be much higher.
       So here we are with an energy source that is the absolute dirtiest fuel in the world. The biggest polluter  before, during and after use and they can't even keep from killing and endangering their own employees. Ya see, they keep doing their level best to keep the cost of your electric bill down.
       One way they have of doing that is to ignore safety issues for their employees and then fighting citations when they get caught. And now that the federal government can't run a tight enough ship to stay open, or at least keep important agencies at full staff, the coal companies don't even have to pay lawyers to fight the safety citations. They just keep saving us money and they just keep endangering their employees. Kudos to Massey and the rest of the modern day coal barons.