Miller to Murray: We mean business
Back in October, House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller called out the Department of Labor and Bob Murray of Murray Energy Corporation for refusing to aid the investigation into the deaths of nine men at Crandall Canyon Mine, and issued an ultimatum:
Let me be very clear: this committee will not be deterred from getting all of the information we need to do our independent investigation. We will not tolerate obstruction or delay by either the Department or by the company in pursuit of that information and this investigation.
He wasn’t kidding. The committee announced today that it issued subpoenas for two top officials at Murray Energy, including Mr. Bob Murray himself.
Murray has been confronted about safety problems at his mines before, and had some choice words about why he shouldn’t be held accountable. The Herald-Leader tells the story best:
Millionaire coal magnate Bob Murray knew the name to drop in September 2002, when Mine Safety Health Administration inspectors confronted him about safety problems at his mines: Sen. Mitch McConnell.
Murray, a large man with a fierce temper, is a huge donor to Republican senators. McConnell, R-Ky., rose through the ranks by raising money for those senators. And McConnell is married to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, whose agency oversees MSHA.
Shouting at a table full of MSHA officials at their district office in Morgantown, W.Va., Murray said: “Mitch McConnell calls me one of the five finest men in America, and the last I checked, he was sleeping with your boss,” according to notes of the meeting.
Ahem. We’ll just let that speak for itself.
February 23rd, 2008 at 1:13 pm
The transcripts to that meeting are floating around everywhere. They are verrrrry telling.
First, one of Murray’s minions who mouthed off during the meeting was Michael Lawless, who had only a few weeks before the meeting left the Mine Safety and Health agency as the Director for enforcement of coal mines. Which means he was not only job hunting in the industry that he was supposed to be regulating.
Second, Lawless lived up to his name because he broke some serious federal laws by being at that meeting. High ranking government officials in positions such as Lawless held who leave the government are NOT allowed to contract their former agencies about anything that involves their old job.
Third, the Director of enforcement was also at the meeting, and did nothing to evict Lawless. Every Labor Department employee knows the rules. There are yearly mandatory classes concerning that rule, and the Labor Department gives each employee a booklet entitled something like “How to stay out of trouble”.
Finally, after Lawless left the government and went to work for Chao’s friend Murray, his wife was still allowed to work at the Mine Safety agency, and she had access from her home to the entire Management Information System. The last time I checked she was still sleeping with Lawless. That means that Murray’s number two guy, Lawless, had acess to each and every planned mine inspection and the medical records of each inspector, not to mention many other things. And by the way, the Mine Act makes it a criminal offense with prison time to leak information to the industry about upcomming mine inspections. Not only that, each year the employees at the Mine Safety agency have to fill out a financial form to send to the Office of Government Ethics. The form is to make sure that the employees have no financial interest in any mining operation. Having a husband who is a head honcho at Murray’s company definitely falls into that category. The law does not contain an exception for friends of the secretary of labor.