What would Dante say?

The Gentle Reader may recall an expose by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News a while back about how coal companies, their lawyers, and a lab at Johns Hopkins routinely collaborated to deny miners black lung benefits.

According to news reports, Hopkins has terminated that program, which will forever be a scar on the institution. It should never have existed to start with. I wonder how many miners died before getting the benefits they deserved

One doctor there, and I use the term loosely, is said not to have found a single case of black lung in the more than 1,500 cases he investigated. Since then, the federal government has informed around 1,100 miners that they were wrongly denied benefits.Of course, they only informed the ones who still lived.

All of which makes me wonder what circle in Hell Dante would assign to those responsible. I'm guessing it would be somewhere in Malebolge, the eight circle, which is reserved for fraud, or maybe even the icy ninth, which is reserved for those who betray. I think it's a safe bet that he'd put them way down.

Annals of hypocrisy

The coal industry continued its 5 year long hissy fit in Washington yesterday, where it asserted that the troubles of the industry have nothing to do with cheap natural gas,cheap western coal or the very real threat of climate change but rather can be conveniently blamed on the black guy.

But a lot of the same industry voices claiming to be the protectors of miners are the same ones who cheat them out of black lung benefits. Kudos to the Center for Public Integrity for shedding light on evil.