Excerpts from newspapers that may be of use for our readers. Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly, LAT=Los Angeles Times

Safety ‘a distant second’ to profit

NYT, 4/11 — “Every place I’ve ever worked, safety has been a distant second to production,” said Billy Brannon, 30, of Harlan, Ky., who has been a miner for nine years. ”If you take 30 minutes out of the day doing it right, that takes a lot out of the tonnage of the mine….”

Fines remain so low that they are mere rounding errors on the bottom lines of the big energy companies that own mines….

And once the inspectors arrive, operators can employ a variety of delaying tactics so they can clean up glaring violations….

“It’s always been a game of cat and mouse….”

Making routine methane checks, hanging ventilation curtains and shoveling dangerous accumulations of coal dust — all required under federal rules — take time away from production….

Miners say that despite ubiquitous “safety first” slogans, they face relentless pressure to run more coal….

Last Monday morning, a federal inspector visited the Upper Big Branch mine…. took air readings in two locations that showed no methane….

Then he left…. That afternoon the mine blew up.

Jobs kill 170 non-miners daily

NYT, 4/20 — To the editor: You’re right that the deaths of 29 miners in West Virginia show the need for stronger oversight… But this is part of a bigger story.

Each day, on average, an estimated 177 workers die from work-related causes — 13 from traumatic injuries, 164 from occupational diseases. Each of these deaths is as heartbreaking and unnecessary as those in West Virginia. But they usually happen one by one, rarely getting much media attention.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is charged with ensuring that workplaces are safe, healthful and “free of recognized hazards.” But like the mine safety agency, OSHA has been understaffed, underfinanced and lacking in enforcement power.

Psychologist’s tell-all on priests

NYT, 4/10 — Leslie Lothstein has seen them all: priests sexually active with adult men, others with adult women, others with adolescents, others with children….

“It was a surprise for me to see how many psychopaths I met in the priesthood,” Dr. Lothstein said. “Glib, callous, could say anything to you and be charming….”

“I treated priests who had two children. I treated priests who got women pregnant and got them abortions.

“I said to one of them, ‘Why didn’t you just use a condom?’ And he said, ‘Because birth control is against the law of the church.’”

Bush or Obama, civilians get shot

GW, 4/16 — …Recent revelations through WikiLeaks about the killing of civilians by US helicopters in Iraq have highlighted the opportunities for misuse in targeting from the air….

According to Pakistani official statistics… during 2009, of the 44 Predator drone attacks… only five targets were correctly indentified; the result was over 700 civilian casualties….

The assumption that trust should be extended to a [US] government that has involved itself in many unlawful practices since the start of the war on terror is too much to ask. Whatever goodwill the US government had after 9/11 was destroyed by the way in which it prosecuted its wars. Further, the hope that came with the election of Obama has faded as his policies have indicated nothing more than a reconfiguration of the basic tenet of the Bush Doctrine, that the US’s national security interests supersede any consideration of due process or the rule of law. The only difference — witness the rising civilian body count from drone attacks — is that the Obama doctrine is even more deadly.

Dump lethal junk on Africa, Asia

NYT, 4/15 — Much of the debate over the handling of electronic refuse arises from the metals like lead and mercury that are used to make electronic devices. Most discarded equipment is either ported to landfills or sold into a murky global market, where it often ends up in vast and unregulated harvesting and smelting operations in poor corners of Africa and Asia. In either case, the disposal poses significant environmental and health risks.

Trust in US gov’t at all-time low

minutemanmedia.org, 4/2 — A recent CBS News/New York Times poll confirmed what most of us already know: Trust in government is at an all-time low. According to the survey, nearly seven in 10 Americans feel they don’t have much say in what government does, and nearly four in five think our government is run by a few powerful interests….

It shouldn’t come as any surprise, then, that only one out of five Americans trust government to do what’s right most of the time. They don’t believe they have any power to affect public policy.

Jobless rate: worse for young

NYT, 4/17 — The global recession… was particularly hard on young people, whose unemployment rates rose much faster than those of adults….

“There are currently nearly 15 million youth unemployed in the [rich countries] about four million more than at the end of 2007….”

In the United States, the rate rose to 19.1 percent, from 11.1 percent….

For most people, the study said, the effects of youthful unemployment are temporary….

“But for disadvantaged youth lacking basic education, a failure in their first experience on the labor market is often difficult to make up and may expose them to long-lasting scarring effects.”

Japan can’t cure capitalist evils

NYT, 4/22 — Disclosure in October that almost one in six Japanese, or 20 million people, lived in poverty in 2007 stunned the nation….

Many Japanese, who cling to the popular myth that their nation is uniformly middle class, were further shocked to see that Japan’s poverty rate, at 15.7 percent, was close to the… figure of 17.1 percent in the United States, whose glaring social inequalities have long been viewed with scorn and pity here….

Years of deregulation of the labor market and competition with low-wage China have brought a proliferation of… low-paying jobs in Japan, economists say….

One in seven children lives in poverty….

The poor will not be able to pay for cram schools an other expenses to enable their children to compete in Japan’s high-pressure education system, consigning them to a permanent cycle of low-wage work.

“We are at risk of creating a chronic underclass.”

Food ads drag down child health

NYT, 4/20 — Last month, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group, gave a grade of F to 95 of 128 food and entertainment companies for their policies — or lack thereof — on marketing to children. This despite the… initiative… in which 16 major food and restaurant companies, representing about 80 percent of television food advertising expenditures, announced they would not market foods to children under 12 if they did not meet the companies’ own nutritional standards.

Unfortunately, there’s the rub. What a company like Kellogg’s regards as an acceptable amount of sugar in a serving of breakfast cereal may not be what a nutrition-wise parent would choose.

Less tax income? Fire teachers!

NYT, 4/21 — School districts around the country, forced to resort to drastic money-saving measures, are warning hundreds of thousands of teachers that their jobs may be eliminated in June….

In addition to teacher layoffs, districts are planning to close schools, cut programs, enlarge classes and shorten the school day, week or year to save money….

Some of the deepest cuts are in Los Angeles, where Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines sent notices to 5,200… employees last month, telling them that they were losing their jobs….

“I don’t see this being over in the year 2014-15,” Mr. Cortines added.

World capitalism keeps Africa poor

GW, 4/9 — More than $1.5 trillion may have flowed out of Africa illegally over the past four decades, most of it to western financial institutions…..

“This massive flow of illicit money out of Africa is facilitated by a global shadow financial system comprising tax havens, secrecy jurisdictions, disguised corporations, anonymous trust accounts, fake foundations, trade mis-pricing and money-laundering techniques.”

Capital loss has a devastating effect on development and attempts to alleviate poverty….

The report adds: “Developing countries lose at least $10 through illegal flight capital for every $1 they receive in external assistance.”

How US enriches human culture

NYT, 4/11 — “Bite Me,” Christopher Moore’s third novel about young San Francisco vampires, enters the hardcover fiction list at No. 5, one spot ahead of Seth Grahame-Smith’s supernatural history, “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.”