The Coal Companies Got the Mine, the Taxpayers Get the Shaft.

Coal companies were supposed to purchase bonds to pay for cleaning up their mines after they extracted the coal. But a shitload of them didn't. They were allowed to "self-bond"; they merely promised to do it and cited the fact that they were doing well financially.

But now, with coal companies going Tango Uniform, guess who's going to get stuck with the cost of the cleanup?

No prizes if you guessed "the government."

For all the blather on the Right of "socialism", they miss the fact that we have capitalistic socialism in this country, at least for the very big players: They get to reap the rewards, but the risks fall on the government, on you and me.

If you ran a small business and you left a mess behind that the government had to clean up, they'd figure out a way to toss your ass in jail. But if you run a big coal company or an oil company or a chemical company, you can trash the environment and the worst that'll happen is a pesky fine. And if you go out of business, you wan walk away and you won't even have to pay that.

The socialism in this country is a safety-net for the oligarchs, the very people who have been energetically destroying the safety-nets for everyone else.