HOW MUCH RESPONSIBILITY DOES BUSH HAVE FOR THE TRAGIC DEATHS AT THE SAGO COAL MINE IN WEST VIRGINIA?

While I was on the other side of the Atlantic, there was gigantic press coverage of the West Virginia mining disaster-- much bigger than the closer collapse of the German skating rink, for example. Ken's immediate response here at DWT, January 5th, hit the nail squarely on the head:"a mine company with no apparent concern except minimizing costs, running a non-union mine that has been plastered with safety violations, which it can afford to plaster its walls with since it has been assessed only chicken-feed fines by a regulatory system that has been (a) gutted budget- and staff-wise, and then (b) had the remaining positions filled with people whose ties are entirely with the mining industry." Good fast summary; Ken was always the smartest guy I knew.

I want to expand a little though, now that I've gotten back in the swing of things after my vacation: is Bush responsible for the deaths of those miners. Even when I was in Morocco, my instincts told me that the right-wing Republican ideological philosophy of government was at the bottom of the disaster. People who don't believe in the efficacy of government, except as a tool to further enrich the rich, are now in control of the machinery of government.

This weekend the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER ran a piece pointing out how the Bush Regime all but abandoned mine safety enforcement. "Davitt McAteer, who headed the mine-safety agency during the Clinton administration, said it had become a 'paper tiger.'" That's because "since the Bush administration took office in 2001, it has been more lenient than its predecessors toward mining companies facing serious safety violations, issuing fewer and smaller major fines and collecting less than half of the money that violators owed."

Bush and his incompetent, venal team disdainfully ignored explicit warning about Osama bin Laden attacking inside the U.S. in 2001. In 2002 he ignored explicit warnings about mine safety. In June of 2002 a Chicago Tribune reported on a call by United Mine Workers Association President Cecil Roberts for the Bush Regime "to fully fund the Mine Safety and Health Administration to ensure that coal mines are inspected more thoroughly and that the mine act is enforced more stringently." His own Labor Department's Inspector General decried an inability "to complete statutorily mandated inspections of... mine operations" because of Bush spending cuts. Congressional Democrats have been very worried about Bush's laissez faire approach to mine safety in general. And the Sago mine, in particular has been a GOP-inspired disaster waiting to happen. The WASHINGTON POST coverage was even more damning and the Joby Warrick piece "Safety Violations Have Piled Up At Coal Mine" would, in a sane society, lead directly to Bush's impeachment. "Time and again," the article begins, "over the past four years, federal mining inspectors documented the same litany of problems at central West Virginia's Sago Mine: mine roofs that tended to collapse without warning. Faulty or inadequate tunnel supports. A dangerous buildup of flammable coal dust."

These articles don't go near drawing a connection between the gigantic contributions the Coal Industry has been making to Bush and the Republicans and lax enforcement. Open Secrets has a great piece on Corporate Energy's legal political bribery. The section on coal is very revealing. "Few industries wagered more heavily on Republicans during the last elections than coal mining, which handed over 88 cents out of every campaign dollar it contributed to the GOP during 1999-2000. Its $3.7 million in total giving was almost three times what the coal industry had given during 1995-96, the previous presidential cycle. No doubt, some of that generosity had something with George W. Bush, who was the industry’s top recipient with just over $110,000 in contributions. Yet the industry’s jump in giving last year can be credited more to its stepped-up soft money contributions. Coal mining interests anted up almost $2 million worth of soft money checks during the last elections, three-quarters of which went to Republicans. That’s three times what the industry gave during 1995-96, when its soft money giving amounted to just over $324,000."

I find it endlessly fascinating that when you scan the list of who got the biggest payoffs from the coal mining industry, it's mostly the most corrupt and avaricious Republican salons whose names come up over and over and over whenever something crooked is being investigated. The #1 Senate recipient: Rick Santorum. The #1 House recipient: Bob Ney. Other serial criminals big time on the take from the coal industry who should be familiar to all DWT readers include Jim Talent, Denny Hastert, Dick Pombo, Tom DeLay, Roy Blunt, Heather Wilson and, of course, Conrad Burns. (Of course Bush raked in more than all of these crooks combined.)