Bush's Shrinking Safety Zone

[tw]

From the NY Times of 2 Mar 2006:

U.S. Is Reducing Safety Penalties for Mine Flaws
In its drive to foster a more cooperative relationship with mining companies, the Bush administration has decreased major fines for safety violations since 2001, and in nearly half the cases, it has not collected the fines, according to a data analysis by The New York Times.

Federal records also show that in the last two years the federal mine safety agency has failed to hand over any delinquent cases to the Treasury Department for further collection efforts, as is supposed to occur after 180 days. ...

At a House oversight hearing on Wednesday, agency officials repeatedly cited the frequency of fines against Sago in the year before the accident as proof of aggressive enforcement. Exasperated, Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, replied that maybe those fines had little effect because many were for $60. That point set off applause from audience members.] ...

"Operators know that it's cheaper to pay the fine than to fix the problem," Mr. Addington said. "But they also know the cheapest of all routes is to not pay at all. It's pretty galling."

So while relations between government and industry get better, some trapped men in a Sago mine did not even have 55 gallon barrels storing 24 hours of emergency oxygen. Why should they? It's not required by law. They only had two hours worth of oxygen - whatever they had carried with them. Yes nobody thought the levees would be breached. That too is about good relations rather than being product oriented - solving problems.

Rush Limbaugh is also about good relations. Its called propaganda.