Crandall minersPhoto: Utah American Energy Inc./Handout/Reuters, from August 14, 2007.

We were coming in to work this morning when we heard the news.

Three rescue workers have died, and six have been injured, at the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah. They were caught in the further collapse of a mine whose owner, Robert Murray, has been trying to say and do anything he can — including inventing mythical “earthquakes” (see also here) — to excuse himself from any sort of responsibility for their fates.

The scary thing is, as this NPR article notes, this is by no means the first time Murray’s been in trouble over safety issues. But somehow, he manages to escape any serious consequences for his actions.

Why is this? How can this be?

One possible reason is hinted at by the presence of Mexican immigrant workers at the mine. No information seems to be available on their status, whether documented or not. But it wouldn’t surprise me if Murray, whose union-hating ways are well known, thought — as do many employers — that the best way to keep his workers from fighting for better wages and safety was to make sure that a certain portion of his workforce is made up of workers that have no legal means to force him to treat his people properly.

Another, more apparent reason, would be in the decided pattern of laissez-faire malignant neglect promoted by the twelve-year Republican Congress and the six years of Republican White House occupants Bush and Cheney. Just check out this bit of news from the Huffington Post on Richard Stickler, the guy Bush and Cheney picked to oversee mine and miners’ safety in America:

The man who will oversee the federal government’s investigation into the disaster that has trapped six workers in a Utah coal mine for over a week was twice rejected for his current job by senators concerned about his own safety record when he managed mines in the private sector.

President George W. Bush resorted to a recess appointment in October 2006 to anoint Richard Stickler as the nation’s mine safety czar after it became clear he could not receive enough support even in a GOP-controlled Senate.

In the wake of the January 2006 Sago mine disaster in West Virginia, senators from both sides of the aisle expressed concern that Stickler was not the right person to combat climbing death rates in the nation’s mines.

Democrats, led by West Virginia Sens. Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, questioned the safety record of the mines Stickler ran when he was a coal company executive.

Over the course of his career in the private sector, Stickler managed various mining operations for Bethlehem Steel subsidiary BethEnergy Mines, Inc.

The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette reported in January 2006 that three workers died at BethEnergy mines managed by Stickler during the 1980s and 1990s.

Gazette reporter Ken Ward, Jr. wrote that in the worst of the incidents, one mechanic was killed, and eight other workers were injured when the portal bus that was carrying them to the mine-shaft bottom derailed. A report later said the portal bus had not been properly maintained.

There’s much more at the link, but what strikes me is this: The guy’s so frickin’ vile that Bush couldn’t even get him past Senate Republicans, who usually never see a worker-shafting clown they don’t like.

In the words of Hunter Stockton Thompson: How long, O Lord, how long?

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