(1) West Virginia coal firms raised $275,000 for Bush.
(2) The Bush administration cut 170 positions from federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and has not proposed a single new mine-safety standard or rule during its tenure.
(3) Only 1 miner survives West Virginia coal mine incident.
Now, am I suggesting that Bush is responsible for the Sago explosion? Of course not. He’s no more responsible for that than he is for creating a hurricane called Katrina, which subsequently causes levees to break.
But both incidents should provide an abject lesson in what happens when people who disdain government are put in charge of a government.
UPDATE: Here’s the quote of the day, although it is nearly five years old. It comes from a Washington Monthly article in their Jan/Feb 2005 edition:
At the annual meeting of the West Virginia Coal Association a few months after Bush’s inauguration, the group’s director told 150 industry executives, “You did everything you could to elect a Republican president. [Now] you are already seeing in his actions the payback.”