The Administration’s Theme
Via Corrente, we get this lovely story…
The families of the Crandall Canyon miner’s aren’t the only ones raising questions about the handling of the rescue effort.
Many news organizations and blogs are also now asking questions about the governments role and the man chosen to lead the rescue effort, Mine and Health Safety Administrator, Richard Stickler.
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Increasing attention is now being paid to Stickler, the federal government’s main mine man.
Stickler used to be a mining executive who – according to various media reports – ran mines which had several fatalities and “…an incident rate that was often twice the national average.”
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Also coming to light, is the fact that Stickler’s nomination to head the mine administration was twice rejected by congress and rejected when republicans were still in charge.
Rejected reportedly by senators who were concerned about Stickler’s safety record when he operated mines.
After his nomination was twice rejected by the Senate, President Bush gave Richard Stickler the mine safety job with a recess appointment.
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A Republican nominee by a Republican President rejected by a Republican Congress? How incompetent was this guy?
ABC News now notes it took the mine safety administration two days to take public control of the Crandall Canyon Mine.
ABC also adds, “Others were irate that [mine owner Bob] Murray was allowed to publicly predict success and contradict MSHA itself while agency officials quietly looked on.”
This business of putting incompetent people in charge of things is like a theme for this administration, isn’t it? I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… this administration is qualitatively different from any previous one I remember. And when the people at the very top are so incompetent that they cannot recognize the difference between quality and crap, they tend to fill their organization with other incompetent people. So we end up with incompetent people being in charge of a range of things, from planning a war to running the economy or being National Security Advisor or being in charge of the USDA or FEMA. Now, most of these things more or less run themselves to some degree, but every so often, not having someone who knows what’s going on in charge makes one heck of a difference.