Connect the Dots: Karl Rove's Politics Uber Alles Strategy and the Utah Mine Disaster
What makes Karl Rove's politics uber alles strategy chilling is connecting the dots between it and the Utah mining disaster.
Rove's unprecedented use of federal assets for political gain, laid out in yesterday's Washington Post, meant that every tool at his disposal was employed to help foster his goal of a permanent Republican majority. "It was all politics, all the time," Rep. Henry Waxman told WaPo.
"It was total commitment," marveled Rep. Thomas Davis III, who worked closely with Rove in 2002 on the GOP's House reelection campaign. "We knew history was against us, and [Rove] helped coordinate all of the accoutrements of the executive branch to help with the campaign."
These accouterments included, in the words of the Post, "enlisting political appointees at every level of government in a permanent campaign that was an integral part of [Rove's] strategy to establish electoral dominance." But Rove's plan involved much more than having Cabinet officials make election year visits bearing federal goodies to the districts of embattled Republicans; it also meant using the government's regulatory mechanisms to reward major GOP contributors. Major contributors such as Big Coal.
Coal mining interests have donated more than $12 million to federal candidates since the Bush-era began with the 2000 election cycle, with 88% of that money -- $10.6 million -- going to Republicans.
And what did that largess buy the coal mining industry? Mine safety regulators far more interested in looking out for the financial well-being of mine owners than for the physical well-being of miners.
Exhibit A is Bush's "mine safety" czar, Richard Stickler, whose agency both approved the controversial mining technique used at the Crandall Canyon Mine before the collapse, and oversaw the rescue operation.
Stickler is a former coal company manager with such a lousy safety record at the companies he'd run that his nomination as head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration was twice rejected by Senators from both parties, forcing Bush to sneak him in the back door with a recess appointment.
In other words, the guy the White House tapped to protect miners is precisely the kind of executive the head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration is supposed to protect miners from. And now Stickler is the one who will lead the "investigation" into what happened in Utah -- unless there is enough public outcry to force a truly independent investigation.
Of course, industry-friendly regulators like Stickler have been the rule under Bush, not the exception. Indeed, Bush's first mine safety czar was Dave Lauriski, a former mining executive who had earned a reputation for aggressively defending the interests of mine owners. For chapter and verse on Lauriski, read this terrific article by Ken Ward, Jr. in the Washington Monthly, but here is the nub of the matter: Lauriski took office promising mine owners that he would "collaborate more with stakeholders on regulatory initiatives" and become "less confrontational" with mine operators.
Exactly what did he mean by "less confrontational"? According to Ward, during his tenure, Lauriski "filled [MSHA's] top jobs with former industry colleagues, dropped more than a dozen safety proposals initiated during the Clinton administration, and cut almost 200 of the agency's 1,200 coal mine inspectors. Mine-safety experts have linked many of these actions to the causes of deadly mine safety accidents since 2001." Among the mine-safety regulations Lauriski dropped was one that would have deepened investigations of mining accidents.
No doubt Murray and the owners of the coal mines where over 170 miners have died since Lauriski gutted those safety regulations are happy that he did.
Lauriski resigned after 60 Minutes revealed that the MSHA had improperly awarded no-bid contracts to coal industry companies to which he was tied.
It's worth noting that the person Bill Clinton appointed to head MSHA, J. Davitt McAteer, was not a coal-industry insider -- indeed, he had been a key force behind the 1969 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, had worked with Ralph Nader on workplace safety reforms, and was running a public-interest law firm focused on occupational safety when Clinton tapped him. He therefore came to the job with a very different perspective than the one required by Rove's objective of using government agencies as accoutrements for the GOP's permanent campaign.
Putting foxes in charge of the henhouse has been standard operating procedure for Rove's hyper-politicized White House. The long list of industry hacks given key slots at federal agencies will forever stand as the ultimate tribute to Rove's effectiveness in turning the federal government into an arm of the Republican Party -- and a payback machine for those that funded it. For a primer on the hackocracy, check out the New Republic, TomPaine.com, and the Denver Post.
In far too many cases, these cynical appointments that put the Party's interest above the public interest, have left our country less safe, our environment more polluted, our fellow citizens less healthy -- and, in the case of the Crandall Canyon Mine, three of them dead, and six others in all likelihood entombed in the mine forever.
Karl Rove may be on his way out the door, but the destructive legacy of his politicization of the federal government will be with us for many years to come.
Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
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Thanks, Arianna for another telling post.
In an administration which has put the foxes into every hen house you could subsitute any industry for 'coal' and the regulators are the foxes.
I said in 2001 to my sister that it seemed to me the Bush agenda was to turn this country into a 3rd world country. I believe it is coming to fruition.
Rove is a Nazi zealot. He should be tried and imprisoned for his abuses but of course, that won't happen. I suspect he was a fan of Goebbels and that crowd.
Honestly I am sick to death of these people who think they know what is best for the rest of us suckers and abuse power ad nauseum.
When it comes to squandering tax payer money while indigent and children and lower income families are suffering is obscene. But when it comes to allowing company profits to allow these senseless accidents that could easily be prevented by safety enforcement to take precedense then that is illegal in my opinion.
I hope the bastards get what's coming to them, starting with Rove. In fact, I hope he sees the end of his life with such terror he confesses all his sins before going quite mad. Now that's a show I'd tune in for!
As always Arriana, you have found the core of the problem. The Bush administration is nothing more than a crime family, using it's power to wield influence for more power in a never ending cycle of corporate greed. It's as though Bush thought his job was to be President of the Republican party, first, and of the nation and it's people, last.
Whether they're pushing Katrina victims out of their homes to build condo's for rich people, of miners down unsafe shafts, the story is always the same:
Never have so many sacrificed so much for so few.
Oh, so that's why he beat feet! Silly me, his work is done, ans the caretakers house in Paraguay is finished, & the fence is electrified.
Is it for really true that Paraguay has no ex-tradition treaty with the US? Can somebody confirm what I've heard?
Dogman, the information I've found has been contradictory.
Some claim they don't while others say they do but don't enforce it because the government is so corrupt.
I would venture a guess that the country doesn't extradite or Bush would not have bought property there.
Hi, Milo9. The answer is because of corporate dominance of everything...media, oil, chemical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, you name it, including politicians. Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rice, etc. should all have been removed from office and prosecuted at least as war criminals if not for treason. They haven't been because both democrat's and republican's "jobs" depend on corporate lobbyist money, so that is who they represent, not us. Hollyweird should start awarding these congresspersons and senators Oscars for pretending to represent "the people." The fact is that they are all owned by corporations so the stories are made less important than Anna Nicole Smith and who won on American Idol.
Please impeach them all -- or at least try. It would be refreshing to see you have to marshall some actual facts to support your repeated accusations.
Corporations don't vote. Lobbyists don't vote. Unions and Chambers of Commerce don't vote. People do, and we, the people, are getting the government we've earned.
This isn't the government I earned. Some of us have been fighting these right wing megalo-maniacs
for over 25 years. People called us crazy and marginalized us as left wing nut cases, or, at best, ignored us. Turns our we were right all along. Now it is just too da--ed late.
Just like Scaredy Squirrel never leaves his nut tree because 'it's way too dangerous out there', haven't the Democrats had enough yet?
If Nancy Pelosi will not take the lead to IMPEACH Bush & Co. now, we can kiss this hanging shred of the Constitution 'goodbye' and establish a precedent for much scarier presidency's to come.
Which part of the Constitution has been undermined? What, exactly, are you afraid of? And how would impeachment help?
I think the TRUTH, Arianna, is that as bad as this administration has been, Hillary is no less beholding to the same lobbies and industries that Karl seems to have been working for, and indeed still seems to be representing. While Bill Clinton had tremendously greater conscience about his appointees to federal positions than the preznutz has shown, they were band-aids at best and in reality changed little in ANY industry's practices permanently.
I have no faith that the dems current course, or their apparently already chosen candidate, will make ANY concrete progress against the corruption that runs OUR government behind the scenes. I've become convinced OUR government spends far more of OUR taxed energies on perfecting their smoke and mirrors shell-game, than doing real progressive and compassionate work for the citizens (witness SSP).
If half the effort put into prevaricating and misdirecting the TRUTH, for 'our benefit' continually, were used to actually CHANGE this accepted form of campaign corruption by those "...real Americans" with the most money, ALL citizens might again have their votes mean something.
Until then, every vote we make for the status quo only serves to make 'US' a part of the problem ALSO.
I just heard some reverand on CNN say, "There's no more closed mind than the one that's open to everything." THIS is exactly the type of double-talk BS that WE must fight at every turn, if WE have ANY desire to preserve the freedoms set down in OUR Constitution. We must ALL refuse to allow OUR reality to be redefined by the forces of greed that want to own US.
Come on. What Bush has done to the federal regulatory system is unprecedented -- and it's criminal. But even if one could compare what he's done to Clinton or anyone else (and you can't, at least not legitimately), what difference does that make? Every single time Bush is caught breaking the law, the Regressives try to find an analogy in someone else's conduct?
What ever happened to conservatives who actually had personal responsibility instead of using it as just another political catch-phrase?
Uh, and by the way, NoFactsJustTruth, facts and truth are actually the same thing? (True facts being redundant and all that. Get it?)
Have we really gotten to the point where Regressives now actually believe they're entitled to their own facts, and that facts are what you can convince someone is true? That's called sophistry. And that's the hallmark of this entire Administration.
Sophistry, thus is not only the current administration's hallmark, but that of "We're losing the war" folk, or the Bush is responsible for 9/11, Katrina, that bridge in Minn. and now the UTah mine thing. I'm sure he's to blame for some tsunamis, world hunger, and global warming... repetition is bad science for the truth (global warming is real but has to do more with the sun than with fossil fuels but you never here that) but seems to good job in getting people to believe something is true or fact even when it is not, on both ends of the spectrum. Think Pavlov's Dog, hating Bush makes your mouth water, you click at the voting booth and you think you will get fed, because the Dems told you they would feed you, but they don't (Democratic mandate to end the war was their own claim for victory in the elcetion, but they fail to deliver, because they never really had the power to end the war, they just wanted your vote).
Typo: SSP should've been SPP - Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. It is a big-business attempt to possibly subvert the Constitutions and sovereignty of the 3 nations and create a North American Union.
Remember the results of neo-CONS!!!
We've got to take our country back!
http://OsiSpeaks.org or http://OsiSpeaks.org
Amen my friend. One more war, Class war. And then wealth and corporate power must be closely watched and regulated. Everytime the powerful have been entrusted with regulating their own predation/depredation over society they have failed. Does that surprise anybody anymore.
My my my said the spider to the fly.
I just learned Leona Helmsley was a Democrat!!!!
This class war you speak of should be aimed everywhere...
http://www.topix.com/forum/topstories/TJH9AE9M87F5J64BL
Direct quote from the just published REAGAN
> DIARIES.
>
> The entry is dated May 17, 1986.
>
> 'A moment I've been dreading. George brought his
> ne're-do-well son around this morning and asked
> me to find the kid a job. Not the political one
> who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around
> here all the time looking shiftless. This
> so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never
> had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at
> The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a
> contributing editor or something. That looks
> like easy work.'
ha! now thats the kind of bashing I can appreciate. Shows you think there Woodyy, not just regurgitate leftist propaganda. I like a smart progressive, makes me want to be one.
Dog,
Did you perhaps wander in here by accident?
It's a LIBERAL site, so you may have to expect LIBERAL comments and thoughts.
Thank you.
BB,
Please reconsider accepting this comment. I feel that it in no way violates ANY rule, and is in fact a direct response to an accepted comment. What's more non-acceptance represents an unfair blocking of defense of myself and my ideology.
Thank you. Veru much.
Instead he ended up president.
that looks like easy work
Reagan didn't write that--it's a hoax--but how I wish he had.
That quote is a piece of satire written by Michael Kinsley.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/kinsley.asp
Those people are there to GUT regulatory agencies. They live in a fantasy world of infinite resources.
Excellent! Hopefully, the mass media will find the intestinal fortitude to stay with this mining tragedy long enough to fully expose yet one more example of the corrupt cronyism, non-compassionate greed, abuse of power, and arrogant inept leadership of the Bush/Cheney administration. Karl Rove's resignation should not sway Congress from fully investigating and exposing those responsible for all of these scandals. Rove - and his masters who still possess and infect the White House - must be exorcised or cut out like cancer from all positions of power so that our democratic republic can begin a much needed process of healing and reform.
The legacy of the thugs will be with us for a long time, alright.
But I'm wondering if this might finally be the smoking gun.
As far as I'm concerned, Stickler's official actions led directly to the deaths of those miners. This simply must be independently investigated.
If you or I knowingly endangered another's life - and that risky action resulted in that person actually dying...well, we'd be in some deep shit.
In fact, manslaughter would no doubt be charged.
And here, well, no one can say Stickler didn't directly impact safety at that mine.
But the real smoking gun here goes all the way to the top.
Past Karl, past all the little thugs.
Straight to the idiot himself who knew all about the plan.
And knew all about the risks, but defied Congress anyway.
You might say his fingerprints are all over this one.
No erasing that appointment.
Raven, I would like to read you my poetry at coffee shop in Havana, but its to progressive for Castro and Raul said I can't have any friends over.
No erasing that appointment.
'nother Dog,
Something about "those who read their poetry in public likely also have other disgusting habits."
Are you a MIME, too?
Please, just be a neocon, OK?
Thank you.
Maybe other regulatory bodies, say the F.C.C., can be examined for subversion by the the Bush Administration. How can story after story that is damaging to Bush or his corporate allies be dumped never to be heard of again except in the blogoshere. Pardon me but it begs for a conspiracy theory.
This is the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" in it's fruition. Mocking those who tried to expose it was just a diversionary tactic. Some day it will be exposed that Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, King George I and II, are all part of this conspiracy. The KKK and the John Birch Society are behind this. Google H.L. Hunt for some background.
Democrats need to expose these purposeful guttings of regulatory agencies for what they are--reckless and criminal endangerment. The same Republican impulses deregulated savings and loan institutions that led to massive legalized embezzlement. Deregulating energy led to Enron's arrogant mismanagement and California's energy crisis. Not enforcing environmental regulations has harmed Americans and the world.
Attacking the culture of corruption is more than talking about the Congressional page scandals or the loss of weapons in Iraq because of laissez faire administrative practices. If the Dems want to win on the issue of corruption, Republican involvement in gutting regulations should be front and center. Nice parallels are there for the speeches and the attack ads.
Let's keep reminding the electorate that Republicans care mostly for their big interests instead of the country they so loudly pledge their allegiance to.
I remember Bill Clinton at a news conference in 2003 - something to the effect: "If Bush is elected in 2004, you will not recognize your country by 2008".
Once again and this time very sadly, Bill Clinton was right.
They're abandoning those men in that hole. What more needs to be said about the "leadership" of the federal government?
Just speculation, but it'd be interesting to see how much C&D Distributors of Lexington, South Carolina, winners of the $1 million contract for two washers, contributed to the RNC and its candidates.
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