How many deaths will it take...

I wish we could someday add up the number of people who’ve died due to the Bush Administration’s quiet regulatory changes, flat-out refusals to enforce the law, abandonment of science, and indifference to competent governance.

This is all the untrendy stuff it’s too much work to think about: the changes to mercury regulations, the cancellation of anti-tuberculosis rules, the White House lies about post-9/11 air quality. (Plus, occasionally, things people eventually do come to notice, e.g., the systematic destruction of FEMA prior to Hurricane Katrina.)

Today’s looming tragedy is happening underground in West Virginia. Priority #1: to do everything humanly possible to save those 13 trapped miners. Then, after that, to ask why so many important mine safety rules have been abandoned or scaled back since January 2001. Mine safety ought still to be a huge issue, but that would cramp profits for the Republican party’s contributors, now, wouldn’t it? Read here, here, and here.