When those miners died in West Virginia last year, a lot of the aim was at the White House and their lax enforcement of safety regulations. Just this past year, Bush issue an executive order putting a “political officer” at each enforcement agency, such as OSHA and the EPA. This officer will make sure the enforcement of safety regulations comply with the administrations policy.

This is the Republican idea of “businesses self regulating”, and now we got another example of how this principal is severely flawed:

Overly lax federal oversight and cost-cutting by BP were factors in a 2005 explosion at the oil giant’s Texas City refinery that killed 15 people and injured 170, the worst U.S. industrial accident since 1990, a government report found.

Though companies have plenty of safeguards for individual workers’ safety, there is a potentially deadly lack of sound procedures to measure process safety, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which released the report Tuesday.

At a public meeting Tuesday night where the board approved the report, Chairwoman Carolyn W. Merritt vowed that the agency would follow up on the report’s safety recommendations until they are adopted.

We need strict oversight of these companies. This serves as a safety insurance to the American worker. The right tries to say that this sounds like some communistic tactic. Well, as I said Bush has placed political officers in government enforcement agencies to insure the administrations “policy” is followed. I know of one other country that used to follow that same policy – The Soviet Union. Now which idea sounds like communism?