There are still 15 fatalities from 2008 pending before a review committee at MSHA. It is premature to claim the safest year on record.

Human life is the cost of mining. It's a cost we as well as Stickler, are quite willing to pay. Convenience always comes by creating a dispensable class of people, which mine workers are. The fact that Stickler has worked in the mines himself doesn't make this any less unfortunate or ironic, in fact it makes it more so.

Mine owners can murder and walk free in Utah.

Stickler's "A" Team was responsible for the deaths of the 3 rescuers. There were plenty of red flags that any competent civil engineer, especially safety engineer, could read to decide not to send the rescuers in as they did.

The nation needs to combat unchallenged big business anti labor by supporting union organizations for labor support and credit unions to compete with big banks. Bush promised an ownership society and delivered the citizens tax payers nothing more than ownership in big business debt. The working class must organize or become total slaves to the ruling class.

With the high risk of driving I bet more traveling salesmen die a year than coal miners. Construction work is deadly too. But we could care less. Many many more smokers than miners die every year yet we still sell the stuff. No outcry.

Not to belittle the danger of coal mining, 1 death is really too much. But there are many more jobs just as dangerous as mining that could use some attention, millions of dollars in development & aid, or a monument as well.

Stickler was a part of the foxes guarding the hen house gang. The MSHA as well as the entire Labor Department spent the entire Bush administration improving the lot for businesses and undermining worker safety precautions. The MSHA was just as ative in eliminating safety programs and protocols as any.

For this editorial to suggest that Stickler was somehow working on the side of the miners for his entire tenure is misleading and erroneous. He certainly put on a good face for the administration after the disaster but there is no public record that he did anything to prevent disasters of this nature. On the contrary, he was one of the many who enabled this tragedy.

With a new administration, it is time to undo the unfortunate anti-worker legacy of the Bush administration.