"Seven workers were also hurt when the crane fell at about 1:30 p.m. local time (2:30 p.m. EDT) but only two remained in area hospitals, and their injuries were not life-threatening, LysondellBasell Houston refinery spokesman David Roznowski told a news conference late on Friday.

"All of those killed were employees of the crane's owner Deep South Crane & Rigging of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he said."

How is the Bush administration responsible for these crane collapses and fatalities?

The AFL-CIO blog reports: "The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that between 64 and 82 construction workers are killed and 263 are injured working around cranes and derricks each year.

"But just as OSHA has failed to issue so many vital safety standards during the Bush administration—combustible dust, personal protective gear, diacetyl (a cancer-causing chemical) and more—it has yet to issue a crane and derrick safety standard, despite the urging of both industry and unions.

"Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, took to task OSHA chief Edwin Foulke for failing to protect workers and a “tragic pattern of inaction” on important safety rules. The remarks came at a recent hearing on the deadly Imperial Sugar Co. explosion that killed 13 workers in Georgia last month. (Click here to read Miller’s statement.)

"The folks at OSHA Underground—a workplace safety blog run by OSHA employees who post anonymously to protect their jobs—have tracked the nearly four-year delay in issuing a crane and derrick standard.

"In July 2004, a 23-member industry and union advisory committee that OSHA established issued its recommendations and a proposed standard on crane safety. It contains specific rules on crane assembly.

"In January, three and a half years after the industry/union advisory committee issued its proposed crane and derrick safety standard, OSHA has yet to even issue a proposed rule. Noah Connell, OSHA’s construction standards chief, defended the agency’s slow pace."

The Bush adminstration's OSHA footdragging and stonewalling resulted in deaths and injuries in Manhattan and now in Houston and average 22 workers killed yearly in crane related incidents.

As another AFL-CIO blog states: "According to the AP report, Texas, which led the nation in crane-related deaths in 2005 and 2006, requires no state or city oversight or licensing of crane operations.  The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires cranes to be inspected each year but this is a “self-policing” operation for owners. Although inspection records are supposed to be kept, they do not have to be submitted to OSHA."

Just as the deregulatory, no regulatory, corporate self-regulatory policies of the Bush regime have led to the current  economic catastrophe, this same dereliction of government oversight of worker safety, left to "self-policiing" corporation discretion, makes the Bush administration's politicized departments and agencies like Labor and OSHA complicit in the deaths of these workers.