The Washington Post is running a three-part series on how the WHS* have manipulated and basically hijacked the regulatory process of the federal government for the benefit of their corporate cronies and fat cat friends.
Sunday's was about the methodical way in which OSHA was turned from an agency designed to protect worker safety into one more concerned with corporate profit.
In the past 3 1/2 years, OSHA, the branch of the Labor Department in charge of workers' well-being, has eliminated nearly five times as many pending standards as it has completed. It has not started any major new health or safety rules, setting Bush apart from the previous three presidents, including Ronald Reagan.Monday's was about the effect of a law slipped into a slipped into a massive appropriations bill in 2000. It's called the Data Quality Act, and it's
a little-known piece of legislation that, under President Bush's Office of Management and Budget, has become a potent tool for companies seeking to beat back regulation.What it does is require that all reports on scientific matters from all government agencies get cleared through the Office of Management and Budget, putting that one politicized office in the position to prevent the release of any undesired (or undesirable) scientific data and to block regulations based on industry claims that the research doesn't meet standards of "reliability" because it conflicts with the industry's own self-interested numbers.
Tuesday's is to be example of twisting regulations with a little tweak. (The quote is from a sidebar to Monday's article.)
By changing the word "waste" to "fill" in a regulation covering coal mining, Bush appointees have allowed an increase in the destruction of mountaintops in Appalachia.The pieces are a little longer than we've come to expect from newspapers, but it's good to see some resources devoted to digging below the obvious and the press releases. I'd urge you to read the whole series.
*WHS = White House Sociopaths
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