261,600 Tuberculosis infections; $920,000,000 in health care costs; 1,520 lives
According to a depressing but stunning article in today's Washington Postthat was the cost to the nation of Bush's appointees a OSHA spiking a regulation recommended by the agency's scientists:
Among the regulations proposed by OSHA's staff but scuttled by political appointees was one meant to protect health workers from tuberculosis. Although OSHA concluded in 1997 that the regulation could avert as many as 32,700 infections and 190 deaths annually and save $115 million, it was blocked by opposition from large hospitals.
and that's just ONE regulation, at one agency. Even just at OSHA there were so many more:
for example, take this sickening and scary tale
In early 2001, an epidemiologist at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration sought to publish a special bulletin warning dental technicians that they could be exposed to dangerous beryllium alloys while grinding fillings. Health studies showed that even a single day's exposure at the agency's permitted level could lead to incurable lung disease.
Yikes! But hey that's why we have OSHA right? To figure stuff like this out and protect us? So of course the bulletin was published without delay, right?
Not exactly:
After the bulletin was drafted, political appointees at the agency gave a copy to a lobbying firm hired by the country's principal beryllium manufacturer, The epidemiologist, Peter Infante, incorporated what he considered reasonable changes requested by the company and won approval from key directorates, but he bristled when the private firm complained again.
"In my 24 years at the Agency, I have never experienced such indecision and delay," Infante wrote in an e-mail to the agency's director of standards in March 2002. Eventually, top OSHA officials decided, over ...opposition from "the entire OSHA staff working on beryllium issues," to publish the bulletin with a footnote challenging a key recommendation the firm opposed.
Hey, what's a little incurable lung disease between friends? The important thing is that The Occupational Health and Safety Administrators kept their eyes on their REAL mission, which is making large companies happy. And lest you think I'm exaggerating; That what Bush's first OSHA director actually said to his career staff out loud even:
The agency's first director under Bush, John L. Henshaw, startled career officials by telling them in an early meeting that employers were OSHA's real customers, not the nation's workers. "Everybody was pretty amazed," one of those present recalled. "Our purpose is to ensure employee safety and health. . . . He just looked at things differently."
And Henshaw certainly made sure his "customers" were happy:
Within two years, Henshaw, an industrial hygienist who had worked for Monsanto and another chemical firm, withdrew 26 draft regulations on OSHA's public calendar, including rules meant to limit workplace exposure to air contaminants, highly hazardous chemicals, and shipyard and scaffolding hazards.
In many cases, the agency cited "resource constraints" as the reason. But Charles Gordon, a Labor Department lawyer who worked on OSHA regulations in the solicitor's office from 1975 until January, said that "all the work had been done" on many of the rules, including laborious, peer-reviewed risk assessments and economic analyses.
Henshaw, acting in concert with legislation passed by the Republican majority in Congress, quickly withdrew a proposed regulation -- drawn up during the Clinton administration -- meant to curtail ergonomic problems, which OSHA studies have said cause 60 percent of workplace injuries.
apparently not even the hazards of radiation in the workplace were sufficiently serious to move Henshaw to act.
In the spring, political appointees quietly scrapped work on another long-pending regulation of hazardous exposure to ionizing radiation in mailrooms, food warehouses, and hospitals and airports. It cited "resource constraints and other priorities" --the same reason officials gave for withdrawing more than a dozen regulatory proposals in 2001.
But really, what are the Odds that exposure to ionizing radiation, the first identified carcinogen ever, is harmful? No need to waste the government's valuable time worrying about that sort of nonsense.
There's so much more but you get the idea.
Have you gotten down on your knees or other favorite appendage and thanked God, The Universe or Nothing however you do or do not perceive him, that Obama got elected? No? Perhaps you've been too busy criticizing his personnel and personal decisions about who to have come pray at his inauguration and fill up his cabinet to realize what was at stake in this election and what we really won.
That's a big mistake, and it might be time to step back from squinting at sapling to see the whole forest blooming. Control of the executive branch does not mean only having the reigns of one or two high-profile cabinet officers, but an entire alphabet soup of regulatory agencies, commissions, boards, panels, etc that safeguard our food, our water our workplaces, etc etc etc.
And all that mighty machinery of federal power, which has been damaged by incompetence, malfeasance and greed in the last 8 years, is finally returning to saner hands. That is a cause for rejoicing and optimism my friends. Be deeply troubled by who Obama has running the Pentagon if you like, be troubled by his choice of Secretary of State if you must. Dissent is a good an honorable thing in a democracy and informed, passionate and principled dissent is the best kind.
BUT also take a step back and draw a deep breath. Your life will be much more impacted by policies, regulations and response times of the people running HHS, or HUD, or even god forbid, FEMA, than they ever will the DOD. OSHA is far more likely to affect and preserve your well-being that the State Department, the Treasury and DHS combined ever will. And all of those places and agencies, are, thanks to Obama, being returned to friendly hands. Yes it would be nice, if this transition also sparked a renaissance of progressive ideals at every level of government; but right now I'm too busy being ecstatic at the possibility of the return of trustworthy, effective, and efficient government to swaet the big policy stuff right now.
There are people who will tell you that there are no differences between the parties, The loudly proclaim that it matter not whether Democrats or Republicans control things because they are all in thrall to the same corporate masters. Put simply, such people are either brain damaged or delusional to the point that I wouldn't allow them access to sharpened cutlery without close supervision.
Let's compare and contrast shall we?
Current and former career officials at OSHA say that such sagas were a recurrent feature during the Bush administration, as political appointees ordered the withdrawal of dozens of workplace health regulations, slow-rolled others, and altered the reach of its warnings and rules in response to industry pressure.
The result is a legacy of unregulation common to several health-protection agencies under Bush: From 2001 to the end of 2007, OSHA officials issued 86 percent fewer rules or regulations termed economically significant by the Office of Management and Budget than their counterparts did during a similar period in President Bill Clinton's tenure, according to White House lists.
86%! From the Agency in charge of workplace SAFETY and health-which is to say YOUR safety and health in the place where you spend the majority of your waking life. Worse yet, as described above, even when OSHA DID regulate, they were only to happy to water down the regulations at the behest of the affected industries.
Now compare this with Team Obama's early interaction with industry lobbyists:
Breaking with tradition, he has banned Lobbyist contributions to his inaugural committee
He has set up anti lobbying rules for his transition team called that are the strictest ever. And as a coup de grace, his transition team has kept their promise to post on Change.gov any policy documents that are given to them when they meet with outside groups including lobbyists
THAT's What we won in this election. We won a chance to have our government work for us rather than the highest paying lobbyist. We won a chance not to loose another 1,500 of our fellow citizens to disease simply because a large hospital chain finds it it unprofitable to prevent their deaths. We won a chance to have people protecting our health and safety who see us, and not our employers, as their "customers".
We won a chance to believe in, and trust government again; and I for one am extremely grateful