space shuttle, space: 2003_05_01_spewingforth

PERMALINK Posted 8:46 PM by Jordan

And now for a little politics...

You political junkies may have noticed this article in the New York

Times (which you can no longer read without paying because the

idiotic Times charges for any article more than a week old!) last

week:

National Desk | April 22, 2003, Tuesday

BUSH'S AIDES PLAN LATE SPRINT IN '04

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and RICHARD W. STEVENSON (NYT) 2049 words

Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 1 , Column 1

President Bush's advisers have drafted a re-election strategy built

around staging the latest nominating convention in the party's

history, allowing Mr. Bush to begin his formal campaign near the

third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and to enhance his

fund-raising advantage, Republicans close to the White House say.

Michael Tomasky has an article on the American Prospect website

contrasting the Democrats' spirited condemnation of Senator Rick

Santorum's anti-gay remarks, with their feeble response to the

Republicans' decision break a "gentlemen's agreement" and hold the

latest convention in American history so that they can stage it (in

New York) as close to September 11 as possible.

And they in essence acknowledge, discreetly but quite openly, that

the purpose is to squeeze as much political gain out of the

attacks, and the national-security issue, as they can.

This is a many-layered offense -- to the traditions and integrity

(such that remains) of the American political process, to the

firefighters and police officers who did not give their lives so

that Bush could later use their deaths to get a bounce in the

polls, to every American citizen who doesn't drink Karl Rove's

Kool-Aid, and to plain decency.

Tomasky offers four possible Democratic responses: hell raising by

Democratic Senators, rescheduling their Convention for late August,

not doing a Convention at all (thereby saving the money for the

campaign), and fourth:

Plan, or encourage others to plan, a serious, thoughtful, humble,

dignified series of counter-events for the week the Republicans are

in New York that show how real Americans -- Republicans who wish to

participate included -- commemorate somber occasions.

The last suggestion sounds like a good role for Labor.

But Tomasky's a pessimist - or a realist: "Of course, none of this

will happen. The Republicans will have their way, and Bush will

maul them on the security issue. But, by God, Democrats will have

the gay vote."

But if there's any message we can take away from this, it's that

it's never too early to start thinking of strategies for Regime

Change '04. After all, there's only 629 days, 19 hours, 29 minutes,

12 seconds until Inauguration Day 2005.

PERMALINK Posted 12:05 AM by Jordan

OSHA Kills

Read it here.

If you check out OSHA's Website, you'll find a page entitled OSHA

Saves Lives. "Not so," say "scholars" at the Mercatus Center. Despite

OSHA's director John Henshaw's assertion that "Safety and health add

value to businesses, workplaces and people's lives," a recent study by

two authors from the anti-government Mercatus Institute argues that,

in fact, OSHA inspections actually cause more workplace fatalities.

How so, you ask? Well I can't begin to describe the statistical

methods that the two authors, Jonathan Klick and Thomas Stratmann,

both of George Mason University, used to come to this conclusion in

their study. I'll leave the deconstruction to those who can understand

statistics better than I. You can also read a simpler, abbreviated

version of the study if visit your local newsstand and pick up the

latest copy of Regulation magazine, published by the right-wing,

libertarian Cato Institute. (It doesn't appear in electronic form.)

The most interesting part is their explanation of this phenomenon.

From the Regulation article, here it is in a nutshell:

Surprisingly, we found that fines have no statistically significant

effect on death rates and increasing inspections actually leads to

significantly higher fatality rates. On average, we found that an

additional 100 inspections in a given state-industry in a

particular year leads to between 1 and 2.5 additional deaths in

that industry

What accounts for such a surprising result?...When the firm

increases its efforts because of OSHA enforcement, the worker

rationally substitutes away from his own efforts. That is, if the

firm is doing more to protect the worker, the worker has less

incentive to protect himself. (emphases added)

So, let me get this straight. You have a bunch of employees in a

dangerous workplace. OSHA inspects the workplace, finds violations and

cites the company, which starts paying more attention to workplace

safety. But, "increased worker safety measures induce riskier

behaviors on the part of workers," according to the abstract of the

study.

The typical "rational" worker, figuring that OSHA has forced his

employer to be more responsible, now "has less incentive to protect

himself." No sooner does the employer finally get serious about safety

then workers suddenly start jumping down into unshored trenches,

crawling down into unmonitored confined spaces, sticking themselves

with HIV-contaminated needles and climbing tall buildings without fall

protection. "Respirators? We don't need no stinking respirators!"

It must be so, because, according to its web page, Mercatus boasts

that "We draw upon both real world experience and wide reading in

multiple academic disciplines."

The report is almost not worth analyzing, but a few things stick out.

Most glaring is the authors' assumption that injuries and fatalities

are caused by workers' unsafe behaviors and actions.(For more on

behavioralism, see here and here.) When management takes care of

safety (under pressure from OSHA), workers somehow won't feel they

have to "behave" safely. Well if the authors actually had an "real

world experience" they'd know that the reason workers are injured and

killed at work is because they are exposed to unsafe conditions and

hazards.

One thing they did get right. If workers are not involved in the

employer's safety program -- in identifying and controlling hazards --

the program is unlikely to be effective.

So who are these guys? Cato is a well endowed "libertarian" Washington

D.C. think tank that "seeks to broaden the parameters of public policy

debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles

of limited government, individual liberty, free markets and peace."

They publish Regulation magazine, which regularly features

anti-regulation and articles about the benefits of abolishing OSHA.

The Mercatus Center is part of George Mason University. They are known

for coming out with annual reports on the (high) cost of regulations

to American business , and other papers arguing for the abolition of

OSHA. The director of the Mercatus Regulatory Studies Program is Wendy

Gramm, George H.W. Bush's Administrator for Information and Regulatory

Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget and Executive Director

of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief.

Not appearing on Gramm's resume is the fact that she is the wife of

former right-wing Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) and a former member of the

Enron Board of Directors. The George Mason/Mercatus campus also

happened to be where the Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao decided to

hold one of her three ergonomics "forums," after the Congress and Bush

Administration repealed the ergonomics standard.

I am nominating this study as a future member of the Loony Right-Wing

Theory Hall of Fame. It's reminiscent of a theory pushed by the Office

of Management and Budget under George Bush I which postulated that

health and safety regulations led to higher worker fatality rates

because regulations cost businesses money, forcing them to pay workers

less. The lower one's income, the worse their diet, leading to all

kinds of bad health effects.

Oh, and the surprising conclusion of the Regulation article: "If

workers effectively undo safety regulations, it is doubtful that OSHA

can do much to "save lives, prevent injuries, and protect the health

of American workers."

For this I stay up late at night?

Labels: Mindnumbingly Stupid Stuff

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