Bush Political Appointees Rushing To Relax Workplace Toxin Rules

Political appointees at the Department of Labor are moving with unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers' on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins.

The agency did not disclose the proposal, as required, in public notices of regulatory plans that it filed in December and May. Instead, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao's intention to push for the rule first surfaced on July 7, when the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) posted on its Web site that it was reviewing the proposal, identified only by its nine-word title.

The text of the proposed rule has not been made public, but according to sources briefed on the change and to an early draft obtained by The Washington Post, it would call for reexamining the methods used to measure risks posed by workplace exposure to toxins. The change would address long-standing complaints from businesses that the government overestimates the risk posed by job exposure to chemicals.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[holeybuybull]

Now we have proof that this administration if full of closet Darwinists. They're attempting to speed up the evolutionary process for the human species. Mutate or die. The fundamentalist support for the Republicans has now evaporated.

[Mark701]

Welcome back to 1950.

[fact finder]

Neo-con and Bush policy; If you are not dead or incapacitated 30 seconds after you walk through the door it is safe.

[syllepsis]

>Seminario said she was stunned that the administration would consider the rule its top priority...

"This is a guarantee to keep any more worker safety regulation from ever coming out of OSHA," Michaels said. "This is being done in secrecy, to be sprung before President Bush leaves office, to cripple the next administration." >

Two comments:
1) No one has the right to be "stunned" by anything this Administration does, unless it does something of benefit to any living species, including humans.
2) Everything the Administration does is in secrecy, and is done to cripple future Administrations. If our Government were less dyfsfunctional, such a malicious, anti-life Administration would be either thrown out wholesale (through a series of well-deserved impeachments) or neutralized by a Congress that understood that Executive power is merely a derivative of Article I. But our Congress, whether Dem or Repub, shows an appalling disinterest or ignorance about how our Government works. Someone should volunteer to tutor our elected, encrusted representatives in middle-school basics of American government. That way at least ignorance about what their own jobs are would not excuse them.

[olivia]

Most of those people were underprivileged anyway, so working in poison is working very well for them.

[nellie]

The Bush Administration has done a beautiful job of emphasizing all the vulnerabilities in our system of government. How do we safeguard our agencies from incompetent and corrupt sycophants whose only goal is to exploit their positions for the financial benefit of their friends? Let's hope we never see another administration like this one.

[Soulsurfer]

Busheviks M.O.- Appoint an industry lobbyist to regulate the industry in which they represented the biggest violators of rules. Elaine Chao should be jailed.

[jdfast]

Don't be suprised that this administration does all it can for the MIC, big oil and all of the other big corporate donors before January. You see now what a compasionate conservative W is by allowing the DOL to prepare to gut any legislation that will protect the american worker. Thanks W, your true colors are showing and the people will continue to pay.

[ROBOT8]

WORKERS ARE NO LONGER HUMAN!! THEY ARE HALF SLAVE HALF CATTLE

[hellboundtrain]

A very evil cabal of criminals has overtaken our country.

[nellie]

Indeed. A very destructive group of people.

[darthdarcy]

It's the Republican, Bush Scorched Earth Policy, do as much harm as possible before they retreat and leave office just like Saddam did in Kuwait...

[holeybuybull]

darthdarcy, W's jealousy of Saddam"s reign was one of the reasons we're where we are today. He's manged to surpass the Iraqi dictator. This is his real legacy.l

[wm1066]

Yes you got that right, and I wonder how many neoconmen look at North Korea and think " We can do that !" Dictators are thier role models.

[syllepsis]

Yes, and this little gem surfaced recently explaining the high prevalence of neurological disorders in soldiers exposed to Saddam's scorched earth zones:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/115767.php

Probably the best word to sum up the Bush Administration is "neurotoxic." The Administration- an eight-year binge on cocaine.