Let them eat toxins

Tom's new book [1] is one of those brilliant hammers that makes everything you see after you read it look like a nail. Such as, perusing the morning news, this [2]:

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.

The rule would also require the agency to take an extra step before setting new limits on chemicals in the workplace by allowing an additional round of challenges to agency risk assessments.
ad_icon

The department's speed in trying to make the regulatory change contrasts with its reluctance to alter workplace safety rules over the past 7 1/2 years. In that time, the department adopted only one major health rule for a chemical in the workplace, and it did so under a court order. ...

That's another sort of maneuver that we'll learn, working our way through The Wrecking Crew [1], is baked into the cake of conservative "governance." Recently one of the small group of conservative friends I debate with online argued that the only truly admirable member of Bush's cabinet is Elaine Chao. This sort of thing is the reason why. If you're a conservative, stuff like this means she's doing her job.