“Low price at any cost!” Do we want a government that replicates Wal-Mart’s model of catering to consumers and capital without concern for the negative externalities absorbed by workers, the environment, and other public goods?
From NYT story today -
OSHA Leaves Worker Safety in Hands of Industry
WASHINGTON, April 24 — Seven years ago, a Missouri doctor discovered a troubling pattern at a microwave popcorn plant in the town of Jasper. After an additive was modified to produce a more buttery taste, nine workers came down with a rare, life-threatening disease that was ravaging their lungs.
Puzzled Missouri health authorities turned to two federal agencies in Washington. Scientists at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which investigates the causes of workplace health problems, moved quickly to examine patients, inspect factories and run tests. Within months, they concluded that the workers became ill after exposure to diacetyl, a food-flavoring agent.
But the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, charged with overseeing workplace safety, reacted with far less urgency. It did not step up plant inspections or mandate safety standards for businesses, even as more workers became ill.
On Tuesday, the top official at the agency told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing that it would prepare a safety bulletin and plan to inspect a few dozen of the thousands of food plants that use the additive.
That response reflects OSHA’s practices under the Bush administration, which vowed to limit new rules and roll back what it considered cumbersome regulations that imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers. Across Washington, political appointees — often former officials of the industries they now oversee — have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.
Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.
… (read the rest of the story here)
And a similar case of a government agency failing to perform its duty to the public: the department of education… see this NYT story: Cuomo Says U.S. Is Lax on Student Lenders.
The problem with the Bush administration’s corruption of these agencies seems easy to articulate. If Bush’s OSHA panders to businesses and consumers, they are abandoning the principles on which OSHA was founded: to serve the public good by protecting worker’s health. Likewise for other regulatory agencies, like the EPA: their corruption to serve industry is an abandonment of their mission to serve the public good by protecting the environment. None of these agencies should be guided by principles of serving businesses or consumers. Those are corporate and private interests, not public interests. There are other organizations and associations that already represent their interests, such as consumer advocacy groups and industry associations. The point of public deliberation in a liberal democracy is that each of these groups and organizations should be able to express and argue for their positions. If we actually had a critical public sphere (rather than the manufactured publicity of most mass media), then these arguments would be able to be adjudicated in public on the basis of careful reflection on reasons supported by empirical evidence. When the agencies that are supposed to articulate reasons in favor of protecting workers’ health, the environment, and other public goods, abandon that job and instead become mouthpieces for other, private interests, then they have lost their legitimacy, and hence they have lost the public’s trust in them, and hence the public has a right to revolt and overthrow the part of the government in charge of them. Hence, we should impeach Bush. (cf. Locke, Rousseau)
