Editor’s Note: The following article is written by Steve Bergstein, Planet Waves’ in-house civil rights lawyer and blogger for ourВ PsychsoundВ area. Today, he writes about the Bush administration’s last-minute rules that will affect public health and safety. –RA
Dear Friend and Reader,
A FEW WEEKS AGO I wrote about the Bush administration’s efforts to pass new rules on its way out the door that would serve as gifts to American industry.
These rules govern public health and safety, the kind of rules which truly affect all of us, as opposed to high profile matters like the death penalty, which have strong moral implications but which also affect relatively few people (unless you kill someone in a state that recognizes the death penalty).
There is a secret government which affects all of us. This secret government may very well determine who lives and who dies, and who stays healthy and who suffers for years to come. This is not the secret government of conspiracy theorists, but the real branch of government known as the administrative state. In many ways, the administrative agencies which regulate American industry affect our lives more closely than any other branch of government. And we know very little about it, not because it operates in secret, but because no one knows to pay attention.
Here’s the story, on the front page of The New York Times over the weekend. It was news in the Times, but it will be pushed aside very quickly. It’s not sexy enough.
The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule, strenuously opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job.