Friday, September 23, 2005
Government Extortion
This kind of stuff really gets to me (subscription required for the link)
First, precisely how would failure to record accidents result in other accidents? -- that's a pure paperwork violation. No one is endangered by this.
Secondly, "egregious" and "willful" are official evaluation terms OSHA uses when investigating an accident. Investigators assign them to violations uncovered and they serve as multipliers when determining the fines. That's all they are.
Thirdly, and, this is worst of all, OSHA, only ever shows up after an accident or if there are sufficient number of complaints lodged. What the *&%^ good is enforcement after the accident? While not to this scale, I've been through this before -- it's nothing more than a government agency using a dreadful accident wherein everyone is feeling awful already, to negoitiate a payment. It is the sickest form of taxation in the world.
OSHA is, in my estimation, the most corrupt of our bureacracies. All it does is write standards against which it can measure violations after an accident has happened and use them to extort money. What a racket!
BP PLC, in the largest industrial-accident settlement of its kind, agreed to pay workplace-safety regulators $21.4 million in fines for scores of "egregious" safety violations tied to a March 23 explosion at its Texas City, Texas, refinery. The accident killed 15 workers and injured more than 170 others.What that is folks, for the uninitiated, is a government bureacracy saying to British Petroleum that they broke the rules and simply leviying a $21.5M fine. There was no trial here, just an investigation and a levy of fine. Criminal charges are pending. So, what rules were violated?
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration listed hundreds of safety violations -- ranging from failure to record accidents to equipment deficiencies that it called "egregious" and "willful" -- that investigators uncovered in the wake of the March blast.Several comments.
First, precisely how would failure to record accidents result in other accidents? -- that's a pure paperwork violation. No one is endangered by this.
Secondly, "egregious" and "willful" are official evaluation terms OSHA uses when investigating an accident. Investigators assign them to violations uncovered and they serve as multipliers when determining the fines. That's all they are.
Thirdly, and, this is worst of all, OSHA, only ever shows up after an accident or if there are sufficient number of complaints lodged. What the *&%^ good is enforcement after the accident? While not to this scale, I've been through this before -- it's nothing more than a government agency using a dreadful accident wherein everyone is feeling awful already, to negoitiate a payment. It is the sickest form of taxation in the world.
OSHA is, in my estimation, the most corrupt of our bureacracies. All it does is write standards against which it can measure violations after an accident has happened and use them to extort money. What a racket!
