May 04, 2007

Just out in The American: our own Jim Copland pokes some holes in New York Times reporter Stephen Labaton's supposed expose of lax enforcement practices at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration:

...here’s the rub: under Bush’s tenure, American workplaces have actually gotten safer. From 2000 to 2005, workplace fatalities fell from 5,920 to 5,702—a slightly better annual rate of improvement than under Bill Clinton’s tenure. Non-fatal workplace injuries have also fallen from 6.1 to 4.6 cases per 100 workers, a decline of almost 25 percent.

Apparently, these real results matter less to the Times and its quoted experts than the fact that Bush -— who explicitly campaigned on a platform of reducing regulatory complexity —- has rolled back favored policies, streamlined others, embraced voluntary compliance programs, and failed to regulate in safety advocates’ favored areas.