The bureaucracy has some discretion over which laws are enforced more vigorously, and the Bush administration selectively chose a lax attitude when it came to consumer and worker protections.

My biggest objection to Obama's policies so far is that he doesn't seem to understand that any reform he passes needs to be as "Republican proof" as possible.

The recent economic collapse was caused, in large part, by regulatory agencies following the lead of their Bush-appointed, laissez faire heads and ignoring problems and violations. Obama's approach to reform of Wall Street is to create a different agency that will work -- until the next Republican president gets elected and appoints a laissez faire head that will encourage the new agency to ignore problems and violations.

In health care reform, much has been made over insurance corporations being prohibited from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions and dropping coverage of people who get sick. But we still don't know what the penalties will be for the insurance corporations if they continue business as usual. And we don't know whether the next Republican administration will have the flexibility to minimize those fines or ignore the violation altogether.

No matter how successful Obama is, eventually the American public will be fooled by Republicans into believing that they can pay less in taxes and keep all their services. When that happens, the system needs to be re-enforced to minimize the damage by the next Republican president.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. In so many ways which escape the glare of the media spotlight, Federal regulatory agencies make a real difference, and recent Democratic and Republican administrations have taken very different approaches to the enforcement of regulations. This is exactly the kind of thing that Ralph Nader just didn't get when he claimed, back in 2000, that there was no difference between the major party candidates.

On the one hand, people believe the government is expected to be 100% efficient in deterring terrorists, but will tolerate some level of death or injury in the workplace, despite the presence of proven preventative practices.

To merge the two, workplace violence (the murderous kind) might be prevented by singling out all past employees (the most common perpetrators), monitoring them and requiring all post office or bank customers to pass a TSA style screening. Yes, it's ridiculous, so workplace deaths are rued but tolerated.

It's sad that the air traveler is more valuable than the US worker. But, economics is king. The cost of worker safety in the US i sending jobs abroad, where workers die with more impunity. Just listen to the employer groups, they'll tell you.

Strict enforcement of existing laws was my point about financial regulation. Obama could have the banks begging for new financial regs if he wants. Threaten to clamp down on all laws already on the books if the banks aren't willing to work together on responsible new rules.

Insightful comments, Steve.

I would hope there's more mainstream coverage of these kinds of meaningful, unseen changes between Administrations. The avg voter or non-voter has no clue AT ALL of the wide regulatory discretion and the different levers (de-funding, in-industry appointee, change dotted-line org chart) that are pulled to benefit political/ideological allies.

@DRF:
Cheap shot at Nader, as usual.

Of course, there's a diff...but note that this difference is MINISCULE...did you notice who just escalated a stupidly pointless, $40B/year deficit-funded continuation-surge into an 80%-illiterate country that has ~1000 Al-Queda combatants and headed by our own corrupt puppet...? How much did the OSHA "surge" of 250 people in enforcement personnel cost...$25 million at $100K per or less than 0.01%?

And actually, Obama has been limp about appointments there, also.
http://www.nader.org/index.php?/archives/2155-Letter-to-President-Obama-RE-Appointments-to-NHTSA-and-OSHA.html

Getting it yet? Please don't confuse your certitude with correctness. It's dangerous.

Great article.I am concerned about the recent article, "Labor Chief Moves on Job Safety, Workers' Rights," By Sam Hananel, Associated Press Writer that made all the national news outlets.

Especially in the first sentence, "Soon after she became the nation's labor secretary, Hilda Solis warned corporate America there was "a new sheriff in town."

In contrast,a majority of the manufacturing sector is small businesses (over 70% less than 20 employees), which is middle America, not Corporate America. These facilities do not have full-time EHS on their staff. So CSHO's receive specialized training on identifying and evaluating combustible dust fire and explosion hazards. Yet, where is the information, education, and outreach for these small businesses?

This is where NIOSH can enter the picture as the Congress mandated in the OSH Act 1970. OSHA/NIOSH should always be mentioned in the same sentience when discussing occupational health and safety for the nation's workplace.

Lets bring the OSH Act back and have OSHA and NIOSH working in concert together. Just my two cents from the 30,000 ft view

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