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When Congress passed the 1972 law governing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, it gave the agency authority over private companies, but not public employers such as states, counties or cities. States would have to opt in for those public workers to be covered by OSHA protections.
"If they aren't covered by OSHA, they have no right to a safe workplace. If someone gets hurt or killed, there is no investigation, no citation, no lessons learned," said Jordan Barab, who was deputy assistant secretary for OSHA during the Obama administration.
The loophole undermines far more than the heat rule.
It affects a web of federal safety regulations that govern everything from the handling of toxic and flammable chemicals, to protecting workers from falling off ladders or being buried in trenches. If private employees get hurt or killed on the job, OSHA investigates. None of those safety measures exist for public-sector employees in 23 states.
That means workers who do the same job -- such as collecting garbage -- can either benefit from protections, or not, depending on whether they're a private contractor or a city employee. Imagine, for example, that two workers are digging trenches on opposite sides of the highway, but one is employed by a company and the other by a state agency.
"One guy can't dig past five feet without shoring up the trench, and the other guy, who works for the state, can dig down 20 feet, have it cave in on top of him and be killed and no one will have broken any kind of law," Barab said.
As a result, the public sector has a higher rate of workplace injuries than businesses.
In 2022, about 2.7 percent of private sector workers were injured on the job, according to federal data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and analyzed by the AFL-CIO. The injury rate in the public sector was almost double -- at 4.9 percent. Both statistics are likely undercounts because they rely on employers to report the injuries.
Turning away from the Presidential Theater for a moment, and back to more basic matters which actually matter to ordinary people's every day lives. I give credit to Braineack for making me aware of this new trend, and grant permission for the re-use of this original meme which I created to convey it:
You unfortunately can't legislate comprehension of basic economics.
So many people also don't understand that the government manufacturing covid stimulus checks out of thin air reduced their actual buying power since that time by significantly more than the value of the checks themselves.
So many people also don't understand that the government manufacturing covid stimulus checks out of thin air reduced their actual buying power since that time by significantly more than the value of the checks themselves.
I am within the top 5% of individuals in the US by wealth. (Merely top 15% of households... rich people tend to marry one another, and I'm single.)
However, by the standards of those who actually control the fiscal policy of the US, that merely makes me a member of the proletariat.
So this hurts for me much more than it does for most of the population, since I never even received any of those "free money" stimulus checks.
When the USA was first founded, there was no federal income tax. That didn't start until 1861, when a 3% income tax was levied to help pay for the Civil War. (It didn't go away after the war was over.)
No, at that time, taxes were levied against the ownership and productivity of land and commercial buildings. And the privilege of voting was extended only to those individuals who owned land or commercial buildings and, thus, paid taxes.
Over time, we have created the idea that voting is a natural right of every citizen. Or, by some accounts, every person residing within the US, regardless of citizenship status.
And therein lies the problem. Politicians aren't dumb. They realize that promising free money and free services to poor people is a good way to gather votes. And it doesn't matter whether they can back up said spending with equivalent revenue-generation.
Because, quite frankly, poor people are dumb. With the exception of the very small minority who were born without hands or eyes (who have my genuine sympathy, and legitimately deserve public assistance), that's why they're poor in the first place.
So, we now have a system in which poor people can vote for politicians who promise to give them free money. Over 40% of US households pay no income tax at all, and that number is growing. (source)
This is the reason why the US is accelerating towards bankruptcy, and nothing can be done about it.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.
Can anyone explain to me why the Summer Olympics seem to be such widespread cyberattacks / attempts at terrorism / sabotage?
Is this just the way things are nowadays or is there something specific to the 2024 summer games in Paris which makes it a unique target?
Some of the supposed Russian attacks are allegedly "payback" for countries backing Ukraine. In general, it's an event on a worldwide stage with 15M+ tourists from around the world, making it an ideal target with big notoriety.
Hopefully that bill results in websites that "may" contain satire or "misinformation" just geo-blocking California like the **** sites did for North Carolina.
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