>These OSHA rules are probably the most important ones passed since the
>1970s. It's not symbolic but a critical close to life-and-death issue for a
>lot of workers. Unfortunately, it's also too important to business profits
>not to do everything they can to kill the rules. They don't care about
>"worker health"-- if they did, they wouldn't cripple their workers and kick
>them to the curb.
I sez:
I agree about the sheer importance of the ergonomic regulations. Like probably everyone else on this list, I have several friends and family members who've been incapacitated by RSI and been jobbed by their employers, doctors, and workers' compensation bureaucracies. My slight ignorance of the history of this legislation notwithstanding, given the grave significance of the new standards, how come the Democrats didn't make this a major campaign issue ? I can't remember it ever coming up in any of the Presidential debates. How come our Democratic elected officials only bitched and whined when the Republican slaves to capital predictably overturned the regulations, instead of drumming of massive popular support before them before they were eviscerated, such that the Republicans wouldn't dare overturn them ? The unwillingness of the Dems to be militant about anything is partially a problem of the campaign finance system and supplicant social movements, but it's also a problem of a deliberate shift to the right and rank spinelessness.
Also, to echo a point made by another poster, a lot of people who voted for Nader were well aware that their votes might throw the election to Bush, and acknowledged that, in the short term at least, a Bush presidency would be more disastrous than a Gore presidency. Building an alternative to the Democratic Party requires making a clean break and inducing some short-term pain, and so on. You're familiar with the argument (even if you might disagree with it), but you cagily elide it here. In the latest edition of _New Politics_ Barry Finger makes the case very eloquently. Problem is, and I'm sure you'll agree with me here, is that no serious party-building goes on b/w elections. The Greens haven't exactly kept a high profile these last 2 months, and except for the most marginal and silly of issues which get defined as "politics," U.S. culture is so damn apolitical.
Anyway, I won't make mincemeat of a complex topic any further.
John G.