The White House has released a clickable map of the 50 states which lead you to specific information for each state regarding the 2007 budget. That in and of itself is kind of cool, and an interesting use of technology to get a political message out. This, however, caught my eye when examining the points specific to WV:
$772 million for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to strengthen workplace safety and health through strong enforcement and innovative partnerships and cooperative agreements with employers.
The Administration again calls on the Congress to pass legislation to increase civil monetary penalties for violations of laws administered by MSHA. The Administration proposes to raise the maximum penalty for egregious violations from $60,000 to $220,000, bringing its penalties more in line with those assessed by OSHA.
We shall see how that pans out, and I do not know the numbers for OSHA and MSHA last year.
Pooh
“So, get this, he tells me ‘if we ever do decide to enforce it, the fines just went up.’ So, after we had a little chuckle I told him ‘well just so there’s no misunderstandings, how about my wife bake you two pies a month from now on?'”
srv
Proposed 2 years ago, submitted last month after Sago
How pro-active of them. They lie, people die.
How about someone come up with the total number of “egregious violations” during the Bush Administrations?
My prediction: 0
srv
Let’s just stick to mining, I realize a full accounting might be difficult.
Kimmitt
Ya know, that kind of information might change the clickable map from being a political stunt into being a useful citizen’s research tool. Ah, well.
Jay
But the Bush Administration sent no legislation to Capitol Hill, and Congress took no action.
This is the stupidest thing I have ever read. The administration doesn’t the authority or the ability to ‘send legislation’ to Congress. That’s like saying, Congress “didn’t send an executive order to the President.”
And I was wondering how long it would be before the moonbat left started blaming the Bush administration for the mine deaths.
My son got a paper cut the other day. BUSH’S FAULT!!!
Pooh
You had your post jumbled, fixed it.
Bob In Pacifica
Jay, you can’t fly. You can take an airplane somewhere, and that airplane can fly. But you can’t fly.
Jay, everyone knows that Bush lets the Republicans in Congress know what he wants. His own staff probably does write up the bills he wants. And it gets to the people in Congress. It becomes legislation once one of his cronies puts it into the hopper.
But you can’t fly. Don’t ever say that you ever flew anywhere.
stickler
No, no, no. Bob, “his staff” doesn’t write much of anything. Good friends and colleagues in important industries do most of the writing. Congress”men” just rubber-stamp the result.
The Other Steve
Honestly, I think this serves as evidence that Republicans fall into the trap of thinking the reason why voters may like you is based entirely on how much money you are spending.
I can understand where they may have that misperception, as it’s the frequently used public criticism of Democrats.
But it doesn’t show much in the way of insightful leadership.
Mr Furious
Bush’s budgets are full of wish lists, much like the SOTU. Get back to us next year when we know how much was actually appropriated…
ppGaz
So let me see … the White House employs a technical thing that was in wide use almost ten years ago, and we are having a thread about it.
AND the Steelers win the Super Bowl. I tell ya, I’m startin to think I died and went to heaven.
All in one week.
What’s next? Money trees?
ppGaz
So, my several thousand hours of flying time in my old logbook …. not real after all?
Because while I used an airplane, I guaran-fuckin-tee ya, the thing couldn’t fly without me.
Pooh
To quote Dr. Jones “Fly? Yes. Land? No”
ppGaz
Without a pilot, the thing is just a projectile.
Flying pretty much implies a certain degree of control over the outcome.
That’s where I come in.
Okay, try this one: You and I are in an airplane. I’m in the pilot’s seat. You say, “You can’t fly.”
Then I say, “Okay, see ya later,” and bail out. I have the only chute.
How’s my flying now?
Steve
What Pooh said. My god, why would anyone want to appear so wilfully stupid as to pretend the White House can’t propose legislation?
DougJ
Well, that proves that Bush really cares about the miners. Let’s hope he’s got the political muscle to push it through. It’s going to be tough with all the Democratic obstructionists. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Harry Reid mount a filibuster against it.
ppGaz
I’m still blown away by the clickable map of the states. That is just far out. The Dems will never have anything like that.
When I was a kid, I had a jigsaw puzzle of the states, made of wood, and each state was painted a different color. Well, different from the adjacent ones. Anyway, I used to think that the states were all different colors.
Now I can click on them and get information. We should have gotten the Republicans in there sooner, that’s all I can say.
ppGaz
A friend forwars this from NYT. Looks like Bush has invented new ways to bullshit his way through the midterms.
Steve
I had one of those too. Although, would you believe it, there was no wooden state of Israel, until John Bolton came along and made them add one!
Zifnab
Forty years ago, when LBJ wanted to solve a social problem, he raised everyone’s taxes and threw money at it. That was the Democratic strategy on and off for four decades running. Now Bush has adopted the “Cut funding from everything that isn’t in the spotlight so you can throw truckloads of cash to solve a problem that happened yesterday” strategy. It’s alot like the Democratic one, except taxes go down instead of up.
Of course, the predicted result is the same. Throwing giant wades of money at a problem just generates more beaurocracy, graft, and corruption while doing very little to handle the issue. I suspect that a fair chunk of that $772 million will go right into the pockets of mining companies in the form of safety subsidies.
Pb
ppGaz,
Yep. It’s instructive to see how many things Bush wants to get done ‘by 2009’, or enact even after that. Apparently the Bush administration is just forecasting that everything should be much better once they’re finally thrown out of office. I’m not sure that I can entirely disagree with them on that point.
Zifnab,
Amen. This would be the political application of The Mythical Man Month. (“Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”) See Medicare Part D for more examples.
srv
Pilots are always easily amused.
This could be in my airplane panel:
wow
or this could be in my garage:
wow
What should I do, ppgaz?
DougJ
What’s amazing is that the map application runs on servers that are powered by switch grass. It’s all part of president Bush’s fascination with technology.
I’m a little worried, though, that terrorists might use this map to plan future attacks.
ppGaz
srv,
Take the airplane. Even if you don’t like it, you can sell it for enough to buy the car ….. and a house.
ppGaz
Exactly why I fully support the NSA wiretaps.
Rusty Shackleford
Where does the buck stop with this administration? That’s who we’ll blame.
ppGaz
You got that right!
ppGaz
Khalid: Allah be praised, do you have the map of America in front of you?
Ahmed: Yes, yes, go ahead. Allah akbar.
Khalid: Do you see the big orange state next to the small blue one and the funny looking green one?
Ahmed: Yes! Yes! Yes!
Khalid: Destroy that one! In the name of Allah, great Allah!
Ahmed: Someone is at the door!
Voice: NSA! Open up or be killed!
(Loud noises, struggle, groans)
The Other Steve
Reminds me of Consulting…
If you’re not a part of the solution,there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
Krista
ppGaz – you flew? Cool. What kind of planes? I flew gliders, as well as the Piper Tomahawk (a sweet, sweet little plane.)
ppGaz
I was a CFI for ten years starting in 1967. Mostly ASEL suitable for pilot training, C-150 and 152, Cherokees, etc.
Even did some instructing in a Bonanza — talk about a sweet airplane!
Never had the money for much multi-engine time. Got some nice time in a Grand Commander, though.
The Grand basically loooked like this but with piston engines
The Turbo is basically the same airframe with the zillion-dollar engines on it.
Charter, freight hauling, photo … whatever I could scrounge up. Lots of instruction, including an aerobatic course I put together.
Finally had a family to support and the gypsy airport bum lifestyle didn’t feed the bulldog any more.
Now I can’t get a medical, so my barnstormin days are over.
Sigh. Thus, the fast car. It’s my little fantasy world and ongoing obsession.
Digital Amish
I don’t know about ‘egregious violations’ (other than the entire Bush administration being one in re. to compentent governance).
But when this is their behavior it doesn’t make any difference if they raise the fines to $1mil.
e.g.
# The number of major fines over $10,000 has dropped by nearly 10 percent since 2001. The dollar amount of those penalties, when adjusted for inflation, has plummeted 43 percent to a median of $27,584.
# Less than half of the fines levied between 2001 and 2003 – about $3 million – have been paid.
# The budget and staff for the enforcement office also have declined, forcing the agency to make do with about 100 fewer coal mine enforcement personnel.
# In serious criminal cases, the number of guilty pleas and convictions fell 54.8 percent since 2001. In the first four years of the Bush administration, the federal government has averaged 3.5 criminal convictions a year; in the four years before that the average was 7.75 per year.
or-
“Earnie Williams, 65, was killed when a chunk of frozen coal slurry rocketed out of a clogged pipe, ricocheted and hit him in the head. The company, ICG, was faulted for not having procedures on how to unclog frozen pipes and was fined $440.”
Krista
What a sweet plane. Mmm…
I wound up letting my medical lapse. I just couldn’t afford to fly often enough to not need instructor time, and that just jacked up the charges even more. I’m still glad I got my license, though…it was a fantastic experience.
Aerobatics…I looooooove aerobatics. I used to get positively giddy with delight when my instructor and I would take it out of a hard spin, throwing as many Gs onto ourselves as we could get, and would then slam down the yoke to get some negative Gs going. Whee!!
Krista
Damn, I want to go flying now. There’s an airfield about an hour away from me where you can get glider lessons. (That license is lapsed too.) Maybe I’ll treat myself this spring to an hour up in the air. Gliders are nice…no engine noise. Just the wind rushing past the canopy, the sun glinting off the wings, the fields and rivers stretched out below. When I was a little girl, I used to have dreams that I could fly. They always seemed so real. I’d think, “This time it’s real…I really can fly!” Then I’d wake up, and would try so hard to remember that feeling, but it would fade so quickly. Flying a glider is the closest I’ve ever come to recreating that.
I suppose skydiving would work too, but there’s no way I’ll be jumping out of perfectly functional aircraft. Besides, I’m afraid of heights.
srv
ppGaz,
Building this:
My dad’s kitplane
So I can’t really afford that panel or the GT500 now. But we’ll have some nice gizmos. You’re right though, the checks are easier to write when I think of it as an investment. It’ll be worth 20-25% more than we put into it when it’s done.
I know quite a few guys building kitplanes together – one with a medical, the other w/o. My dad wouldn’t be building this if he didn’t assume I’d be flying him around in a few years.
Krista, I miss gliders. Most fun you can have with your clothes on IMHO. Much more challenging mentally and physically than people realize.
muddy
“We shall see how that pans out, and I do not know the numbers for OSHA and MSHA last year.”
Here’s a thought, you could have looked them up first to make a more informative post. Another link we could clickety click on.
ppGaz
Are you building the taildragger or the trike?
‘Twere me, I’d build the taildragger. You can operate it into and out of more fields, and of course, you get better performance.
ppGaz
Me either. I didn’t learn to drive and then start jumping out of cars! Why would I abandon my airplane?
Interesting sport, but not for me.
srv
If it were just for me, aesthetically, I’d be with ya. But I had to put my foot down on the taildragger. Given how many of his 70+ pals will be flying it, I’m not trusting their skills with my $30K+ engine and prop. I’ve watched too many of their landings.
Might not have been the best decision, as the nosegear design seems to be bad about ruts. More than a few have ground looped. But builders are experimenting with fixes.
Speed-wise, a couple of knots, and our cowling (horizontal sump) will make up for it.
ppGaz
Ah, good point. If many will fly it, build the tricycle gear. Otherwise somebody will groundloop it and prang it.