Tuesday August 2, 2022; 7:51 PM EDT
- People were talking about big government, and about regulations being job killers. The conversation seemed naive, and I spent some time and wrote this:#
- My brother died at work twenty-seven years ago, when he was in his early thirties, leaving a wife and small children. He was working on an electric line on a utility pole in a suburban neighborhood and he was electrocuted.#
- Some months later a person from OSHA came to my parents with the accident report. Speaking of workplace safety, he told my father, "Every one of the regulations is written in someone's blood."#
- About a year later, another lineman from the same Midwestern electric company was electrocuted at work. On the evening news, a reporter asked the company's representative if these kinds of accidents happened frequently and how long it had been since the last one. The company man said that they were very rare and that he couldn't remember when the last one took place. The reporter didn't know enough to push back against that phony, self-serving answer. Episodes like this show me how much we need strong regulatory agencies, skillful watchdog journalists, and activist citizens groups, and why we always will.#