A. Barton Hinkle
timesdispatch.com
According to conventional progressive wisdom, regulation is the means by which a compassionate government protects the weak and innocent from the strong and malevolent. Try telling that to Brad Jones.
Jones is one of the owners of Buckingham Slate, a Virginia business a little over an hour’s drive west of Richmond. The company is distinguished by the quality of the highly valued Arvonia slate it produces. And by the fact that its roots trace back almost to the Civil War. And by the fact that federal regulators smacked it with a $4,000 fine.
Over a trash can. The offending can — or “waste receptacle,” in the words of the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s official citation — was “not covered.” What’s more, “the receptacle was full.” It “could be smelled.” There were — brace yourself — “flies fl[y]ing in and around the receptacle.” And to crown all, “management engaged in aggravated conduct constituting more than ordinary negligence” by allowing this “condition to exist.” The horror.
Buckingham Slate has racked up other fines, too — such as a $70,000 fine imposed because one of its trucks had an inoperable horn. Perhaps regulators were following the approach advocated by Al Armendariz, the former EPA official who said enforcers should “crucify” offenders to “make an example” of them, which would then make others “easy to manage.”
According to President Obama’s campaign rhetoric, Republicans have nothing to offer but “the same prescription they’ve had for the last 30 years. . . : ‘Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning!’ ”