Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyer - New York Times

Fearing a Flu Vaccine?

Paul Kiesel — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:37:49 GMT

When I tell nonmedical friends that our clinic is vaccinating children against the H1N1 flu virus, here is what they say.

With about half, it is something like: “Oh, my God, our doctor doesn’t have it! Can you get me a dose?” And with the other half, it is something like, “Oh, my God, that brand-new vaccine — do you really think it’s safe?”

There is a peculiar duality in the collective cultural mind just now, a kind of pandemic doublethink. Other doctors I know are all eagerly having their own children immunized. Many are answering frantic calls from people desperate for the vaccine. But at the same time, we are all coming up against parents who are determined to refuse that same vaccine.

Wondering what history might have to say about this incongruous state of affairs, I called David M. Oshinsky, a professor of history at the University of Texas who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Polio: An American Story” (Oxford, 2005). Dr. Oshinsky compared the current vaccination campaign with two previous situations.

In 1947, a man newly arrived in New York City from Mexico died of smallpox. The authorities “lined up the entire city” and vaccinated everyone, even those who had already been vaccinated, Dr. Oshinsky said. “The entire city was revaccinated,” he added, “and there was no real resistance. People had a sense of risk versus reward and listened to public health officials.”

Then there were the polio vaccine trials of 1954, in which parents volunteered more than a million children to receive either an experimental vaccine or a placebo. And while they trusted the medical profession much more than parents do now, there was another factor, Dr. Oshinsky said: “They also had lived through virulent epidemics. That to me is probably the biggest issue of all. You’re dealing with parents who’ve never seen a smallpox epidemic, a polio epidemic.”

Few doctors now practicing have ever seen a single case of smallpox, much less an epidemic (thanks to vaccination). But when pediatricians look at today’s strain of H1N1, we tend to be good and scared.

Serious cases of this flu are relatively rare but far from unheard of; more than 100 children have died of H1N1. The deaths seem to occur disproportionately in children and pregnant women.

So we give the H1N1 vaccine to children whose parents are almost tearfully afraid of the virus, and we try to win over those parents who are just as tearfully afraid of the vaccine. To them, we explain over and over that in fact this is not a brand-new vaccine — it is made with the same techniques as the seasonal influenza vaccine. Yes, it has been tested. Yes, it’s safe. Yes, it’s effective.

Click here for the rest of the article.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Lucrative Fees More Attractive to Loan Servicers than Modifications

Paul Kiesel — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:21:32 GMT

From The New York Times:

This week, the Obama administration summoned mortgage company executives to Washington to demand they move faster to lower payments for homeowners sliding toward foreclosure. Treasury officials called on the companies to hire and train more people quickly to field applications for relief.

But industry insiders and legal experts say the limited capacity of mortgage companies is not the primary factor impeding the government’s $75 billion program to prevent foreclosures. Instead, it is that many mortgage companies are reluctant to give strapped homeowners a break because the companies collect lucrative fees on delinquent loans.

Even when borrowers stop paying, mortgage companies that service the loans collect fees out of the proceeds when homes are ultimately sold in foreclosure. So the longer borrowers remain delinquent, the greater the opportunities for these mortgage companies to extract revenue — fees for insurance, appraisals, title searches and legal services.

“It frustrates me when I see the government looking to the servicer for the solution, because it will never ever happen,” said Margery Golant, a Florida lawyer who defends homeowners against foreclosure and who worked in the law department of a major mortgage company, Ocwen Financial. “I don’t think they’re motivated to do modifications at all. They keep hitting the loan all the way through for junk fees. It’s a license to do whatever they want.”

For the rest of this article, click here.

For another article on Loan Modification Scams, click here.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

NYT: Safer Food?

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:48:51 GMT

From The New York Times:

Far too many Americans are falling ill after eating foods tainted with salmonella, E. coli and other pathogens. The Food and Drug Administration, which is charged with protecting much of the nation’s food supply, doesn’t have the authority or the tools to do its job. The House of Representatives can start to fix that problem if it votes this week to approve the Food Safety Enhancement Act.

Under the current system, the F.D.A. can only try to coax a food production facility to voluntarily recall its product after people have grown sick or even died. The legislation, the best in years, would give the agency a great deal more power and responsibility to prevent such outbreaks.

The F.D.A. would finally have the authority to set strong science-based safety standards for the growing, harvesting and transporting of both domestic and imported food. The agency would then require each food production facility to come up with the best safety plan showing how it would meet those standards.

Click here for the rest of this editorial.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

NYT: The Eyeshade Smelled Trouble

Paul Kiesel — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:41:01 GMT

From The New York Times:

WHEN it comes to corporate America, critics and skeptics are about as welcome as skunks at a pool party. And when companies try to silence dissenters, shareholders are often imperiled.

This truism is on full display in the mess at Matrixx Initiatives, a Scottsdale, Ariz., maker of over-the-counter health care products. Best-known for its homeopathic Zicam Cold Remedy offerings, Matrixx hit a rough patch on June 16, when the Food and Drug Administration advised consumers to stop using two of its popular remedies.

The F.D.A. said that it had received more than 130 reports of anosmia — or loss of smell — from users of the products and that more than 800 such reports had been delivered to Matrixx. The agency told Matrixx that Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Gel and the same treatment in swab form could no longer be marketed without government approval.

Matrixx maintains that the products, which contain zinc, are safe. But it immediately withdrew them from the market. Bill Hemelt, Matrixx’s president, said company officials would meet with the F.D.A. to try to persuade it to reverse its decision.

Click here for the rest of the article.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

One of the Largest Food Recalls Ever Just Got Bigger: Peanut Corp. Texas Closed

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:31:32 GMT

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The Peanut Corporation of America closed its processing plant in Plainview, Tex., on Monday night after a laboratory test indicated possible salmonella contamination, a development that threatens to widen one of the largest food recalls ever and raises more questions about why the government allowed the plant to operate.

The company’s plant in Blakely, Ga., was identified a month ago as the source of a nationwide salmonella outbreak. And even though investigators soon determined that the company may have deliberately shipped contaminated products to some of the nation’s largest food makers, officials allowed the company’s plant in Texas to continue supplying customers.

Former workers at the Texas plant said in interviews with The New York Times that the facility was “disgusting” and shared many of the problems found in the plant in Georgia. But state and federal health officials said they did not have enough evidence to close the Texas plant.

The company also has a plant in Suffolk, Va. The Food and Drug Administration said it conducted a comprehensive inspection of the plant in late January and found no evidence of problems.

The Texas Department of State Health Services released a statement on Tuesday saying that “it does not appear that any of the implicated products — peanut meal, granulated peanuts and dry roasted peanuts — have reached consumers.” But a top official at the food and drug agency was far less reassuring, saying the investigation in Texas was continuing.

“I can’t speculate where this might lead us and whether another or expanded recall would be initiated” based on conditions at the Texas plant, said Michael Rogers, director of the F.D.A.’s division of field investigation.

Meanwhile, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and criminal investigators from the food agency descended on the Peanut Corporation’s plant in Georgia on Monday and hauled away “a whole bunch of stuff,” said George Straitt, a food and drug agency spokesman.

The Peanut Corporation released a statement saying it was cooperating with the investigations and had voluntarily closed its Texas plant.

The contamination scare has been associated with 8 deaths and more than 500 illnesses and has led to one of the largest food recalls in the nation’s history, with more than 1,800 separate recalls of peanut butter, cookies, crackers and other foods. Peanut butter sales have plunged.

The scandal has also focused attention on weaknesses in the nation’s oversight of food safety, leading the Obama administration to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the food agency’s procedures and spurring multiple legislative proposals on Capitol Hill to overhaul food regulations. On Wednesday, the investigations subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is to hold the second Congressional hearing on the scare, with more likely.

The Texas facility, which once housed a Jimmy Dean sausage plant, “had a blanching and roasting operation but did not make peanut butter,” Mr. Rogers said, based on a food agency inspection in late January.

Rest of the article is here.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Paul Krugman is on the Edge

Paul Kiesel — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:53:48 GMT

As the economy remains stagnant or contracts into a more depressing declivity, reports of the number of job losses from January coming in and continuing to rise (600,000 and counting; not to mention the 200,000 state workers in California who didn't work today), and a Republican Congress hell-bent on an "insurgency," here (below) is an article that compliments and captures the sentiments most people in this country currently feel.

On the Edge by Paul Krugman

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners.

Meanwhile, our main line of defense against recessions — the Federal Reserve’s usual ability to support the economy by cutting interest rates — has already been overrun. The Fed has cut the rates it controls basically to zero, yet the economy is still in free fall.

It’s no wonder, then, that most economic forecasts warn that in the absence of government action we’re headed for a deep, prolonged slump. Some private analysts predict double-digit unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office is slightly more sanguine, but its director, nonetheless, recently warned that “absent a change in fiscal policy ... the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to potential levels will be the largest — in duration and depth — since the Depression of the 1930s.”

Worst of all is the possibility that the economy will, as it did in the ’30s, end up stuck in a prolonged deflationary trap.

We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.

As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on.

And deflationary traps can go on for a long time. Japan experienced a “lost decade” of deflation and stagnation in the 1990s — and the only thing that let Japan escape from its trap was a global boom that boosted the nation’s exports. Who will rescue America from a similar trap now that the whole world is slumping at the same time?

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

What Did JPMorgan Know?

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:43:42 GMT

From the New York Times:

By CLAUDIO GATTI and DIANA B. HENRIQUES

JPMorgan Chase says that its potential losses related to Bernard L. Madoff, the man accused of engineering an immense global Ponzi scheme, are “pretty close to zero.” But what some angry European investors want to know is when the bank cut its exposure to Mr. Madoff — and why.

As early as 2006, the bank had started offering investors a way to leverage their bets on the future performance of two hedge funds that invested with Mr. Madoff. To protect itself from the resulting risk, the bank put $250 million of its own money into those funds.

But the bank suddenly began pulling its millions out of those funds in early autumn, months before Mr. Madoff was arrested, according to accounts from Europe and New York that were subsequently confirmed by the bank. The bank did not notify investors of its move, and several of them are furious that it protected itself but left them holding notes that the bank itself now says are probably worthless.

A spokeswoman, Kristin Lemkau, said the bank withdrew from the Madoff-linked funds last fall after “a wide-ranging review of our hedge fund exposure.” Ms. Lemkau acknowledged, however, that the bank also “became concerned about the lack of transparency to some questions we posed as part of our review.”

Investors were not alerted to the move because, under sales agreements, the issues did not meet the threshold necessary to permit the bank to restructure the notes, she said. Under those circumstances, she added, “we did not have the right to disclose our concerns.”

That doesn’t satisfy some investors. As they see it, they were the first people who should have been alerted to the bank’s concerns. “Instead, we continued to pay our fees to the bank and remained the only ones exposed to the risks that JPMorgan did not want to assume,” said the chief asset manager of an Italian investment firm, who declined to be identified because of potential litigation.

The tale began several years ago when a unit of JPMorgan Chase in London issued a series of complex derivatives that gave investors a way to triple their bets on the Fairfield funds, whose solid consistency mirrored the track record that had quietly — and ruinously — drawn investors to Mr. Madoff for decades.

Leveraged notes issued by big banks like JPMorgan Chase and Nomura became conduits through which fresh money flowed from institutional investors into the Fairfield Sentry and the euro-based Fairfield Sigma funds, both run by the Fairfield Greenwich Group — and, in turn, into Mr. Madoff’s hands.

The arrangement worked like this: Investors put up cash to buy the notes from the bank. In return, the bank promised to pay them up to three times the future earnings of the Fairfield funds. When the notes matured in five years, assuming the funds did well, these investors would get more than if they had invested in the funds directly. The bank collected just under 2 percent in fees, investors said.

And because the bank had to hedge its entire risk, it put up to three times the face amount of the notes into the Fairfield funds. Thus, Fairfield Greenwich got more cash to manage than it otherwise would have, increasing its own fee income. To reward note-holders for making that possible, Fairfield paid them a so-called rebate of a fifth to a third of a percentage point a year, according to documentation of those transactions.

The first sign of trouble came in early October, when Fairfield Greenwich notified investors that it would no longer pay them rebates.

The rest of the article is here.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Cuomo Announces Historic Nationwide Health Insurance Reform, Will Create Fair Rates for Consumers Nationwide

Paul Kiesel — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:25:52 GMT

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo has reached an agreement with UnitedHealth Group Inc., the nation's second largest health insurer, to reform the nationwide health care reimbursement system, after an industry-wide investigation proved there was a massive scheme to defraud consumers by manipulating reimbursement rates, according to Mr. Cuomo's press release.

The scheme was meant to defraud consumers by "systematically underpaying" patients by hundreds of millions of dollars over the last decade. To do this, UnitedHealth used Ingenix, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of United, which happens to also be the nation's largest provider of health care billing information, to reimburse patients less than the designated "reasonable and customary" costs of medical services received by doctors outside of the insurer's designated network of physicians.

Cuomo conducted a probe, announced last February, that showed UnitedHealth's Ingenix unit operates a "defective and manipulative" database that most health insurers use to set reimbursement rates for out-of-network medical expenses.

Countless UnitedHealth customers, in the past, have been getting grossly shortchanged in reimbursement rates, as the New York Times points out in a similar article published today, if the insurer "understates" the prevailing local fees.

"The patient might receive a doctor's bill for $100, for example, and expect the insurer to pay at least $70. But if the insurance database says that doctor bill should have been only $72, based on local rates, the patient might get back less than $55," (New York Times, 1/13/09).

Cuomo's deal with United calls for the creation of a new independent database, to be run by a university that is still to be selected. Cuomo hopes that the new system will be operational in about six months.

However, until the system is overhauled in six months, patients who have been "shortchanged" by the current health care billing/reimbursement system should choose to and are able to legally seek the correct economic remedy, if they were not properly reimbursed.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

How Do You Say Heparin Recall in Mandarin?

Paul Kiesel — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:12:27 GMT

The FDA, after years of criticism for its responses to food-sickness outbreaks and contaminated imports, unveiled a report on Monday that summarizes what officials call a "hugely ambitious" campaign to reshape its food and drug inspection channel.

Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's associate commissioner for foods, told The New York Times, " The goal is to radically redesign the process." Meaning, instead of waiting until the food or product hits the U.S., the goal would be to try and detect the tainted products during the production process.

The last thing the FDA needs is another product coming from China or anywhere in Asia for that matter, and causing thousands upon thousands of consumers to fall ill. First there was tainted pet food, then came contaminated heparin and just recently milk containing melamine.

And, likely, due to the scrutiny the FDA's faced over the past year, just under two weeks ago, the agency set up shop in Beijing to protect Americans from similar threats like the aforementioned.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "It's the agency's first overseas office and is part of the regulator's effort to better scrutinize the large and growing number of foods and drugs that China ships into the U.S. 'The FDA is a global regulatory body and expanding their footprint outside the U.S. is the first step in becoming more active in the global market,' Patrick Ronan, a former chief of staff at the FDA, tells the Health Blog."

However, how is one, two or three FDA outposts in China going to blanket an enormous Chinese food industry that lacks adequate food safety controls? Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt optimistically thinks the FDA's arrival in China marks the start of a "new era" and is a first step of many that will allow the FDA to work more closely with manufacturers and regulators abroad.

At the end of the day, whatever the FDA is able to do in China will come down to money, personnel and outside resources, three factors that it grapples with already in the United States. And, on top of that, the FDA still has a dull eye when it comes to spotting material that is imported from China and used to manufacturer products like Heparin. Heparin recalls will continue to occur in the U.S. due to this lack of oversight and will only be abated once the FDA can permeate itself throughout the Chinese food and drug industry, which, not to sound too pessimistic, is doubtful since the FDA has a hard enough time regulating food, drugs and appropriate product labels within the U.S.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

NYT: Bush Aides Hurry to Pass Contentious Labor Department Rule

Paul Kiesel — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:25:06 GMT

President Bush has said that he wants to work with President-elect Obama to make the transition process as smooth as possible. Logically, this makes sense for the greater good of the country, regardless of political ideology: We are in the middle of two wars, an economy that is in a recession, record foreclosure levels, levels of unemployment that haven't been seen in almost 20 years, and an anticipated turbulent first half to 2009.

Contrary to President Bush's words, his actions over the last few weeks do not signal a smooth transfer of power.

Below is an article from yesterday's New York Times that displays how Bush is doing his best to leave his imprint on the presidency for months if not years after he's left office (i.e. Bush is pushing through a ruling that will make it more difficult for women to get contraceptives. The loosening of restrictions makes it easier for health care workers to conscientiously object to filling birth control prescriptions), and the difficulty the Obama administration will have reversing new "midnight hour" regulations.

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule, strenuously opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job.

The rule, which has strong support from business groups, says that in assessing the risk from a particular substance, federal agencies should gather and analyze “industry-by-industry evidence” of employees’ exposure to it during their working lives. The proposal would, in many cases, add a step to the lengthy process of developing standards to protect workers’ health.

Public health officials and labor unions said the rule would delay needed protections for workers, resulting in additional deaths and illnesses.

With the economy tumbling and American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush has promised to cooperate with Mr. Obama to make the transition “as smooth as possible.” But that has not stopped his administration from trying, in its final days, to cement in place a diverse array of new regulations.

The Labor Department proposal is one of about 20 highly contentious rules the Bush administration is planning to issue in its final weeks. The rules deal with issues as diverse as abortion, auto safety and the environment.

One rule would make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wilderness areas. Another would reduce the role of federal wildlife scientists in deciding whether dams, highways and other projects pose a threat to endangered species.

Mr. Obama and his advisers have already signaled their wariness of last-minute efforts by the Bush administration to embed its policies into the Code of Federal Regulations, a collection of rules having the force of law. The advisers have also said that Mr. Obama plans to look at a number of executive orders issued by Mr. Bush.

A new president can unilaterally reverse executive orders issued by his predecessors, as Mr. Bush and President Bill Clinton did in selected cases. But it is much more difficult for a new president to revoke or alter final regulations put in place by a predecessor. A new administration must solicit public comment and supply “a reasoned analysis” for such changes, as if it were issuing a new rule, the Supreme Court has said.

As a senator and a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama sharply criticized the regulation of workplace hazards by the Bush administration.

In September, Mr. Obama and four other senators introduced a bill that would prohibit the Labor Department from issuing the rule it is now rushing to complete. He also signed a letter urging the department to scrap the proposal, saying it would “create serious obstacles to protecting workers from health hazards on the job.”

Administration officials said such concerns were based on a misunderstanding of the proposal.

“This proposal does not affect the substance or methodology of risk assessments, and it does not weaken any health standard,” said Leon R. Sequeira, the assistant secretary of labor for policy. The proposal, Mr. Sequeira said, would allow the department to “cast a wide net for the best available data before proposing a health standard.”

The Labor Department regulates occupational health hazards posed by a wide variety of substances like asbestos, benzene, cotton dust, formaldehyde, lead, vinyl chloride and blood-borne pathogens, including the virus that causes AIDS.

The department is constantly considering whether to take steps to protect workers against hazardous substances. Currently, it is assessing substances like silica, beryllium and diacetyl, a chemical that adds the buttery flavor to some types of microwave popcorn.

The proposal applies to two agencies in the Labor Department, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Under the proposal, they would have to publish “advance notice of proposed rule-making,” soliciting public comment on studies, scientific information and data to be used in drafting a new rule. In some cases, OSHA has done that, but it is not required to do so.

The Bush administration and business groups said the rule would codify “best practices,” ensuring that health standards were based on the best available data and scientific information.

Randel K. Johnson, a vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, said his group “unequivocally supports” the proposal because it would give the public a better opportunity to comment on the science and data used by the government.

After a regulation is drafted and formally proposed, Mr. Johnson said, it is “all but impossible” to get OSHA to make significant changes.

“Risk assessment drives the entire process of regulation,” he said, and “courts almost always defer” to the agency’s assessments.

But critics say the additional step does nothing to protect workers.

“This rule is being pushed through by an administration that, for the last seven and a half years, has failed to set any new OSHA health rules to protect workers, except for one issued pursuant to a court order,” said Margaret M. Seminario, director of occupational safety and health for the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

Now, Ms. Seminario said, “the administration is rushing to lock in place requirements that would make it more difficult for the next administration to protect workers.”

She said the proposal could add two years to a rule-making process that often took eight years or more.

Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who is chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, said the proposal would “weaken future workplace safety regulations and slow their adoption.”

The proposal says that risk assessments should include industry-by-industry data on exposure to workplace substances. Administration officials acknowledged that such data did not always exist.

In their letter, Mr. Obama and other lawmakers said the Labor Department, instead of tinkering with risk-assessment procedures, should issue standards to protect workers against known hazards like silica and beryllium. The government has been working on a silica standard since 1997 and has listed it as a priority since 2002.

The timing of the proposal appears to violate a memorandum issued in early May by Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff.

“Except in extraordinary circumstances,” Mr. Bolten wrote, “regulations to be finalized in this administration should be proposed no later than June 1, 2008, and final regulations should be issued no later than Nov. 1, 2008.”

The Labor Department has not cited any extraordinary circumstances for its proposal, which was published in the Federal Register on Aug. 29. Administration officials confirmed last week that the proposal was still on their regulatory agenda.

The Labor Department said the proposal affected “only internal agency procedures” for developing health standards. It cited one source of authority for the proposal: a general “housekeeping statute” that allows the head of a department to prescribe rules for the performance of its business.

The statute is derived from a law passed in 1789 to help George Washington get the government up and running.

The Labor Department rule is among many that federal agencies are poised to issue before Mr. Bush turns over the White House to Mr. Obama.

One rule would allow coal companies to dump rock and dirt from mountaintop mining operations into nearby streams and valleys. Another, issued last week by the Health and Human Services Department, gives states sweeping authority to charge higher co-payments for doctor’s visits, hospital care and prescription drugs provided to low-income people under Medicaid. The department is working on another rule to protect health care workers who refuse to perform abortions or other procedures on religious or moral grounds.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel