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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Red plot foiled at govt. agency
Message-ID: <457@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 16-May-85 14:24:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.457
Posted: Thu May 16 14:24:28 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 17-May-85 01:36:07 EDT
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 61

Your tax dollars at work:  [from Chicago Tribune 5/10/85]

WASHINGTON--Top officials of the federal Occupational Safety and
Health Administration acknowledged to Congress Thursday that they
referred to their employees as "commies."

OSHA chief Robert Rowland, under fire for reputed conflicts of
interest and lax enforcement of safety standards, was asked at a
House hearing whether he recently told a group of the agency's top
managers:  "OSHA is full of commies, and I'm going to root them out
and [obscenity]."  ...

Rowland denied making the comment precisely as quoted by [Rep. Gerry]
Sikorski, but later said many people use the term "commie" in a
joking way, and he may have made a similar statement.

OSHA's critics say Rowland cares little about maintaining worker
safety and is instead antagonistic toward employees who are dedicated
to that goal.

References to Communists were acknowledged by another OSHA official,
Leonard Vance, director of health standards.  Vance was asked whether
he had told a team working on lead standards in 1982 that their draft
proposal sounded "communistic" or that its author sounded as if she
had "been trained in Moscow."  ...

Vance attracted attention last year when House members threatened to
subpoena records they said might show that he had consulted with a
regulated industry before writing a regulation.  Vance said at the
time that his dog had vomited on the documents and that he had to
destroy them.

Thursday's stormy hearing also included discussion of a top-level
OSHA seminar about internal management.  One manager at the seminar
later wrote an unsigned memo saying that agency leaders were told to
disregard civil-service rules and fire "troublemakers."  The
employees could then fight in court to get their jobs back, the
seminar reportedly was told.  ...

Rowland's failure to enact a long-delayed safety standard for farm
workers requiring sanitation facilities in the field was condemned by
labor groups last month.

Rowland, appointed 18 months ago and not yet confirmed by Congress,
is under an ethics review for his ownership of more than $1 million
in stock in chemical, pharmaceutical, petroleum and other firms.

One of these firms is Tenneco Inc., which has agribusiness
subsidiaries that could be directly affected by the field-sanitation
regulation.
___________________

So I propose the following topic for consideration by net.politics:
If your dog vomits on an important government document, is the
document recoverable?  Is it exempt from subpoena?  Does it depend on
what your dog eats, or on the nature of the document?  I think that
net.politics is well suited to answer this type of question,
particularly since the more prestigious think tanks don't ordinarily
address such issues. 

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes