UG Note:  Charlie Peters is "tilting" again.  Here’s a tidbit from his latest, which can be found in the Washington Monthly magazine.

The chilling effect of hypothetical fines

You may recall that after the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia, a number of news stories mentioned that the fines against coal companies for safety violations often went unpaid or were reduced to a pittance. It turns out that the problem is not confined to mine safety. It is true of federal fines generally.

“The government is owed more than $35 billion in fines and other payments from criminals and in civil cases, according to Justice Department figures,” report Martha Mendoza and Christopher Sullivan of the Associated Press. Another example: “When nuclear labs around the country were found to be exposing workers to radiation and breaking other safety rules, assessments totaling $2.5 million were quickly ordered.” The only problem was that the assessments were then waived.

This failure to collect fines also happens at the state level. “When a gasoline spill and explosion killed three young people in Washington [state], officials announced a record penalty against a gas pipeline company: $3 million to send the message that such tragedies ‘must never happen again.’” What happened then? The pipeline fine was reduced by 92 percent.

The hardship of taramasalata

Government programs have a tendency to outlive their usefulness, to continue long after their original purpose has been accomplished. One of my favorite examples of this comes from an article by James Bennet, the new editor of The Atlantic, written while he was working here in 1991. It described how the Rural Electrification Agency lasted long after every farm in America had been wired by finding other worthy projects, such as helping out country clubs.

The most recent example I’ve discovered was in an article about hardship pay for the State Department’s overseas posts. It describes how money to pay for posts in Iraq and Afghanistan has been found by eliminating hardship pay in Athens, Warsaw, Hong Kong, and Seoul, meaning that up until now, State Department employees at these posts have been pulling down the extra bucks. Athens was found suitable for the Olympics two years ago, Seoul 18 years ago. Warsaw has not been a hardship post for almost as long, and Hong Kong has not been one for at least 50 years.

In English, please?

Everyone tells me Michael Chertoff is a smart fellow, and no one can question his dedication. After all, he gave up a nice lifetime job as a judge on a federal circuit court of appeals. Still, he talks in a way that makes alarm bells sound in my mind as I recall long dull meetings in the bureaucracy. He calls for a “properly risk-managed approach to critical infrastructure” and “an integrated, sensible, systems-based approach.” And according to Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, to whom I am indebted for these examples, he speaks of “the critical points of triangulation” and of “better information about the constituents of the supply chain.” At DHS, he aims for “internal integration into a unified command structure.” I have to say that I have never known anyone who talked this way who was also an effective leader.

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