Hats off to the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) for setting the record straight on workplace safety standards! In a blog post last week, National COSH's Dorry Samuels answered the question posed by The Washington Post's Wonk Blog – "New regulations ... what do they reap?" The piece featured questionable statistics from a report by the conservative American Action Forum complaining about the costs (to business) of regulations. Samuels highlighted the human costs of delaying crucial workplace safety protections.

Two years after the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill killed 11 people and spewed millions of barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, BP has agreed to plead guilty to 14 criminal charges, including manslaughter charges from the deaths. The company will pay $4.5 billion in damages, including $4 billion for the criminal charges and $525 million to securities regulators. BP will face additional civil fines of up to $20 billion as a result of its violations of the Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act.

The highlight of next week's legislative calendar in the House is likely to be a vote on H.R. 4078, the misleadingly named "Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act." With this vote, the House majority is set to launch yet another attack to shut down the safeguards that protect Americans against health, safety, and economic disasters.