Again, a final note on this topic. I read a lot of baloney when I came to this town five years ago about Harry Reid the champion of the worker who through his personal experience as the son of a coal worker fought for the common man. What the heck, Harry?! Are you kidding me? Where is the great Democratic voice today? It's indistinguishable from the Republican / corporate one - that's where it is. OSHA, even on the federal level has been cut off at the knees because once Bubba Bill became the first corporate friendly Democrat in the White House, the agency went into survival mode. Encouraging states to form their own OSHA, especially here in Nevada opens the gate wide open to the type of human disaster we're seeing reported on by the Sun. Every worker accident, including the Orleans tragedy, including every worker that falls into a trench is a mark of shame for Southern Nevada, for OSHA (state and federal), for the union and for our local and state politicians.

I can't believe in this age of cell phone cameras and other digital devices there aren't more photos taken of job sites where proper safety codes are violated. I have to believe if workers started emailing these photos to Ms. Berzon or OSHA at the federal level, with or without a reference to the code violation it wouldn't make a difference. You guys know what's safe and what's not safe. The work will not disappear if these sites are pushed to follow the law! These codes and laws exist so you can work another day on another job site. They've been in existance since the creation of OSHA, specifically because too many of you have perished for no good reason. Safety does not kill jobs. Lack of safety kills you! If your union won't stand up for you, your sons, your daughters and the state agency created to protect you, won't do their job, it's time to get creative, use technology, the law, whatever you can, to protect yourselves and protect your absolute right to work in a safe environment on this job and the next one!!!

The regulations established by OSHA work if they're enforced. OSHA personnel need to show courage and resolve. If the state run office is so crippled that it can't routinely shut down these dangerous work sites, the state should hand over OSHA responsbilities to the federal level.

I've read a lot of excuses as to why a job can't be done safely. You are making excuses as to why it's okay to break the law. It's my opinion that jobsite managers and all the hands I've read about in these fatalities are guilty of criminally negligent homicide.

If this criminal negligence is being ignored on the state level, since the codes must equal or surpass the federal standards, can federal prosecutors step in and file charges?

Also, there seems to me to be a lot of money here to be made by our burgeoning trial attorney population in civil suits. I'm looking at quote after quote of "experts" in these articles who are saying, "yeah we break the law, everyone does it, etc". Sounds like easy pickings for a class action! Someone is conciously deciding not to enforce these well established codes.

Loan officers have a fiduciary responsibility to the companies they work for.

It is in their best interest to write the worst mortgage product possible to ensure their clients will have to refinance.

Loan officers believed, truly that they would be able to refinance their clients out of pay option arms. Unfortunately, too many of these loans and other risky loans were written and everyone up to Sen. Harry Reid believed the Las Vegas housing market was bullet or shall I say bubble proof.

There IS a simple solution:
1. Write laws forcing lenders to state that they in fact represent the lenders best interest and NOT the buyer's.
2. Allow families AND investors in pay-option arms or in mortgages that are in risk of foreclosure the ability to refinance - cost free into 50 year or longer fixed mortgages and
3. Tighten lending requirements
a. no more non income verification loans
b. require substantial downpayments
c. abolish pay option arm loans (most loan officers have no idea what causes a pay option arm to adjust or could pinpoint when that would occur)

But, hold off on doing this until the market shakes out a few more banks and many more snake mortgage brokers are forced to live on D street.

Great idea "letjusticeprevail". I did some digging and found the following information on the OSHA.GOV Web site:

"Anyone finding inadequacies or other problems in the administration of a State's program, may file a Complaint About State Program Administration (CASPA) with the appropriate OSHA regional administrator as well. The complainant's name is kept confidential. OSHA investigates all such complaints, and where complaints are found to be valid, requires appropriate corrective action on the part of the State." I found this here http://www.osha.gov/dcsp/osp/faq.html#os...

NV OSHA is under Region 9 and the regional office information is listed below.

Region IX Federal Contact Numbers
90 7th Street, Suite 18100
San Francisco, California 94103
(415) 625-2547 (Main Public - 8:00 AM - 4:30 PM Pacific)
(800) 475-4019 (For Technical Assistance)
(800) 475-4020 (For Complaints - Accidents/Fatalities)
Note: The 800 number for Complaints - Accidents/Fatalities is Regional only.
(800) 475-4022 (For Publication Requests)
(415) 625-2534 FAX

To the employees of NV OSHA, I have one more comment for you: Re-read the policies and programs instituted under Eula Bingham especially her "common sense priorities". If you refuse to live up to the standards the champions of your organization set so long ago, you have failed yourself and are continuing to endanger the lives of hard working Americans.

Where does one even start? Thank you to Ms. Berzon for tackling this issue and to the Sun for doing what the unions and Nevada OSHA are failing to do. I commend Mr. Toomey's efforts and am completely outraged by the quotes attributed to Mr. Lenhart. How does his membership feel knowing that he will cower to the corporations rather than fight for the very lives of his own membership? It sounds like Mr. Toomey is cut from the cloth of the type of union I'd like to belong to. Mr. Toomey, a man like yourself ran OSHA in region 1 about the same time you were helping your membership. He wouldn't hesitate to shut down a job if upon inspection it didn't meet code, no matter how big and no matter what the threats. He couldn't be bought and he wouldn't be intimdated. Somehow, the jobs still got done and men on those jobs were safer.

It's absolutely disgraceful that there are fatalities on job sites when codes to prevent these accidents were written long ago. These are preventable accidents Las Vegas! Some of these codes should be as fundamental as workers wearing hard hats, yet we still see these tragedies.

Ms. Berzon, the questions I have, and my apologies if I missed it in your article: Why isn't Nevada under Federal OSHA AND what would it take to make that happen? How many inspectors does NV OSHA have and WHO are they? What are their records as far as inspections and citations? Where is this information available for the public to read? How do codes and regulations differ from the state to federal level? Is there legislation that weakened code in this state and which politician voted for it? How does the Department of Labor fit in all of this?

General questions I have are:
How are state government officials allowed to hide behind "no comment"? Why aren't politicians, particularly top Democrats demanding transparency in these proceedings and accountability from Nevada OSHA?

I know this is rather disjointed and goes off in a few different directions, but I'm just so outraged by this utter failure to protect our workers. It's time to inspect and shut down, BEFORE there's a fatality. OSHA - why aren't you doing this?