The hackocracy continues

January 6, 2007

I realize that the [tag]Consumer Product Safety Commission[/tag] is not exactly the most well known agency in the federal government, but has some fairly important responsibilities, and how Bush has decided to staff the Commission says a lot about his administration.

When Clinton was president, he appointed Ann Brown to chair the CPSC, which is responsible for reviewing thousands of consumer products to see which, if any, pose a health risk and might need to be recalled. Brown had spent 20 years as a consumer advocate and served as vice president of the Consumer Federation of America, so she was a logical choice, who ended up doing a fine job on behalf of American consumers.

This is how a functional administration works — find capable, competent people to fill government posts, and the public will be well served. Then Bush was elected. He tapped [tag]Hal Stratton[/tag] for the post.

A former state representative and attorney general in New Mexico, Hal [tag]Stratton[/tag] never asked for his current job, protecting American citizens from such dangers as lead-laced toy jewelry and flammable Halloween costumes. Instead, the former geology major who went on to co-chair the local Lawyers for Bush during the 2000 campaign initially wanted a job in the Interior Department. “That didn’t work out,” he told the Albuquerque Journal, “but I told them, ‘Don’t count me out’ … and they came up with this.” […]

[Now Stratton has] a track record: rare public hearings and a paucity of new safety regulations, as well as regular (often industry-sponsored) travels to such destinations as China, Costa Rica, Belgium, Spain, and Mexico. But at least Stratton won’t let personal bias influence him: Despite saying that he wouldn’t let his own daughters play with water yo-yos — rubber toys that are outlawed in several countries because of concerns that children could be strangled by them — he refused to ban them in the United States.

Fortunately, Stratton left his post in June 2006, giving Bush second chance to find a qualified person to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Surprise, surprise, the president has decided to pick another hack.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday:

Consumer groups prepare to assail rumored Bush candidate to head Consumer Product Safety Commission, National Association of Manufacturers lobbyist Michael Baroody. “It’s sort of astonishing that the administration would pick someone from a regulated industry,” says Rachel Weintraub of the Consumer Federation of America. The agency will lose its ability to make rules or levy fines on Jan. 14 unless chairman’s vacancy is filled.

Baroody, a staunch opponent of labor unions, has also taken a hard line against lawsuits targeting the asbestos industry.

First, it’s once again obvious the Bush gang only knows one way to operate. With an agency like the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the White House has a choice: pick a qualified advocate of consumer’s interests, or pick a conservative ideologue, with no relevant experience, and an agenda hostile to consumer’s interests. Guess which way he went?

Second, what was that the media was saying about the president being more “accommodating” in post-election Washington?

3 people, all young and tested for loyalty to the Republican agenda, hired to work on the infrastructure of Iraq. 8,000 worked on the infrastructure of Germany after WWII.

Bush has never been penalized for being incompetent. Why would he select people who are better at their jobs than he is?

  • If they can’t shrink government small enough to drown then they’ll make it too incompetent to swim. Why do they hate us?

  • I won’t bother pointing out the parallels between the BushBrat’s behaviour and those of various rulers who made a habit of handing out land and titles to their friends. (Though I hope Shrubster meets a sticky end) I’d point to a far more recent example: Washington, DC under the seemingly endless rule of another addict: Marion Barry.

    It isn’t entirely urban legend that if one was a friend or relation of WhereIam Barry, or even a FoaF or FoaR, you had a job, even if someone had to create one. It was so bad that when Mayor Anthony Williams vowed to fire every person who wasn’t qualified for his position, not only did these pigs get angry, Williams couldn’t do it because it would have meant firing almost everyone. Not that they did much anyway…However, with apologies to anyone who had to put up with the DC government, including my dear Grandma, while Barry’s antics only affected a small portion of the population, Bush’s bullshit is fucking up the entire country. (See: New Orleans.) No, make that two. Iraq didn’t fare too well under the loyalists, did it?

  • “It’s sort of astonishing that the administration would pick someone from a regulated industry,” says Rachel Weintraub

    I expected nothing less.

    It’s striking that incompetence is not only a qualification for being a Bush appointee, it’s a hallmark of being a Bush loyalist in the first place.

  • Conservative/Libertarian theory would allow several children to be strangled by the water yo-yos and let the infallible free market decide if their deaths were just acceptable collateral damage in the pursuit of freedom and excellence.

  • While it’s no surprise that they don’t believe in governments and regulation, it infuriates me that they aren’t honest enough about their convictions to eliminate these jobs, and instead use them to reward cronies. They don’t stand up and say “CPSC is the worst kind of big government, and we’re going to eliminate it” because that would be a)unpopular and b)work. Instead, they use it to reward their toadies by letting them suck from the public trough.

    It’s not just that they’re radicals with insane ideas about the role of government, it’s that they are also dishonest scum. Arrrrghhh.

  • I suggest that everyone read “Why Conservatives Can’t Govern” if you haven’t already. It’s here: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0607.wolfe.html

    A couple of quotes:

    “If government is necessary, bad government, at least for conservatives, is inevitable, and conservatives have been exceptionally good at showing just how bad it can be. Hence the truth revealed by the Bush years: Bad government — indeed, bloated, inefficient, corrupt, and unfair government — is the only kind of conservative government there is. Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.

    “Upon assuming office, George W. Bush turned to former Texas campaign aide Joe Allbaugh to run FEMA and then shifted it into the new Department of Homeland Security (whose creation he had opposed). Allbaugh, and his hand-picked successor Michael Brown, like so many Bush appointees, were afflicted with what we might call “learned incompetence.” They did not fail merely out of ignorance and inexperience. Their ineptness, rather, was active rather than passive, the end result of a deliberate determination to prove that the federal government simply should not be in the business of disaster management. “Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management,” Allbaugh had testified before a Senate appropriations subcommittee in May, 2001. “Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.” There was the conservative dilemma in a nutshell: a man put in charge of a mission in which he did not believe.”

    Bill Moyers recently said this: “America became the first nation on earth to offer an economic vision of opportunity for even the humblest beginner to advance, and then moved, in fits and starts–but always irrepressibly–to the invocation of positive government as the means to further that vision through politics.”

    How far our government has strayed from this principle, all the way to intending to make sure government DOESN’T work for anyone except to empower and enrich Bush and his cronies…

  • This is about much more, biggerbox, than “sucking from the public trough.” This is also about much more than providing employment for the Bushian faithful.

    What this is about is establishing the complete impotency of America’s regulatory capabilities.

    Consider the impact when various consumer groups sek information from CPSC. They won’t get the indformation they need; they’ll get, instead, “the company line.” The “safety” information will be based solely on what a company wants the consumer to know—and not know.

    CPSC data, provided to Congressional committees, will likewise be authored by the institutions who wish to avoid government regulation—and the damage that this could do in a 24-month timeframe would be much worse than merely denying CPSC the ability to levy fines. It could create a “false mountain” of safety data that may well take years to sift through—possibly even a decade or more. In the meantime, stores, homes, classrooms, child-care centers, playgrounds, workplaces beyond measure—and even neighborhood yard sales run the risk of being inundated with unsafe products; each merely a dumbed-down form of an IED, waiting to go off and bring harm to someone….

  • “Baroody”??? That doesn’t sound American! Will he be taking his oath of office on the Koran? 🙂

  • It’s important to be clear that this stuff isn’t about incompetence. The Bush people are doing this deliberately, taking a cue from St. Reagan: They’re sabotaging these agencies by putting hacks in charge. One of the fundamental differences between Dems and the current group of Republicans is that the Republicans don’t WANT government to work. They want it to screw up, which increases public support for destroying it. In particular, they don’t want agencies whose job it is to rein in the excesses of big business to work; they’re being paid handsomely by their contributors to emasculate those agencies. Reagan started this with James Watt and Anne Burford; Bush is continuing the tradition.

  • Can I just say that I sort of wish this position wouldn’t get filled? After all considering the idiot in chief’s track record in appointing hacks all over the government, at least a leaderless CPSC wouldn’t be doing any more damage.

  • “agency like the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the White House has a choice: pick a qualified advocate of consumer’s interests, or pick a conservative ideologue, with no relevant experience”

    EXCEPTION TO THE RULE:
    The White House Legal Team, no hacks allowed, including Meyers.

    America: Hacks & Cronies
    His Own Ass: Well Qualified Professionals

    • Comments are closed.