{"id":7786,"date":"2006-06-27T11:18:11","date_gmt":"2006-06-27T15:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7786"},"modified":"2006-06-27T11:18:11","modified_gmt":"2006-06-27T15:18:11","slug":"stratton-leaves-consumers-benefit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/stratton-leaves-consumers-benefit\/","title":{"rendered":"Stratton leaves, consumers benefit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Bill Clinton was president, he appointed Ann Brown to chair the [tag]Consumer Product Safety Co[\/tag]mmission. The panel doesn&#8217;t get a lot of ink, but it&#8217;s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Then [tag]Bush[\/tag] was elected. He nominated <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tnr.com\/doc.mhtml?i=20051017&#038;s=hacks101705 \">[tag]Hal Stratton[\/tag]<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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. &#8220;That didn&#8217;t work out,&#8221; he told the Albuquerque Journal, &#8220;but I told them, &#8216;Don&#8217;t count me out&#8217; &#8230; and they came up with this.&#8221; [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>[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&#8217;t let personal bias influence him: Despite saying that he wouldn&#8217;t let his own daughters play with water yo-yos &#8212; rubber toys that are outlawed in several countries because of concerns that children could be strangled by them &#8212; he refused to ban them in the United States. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s classic [tag]Bush[\/tag] governing. Take a reasonably important government post that helps protect consumer safety, hand it over to a partisan [tag]hack[\/tag] with no credible experience, and watch the public agency stop working.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m pleased to report that Stratton <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/washwire\/2006\/06\/26\/us-product-safety-chief-resigns\/\">submitted his resignation<\/a> yesterday, not because anyone in the White House wanted him out, but because Stratton intends to &#8220;pursue other interests.&#8221; If recent history is any guide, the president will find someone equally unqualified to replace him.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s just the way the administration works, or in this case, doesn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Bill Clinton was president, he appointed Ann Brown to chair the [tag]Consumer Product Safety Co[\/tag]mmission. The panel doesn&#8217;t get a lot of ink, but it&#8217;s 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}