Government by Temper Tantrum
By Molly Ivins, AlterNet
Posted on September 23, 2005, Printed on September 25, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/25910/
So here are all the liberals going into a giant snit just because George
W. Bush appointed a veterinarian to head the women's health section of
the Food and Drug Administration. For Pete's sake, you whiners, the only
reason he chose the vet is because Michael Brown wasn't available.
If you recall, Ol' Heckuva-Job Brownie had to go home, walk his dog and
then hug his wife after exhausting himself in his triumphal handling of
Hurricane Katrina. Otherwise, he'd have been Bush's first pick.
Now, even the veterinarian doesn't get the job -- just because those
professional feminists raised such a stink. What's wrong with a vet? They
know a lot about birth and udders and stuff. If the mother is having
trouble giving birth, you grab the baby by the legs and pull it out --
it's not brain surgery. Then you worm 'em, you tag 'em and you spray for
fleas. Why the fuss?
The only reason Bush even needed a new head of the Office of Women's
Health is because the last one, Susan Wood, quit. She was upset because
the political hacks who run the agency refused to allow over-the-counter
sale of the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B.
True, that decision was made against the advice of the FDA's own
scientific advisory panel and will unquestionably result in more
abortions and almost certainly damage to some women's health. But why
would anyone expect the Bush hacks to pay attention to scientific and
clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended by the professional
staff? Just like the folks at FEMA, they got their jobs because they know
how to set up photo-ops for Bush.
There's a doctoral dissertation to be written about Bush appointees named
during the administration's frequent fits of Petulant Pique. These PP
appointments are made in the immortal childhood spirit of "nanny-nanny
boo-boo, I'll show you." Susan Wood resigns in protest over the
politicization of women's health care? Ha! We'll show her -- we'll put a
vet in charge instead!
The PP appointments are less for reasons of ideology or even rewarding
the politically faithful than just in the old nyeh-nyeh spirit. You
could, for example, put any number of people at the Department of Labor
who are wholly unsympathetic to the labor movement -- Bush has installed
shoals of them already. But there is a certain arch, flippant malice to
making Edwin Foulke assistant secretary in charge of the health and
safety of workers.
Republican appointees who oppose the agencies to which they are assigned
are a dime a dozen, but Foulke is a partner from the most notorious
union-busting law firm in the country. What he does for a living is
destroy the only organizations that care about workers' health and
safety.
Here's another PP pick: put a timber industry lobbyist in as head of the
Forest Service. How about a mining industry lobbyist who believes public
lands are unconstitutional in charge of the public lands? Nice shot. A
utility lobbyist who represented the worst air polluters in the country
as head of the clean air division at the EPA? A laff riot. As head of the
Superfund, a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to
evade Superfund regulations? Cute, cute, cute. A Monsanto lobbyist as No.
2 at the EPA. A lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute at the
Council on Environmental Quality. And so on. And so forth.
The Federal Trade Commission was finally embarrassed enough by demands
from Democratic governors to start an investigation into recent price
gouging by oil companies. But the investigation will be headed by a
former lawyer for ChevronTexaco. Is this fun or what? Nanny-nanny boo-
boo.
The terrible lesson of Hurricane Katrina is that public policy is not a
political gotcha game. The public interest is not well-served by
appointing incompetents or anti-competents to positions of
responsibility. Public policy is about our lives.
Here's another example: The Violence Against Women Act expires on Oct. 1
and must be reauthorized before then. It doesn't look good. For 10 years,
this law has helped improve criminal justice and community-based
responses to sexual violence and sexual assault. As result, there has
been an overall decline in the incidence of women battered or killed by
their partners.
But as the July-August issue of Mother Jones painfully demonstrates,
domestic violence remains a hideous problem. It is both a public health
and a human rights issue. Homicide is the 10th leading cause of death for
women under 65. According to the Family Violence Prevention Fund, about
30 percent of American women report being physically abused by husbands
or boyfriends. Every year, more than 300,000 U.S. women are raped and
more than 4 million assaulted. Funding for family violence prevention was
cut by $48 million this year.
I guess it would be pretty funny, on some level, to put a vet in charge
of this issue, too. But let's not. This is about people's lives. I've
already seen too many people staring numbly at walls, still in shock.
Let's start by getting Congress to at least reauthorize the act. The
arsenal of democracy starts with the telephone, the fax machine, the e-
mail, paper and pen. Just sign it, "Your constituent."
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/25910/
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