By Deanna Gorzynski, 1/31/07
With the new congress in session and Presidential power
waning, President Bush is actively seeking other ways to control “His
Government”.
In an executive order published last week in the Federal
Register, Bush said each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, supervising the
development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries.
This directive gives the White House much greater control
over rules and policy statements created to protect public health, safety, the
environment, civil rights, privacy, and other vital issues.
This shocking, yet quietly announced change will strengthen
the White House in shaping rules that until now have been generated by civil
servants and scientific experts. Bush will now have a gatekeeper in each agency
to analyze the costs, benefits and assurance that agencies carry out the
president’s priorities.
The White House tried to assure that the order was not meant
to reign in any one agency. Serious concern exists among business executives
and consumer advocates saying the administration was particularly interested
about rules and guidelines issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and
the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The consensus of opinion seems to have clearly drawn lines.
In an interview Monday with J. Rosen, general counsel at the White House Office
Of Management And Budget said, “This is
a classic good-government measure that will make federal agencies more open and
accountable.”
Peter Strauss, a Professor at Columbia Law
School said the order
“achieves a major increase in White House control over domestic government.”
Mr. Strauss continued, “Having lost control of Congress, the President’s doing
what he can to increase the control of the executive branch.”
Representative Henry Waxman (D-California) and chairman of
the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said, “The executive order
allows the political staff at the White House to dictate decisions on health
and safety issues, even if the government’s own impartial experts disagree.
This is a terrible way to govern, but great news for special interests.”
This alarming new move harkens back to many troubling appointments
Bush has previously made. He chose Eric Keroack to head the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs. In a 2003 talk to the
International Abstinence Leadership Conference in Las Vegas, Keroack called
premarital sex a form of “germ warfare,” and he has said
contraception “demeans women . . . degrades human sexuality and is adverse
to human health.”
In 2002, Bush appointed W. David Hager–who opposes
contraception and advocates prayer as the only way to treat premenstrual
syndrome–to head the Food and Drug Administration’s reproductive health drugs
committee.
Bush also appointed Alma Golden–who opposes contraception
and sex education–to oversee implementation of Title X, the nation’s only
federally funded family planning program. He issued rules in 2002 making a
fetus eligible for federal health dollars while explicitly excluding the pregnant
woman from coverage. On his watch, abstinence is the only sex education we fund
for public schools with our federal tax dollars.
On March 7, 2005 Bolton was
nominated to the post of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations by President
George W. Bush. Bolton has been a strong
critic of the United Nations for much of his career. In a 1994 Global
Structures Convocation hosted by the World Federalist Association he stated,
“There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the
international community, which can only be led by the only remaining
superpower, which is the United
States.” He also stated that “The Secretariat
building in New York
has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of
difference.”
I am often asked by people who don’t understand the pivotal
issues regarding the removal of Bush/Cheney, “What can he do in 2
years?!”. Here are some clear and
disturbing examples.