H
Harry Hope
Guest
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051607K.shtml
Wednesday 16 May 2007
Consumer Protection Nominee Rekindles Charges of Cronyism
By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t | Report
The nomination of a long-time manufacturers' lobbyist to head the
nation's consumer safety watchdog agency is not only igniting fierce
opposition from public interest groups, but is sparking a
reexamination of the Bush administration's five-year history of
appointing senior officials many regard as "cronies" who were
inefficient, inexperienced and, in some cases, forced to resign under
pressure or convicted of crimes.
According to a report released by Public Citizen, Michael Baroody,
President Bush's nominee to chair the Consumer Products Safety
Commission, was the top lobbyist for the country's most powerful
industry trade association when the group supported weakening
guidelines for reporting information about dangerous products.
The report charged that the "requirements that the National
Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and its allies sought to weaken had
been responsible for more than 80 percent of the fines issued by the
Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) over the past decade.
NAM's members and its coalition partners were responsible for paying
more than half of those fines."
The CPSC is tasked with protecting the public - and especially
children - from serious injury or death and monitors more than 15,000
types of consumer products. Reports about product hazards are mandated
by the Consumer Product Safety Act, one of the key laws governing the
CPSC's role in protecting consumer safety.
Public Citizen says that, with Baroody serving as its executive
director for lobbying efforts, NAM supported a move to weaken agency
protocols that dictate when companies - including NAM members - must
immediately report information about potentially hazardous product
defects.
The changes NAM successfully pressed for could affect the agency's
ability to issue timely decisions to recall dangerous products.
"As head of the CPSC, Baroody would be in charge of administering the
weakened disclosure guidance his industry association sought,
presenting a serious and unavoidable conflict of interest," said
Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook.
"Under his authority, consumer and public safety would be at risk,
while the companies he represented for years would save millions in
future fines."
Public Citizen's analysis shows that weakening the rules had enormous
financial benefits for NAM and its manufacturer members at the expense
of consumer safety.
Alleged violations of reporting guidelines were responsible for about
$32.9 million of $39.6 million in civil fines collected by the CPSC
since 1997.
NAM members and affiliates accounted for more than half of those
payments, totaling $18 million.
Five of those companies alone paid a combined $10 million for
allegedly violating reporting guidelines.
"While Baroody was at its helm, NAM had a record of unrelenting
hostility to the safety of consumers, including small children," said
Laura MacCleery, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch division.
"Baroody should not be confirmed to lead a safety agency that has such
a vital role in protecting American families."
The Baroody nomination has rekindled charges of serious ethics
breaches, conflicts of interest, inefficiency, cronyism and a number
of criminal convictions among Bush political appointees since the
election of 2000.
The public is by now familiar with the more high-profile cases.
The departure of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The conviction of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter
Libby, for lying to a federal grand jury in connection with the
leaking of a CIA operative's identity.
The conviction of David Safavian, head of all government procurement
at the Office of Management and Budget, for lying to ethics officials
and Senate investigators about his ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The resignation of neoconservative leader Richard Perle, one of the
architects of the Iraq invasion, who stepped down as chairman of the
Pentagon's Defense Policy Board amid conflict-of-interest charges.
The firing of Michael Brown, the FEMA director whose performance
before, during and after Hurricane Katrina became a national scandal.
And, most recently, the resignation of Monica Goodling, the Bush
administration official believed to have played a pivotal role in the
current contretemps over sacked prosecutors, after she invoked her
Fifth Amendment right not to testify to Congress.
Less well-known to the public is the catalog of indictments or guilty
pleas by lower-level Executive Branch political appointees.
Here are some of them, originally compiled by Nick Turse of TPM
Muckraker, and added to by readers.
Steven Griles, deputy secretary at the Interior Department, who
resigned and subsequently pled guilty to lying about his ties to
convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Dusty Foggo, CIA executive director, who was indicted following
accusations of corruption in connection to the Duke Cunningham
scandal.
Claude Allen, assistant to the president for domestic policy,
who pled guilty to shoplifting from Target stores.
Larry Franklin, a DOD intelligence officer, who pled guilty to
passing secrets to Israel.
Roger Stillwell, a desk officer at the Interior Department, who
pled guilty to failing to report receiving Redskins tickets and free
dinners from Jack Abramoff.
Frank Figueroa, a senior official in the Department of Homeland
Security and former head of anti-sex-crime Operation Predator, who
pled no contest to exposing himself to a 16-year-old girl in a Florida
mall.
Darleen Druyun, a senior contracting official for the Air Force,
who pled guilty and was sentenced to nine months in prison for her
role in the Boeing tanker lease scandal.
John Korsmo, chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board, who
pled guilty to lying to the Senate and an inspector general about his
role in a fundraiser for a friend's Congressional campaign.
Korsmo's wife, Michelle Larson Korsmo, deputy chief of staff at
the Department of Labor, who resigned about two weeks before news
broke that she and her husband were targets of a criminal probe.
P. Trey Sunderland III, chief of geriatric psychiatry at the
National Institute of Mental Health, who admitted to a criminal
conflict of interest charge for failing to report $300,000 received
from Pfizer Inc., a pharmaceutical company.
Still others have resigned in the face of pending charges or after
investigations had been completed.
These include:
Carl Truscott, director of the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives Bureau, who resigned after a report by the Justice
Department's inspector general found he wasted tens of thousands of
dollars on luxuries, wasted millions on whimsical management decisions
and violated ethics rules by ordering employees to help his nephew
with a high school video project.
Joseph Schmitz, the Defense Department's inspector general, who
resigned amid charges he personally intervened to protect top
political appointees.
Susan Ralston, a White House assistant, who resigned amidst
revelations she had accepted thousands of dollars in gifts from
lobbyist Abramoff without compensating him, counter to White House
ethics rules.
Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting and a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, who
resigned after the release of an inspector general's report concluding
he had broken laws in spending CPB money to hire politically connected
consultants to search for "bias" without consulting the board. At BBG,
a separate investigation found he was running a "horse racing
operation" out of his office, and continuing to hire politically wired
individuals to do "consulting" work for him.
George Deutsch, a NASA press aide, who resigned amid allegations
he prevented the agency's top climate scientist from speaking publicly
about global warming.
James Roche, secretary of the Air Force, who resigned in the
wake of the Boeing tanker lease scandal, after it was revealed he had
pushed for Boeing to win a $23 billion contract.
Marvin Sambur, the top contracting executive at the Air Force -
Darleen Druyun's boss - who resigned in the wake of the Boeing
scandal, though further investigations cleared him of wrongdoing.
Philip Cooney, chief of staff for the White House Council on
Environmental Quality and a former oil industry lawyer with no
scientific expertise, who resigned after it was revealed he had
watered down reports on global warming.
Thomas Scully, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services, who resigned following an investigation by the HHS
Inspector General found he had pressured the agency's actuary to
underestimate the full cost of the Medicare reform bill by
approximately $100 billion until after Congress passed the bill into
law.
David Smith, deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and
parks at the Interior Department, who resigned after shooting a
buffalo and accepting its remains as an illegal gratuity.
Sean Tunis, Chief Medical Officer at the Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services, who left after the State of Maryland suspended
his medical license because he faked documentation relating to his
medical education.
Julie MacDonald, the Interior Department's assistant secretary
of fish, wildlife and parks, who resigned after an inspector general
investigation concluded that she used her position to squelch
protection of endangered species.
Janet Rehnquist, daughter of the late Chief Justice William
Rehnquist, who resigned as inspector general of the Health and Human
Services Department after Congress began investigating her decision to
delay an audit of Florida's pension fund at the request of Gov. Jeb
Bush's office.
Robert E. Coughlin II, deputy chief of staff for the DOJ's
criminal division, who resigned after coming under scrutiny in the
department's expanding investigation of convicted super-lobbyist Jack
Abramoff.
Lester Crawford, who resigned as a commissioner of the US Food
and Drug Administration and pled guilty to charges of "conflict of
interest and false reporting of information about stocks he owned in
food, beverage and medical device companies he was in charge of
regulating."
Army Secretary Francis Harvey, the Army's top civilian official,
who resigned in the wake of the ongoing controversy about poor
outpatient care of injured soldiers at Walter Reid Army Medical
Center.
The nominations of a number of other Bush loyalists were withdrawn
because of scandal or political opposition.
For example:
Harriet Miers, a longtime Bush friend, whom the president
nominated to be an associate justice on the Supreme Court, but later
was forced to withdraw because of opposition from the religious right.
Bernard Kerik, nominated on the recommendation of former New
York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to head the Department of Homeland
Security, who withdrew his nomination amidst a host of corruption
allegations.
Timothy Flanigan, nominated to be deputy attorney general, who
withdrew his nomination after revelations that he had worked closely
with lobbyist Jack Abramoff when he was general counsel for corporate
and international law at Tyco, an Abramoff client.
Linda Chavez, nominated to become secretary of labor, who
withdrew her nomination because of revelations that an illegal
immigrant lived in her home and worked for her.
A number of other Bush nominees made it through the Senate
confirmation process but remain under scrutiny by Congress because of
lack of experience or ideologically driven views.
One such is Ellen Sauerbrey, now head of the State Department's
Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, the office that
coordinates the American response to migration problems caused by war
and natural disasters and works with international groups on
population and reproductive-health issues. Sauerbrey's resume includes
no experience in any of these areas. She ran Bush's 2000 presidential
campaign in Maryland, and twice ran for governor of that state.
Another is Julie Myers, head of US Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), whose nomination was criticized by several ICE
supervisors and agents who said she was "unqualified" because she
never held a law-enforcement management position. Myers leads the
largest investigative component of the Department of Homeland Security
and the second-largest investigative agency in the federal government,
with more than 15,000 employees and an annual budget of nearly $5
billion. Her uncle is retired Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers,
formerly chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
A third is J. Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defense for
public affairs. Smith, a former ABC News producer and the former media
adviser to Coalition Provisional Authority Ambassador L. Paul Bremer,
was confirmed by the Senate months after President Bush used a recess
appointment to install him in the job. Objections were raised about a
column he wrote for the Wall Street Journal in which he suggested that
US television networks engaged in "collaboration" with terrorists by
airing Arab news reports on al-Qaeda.
Many of the Bush administration's younger appointees were recruited
from right-wing Christian universities, such as Patrick Henry College,
whose mission is "to prepare Christian men and women who will lead our
nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values and
fidelity to the spirit of the American founding."
Others have come from Liberty University, the Christian liberal arts
university founded as Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971 by
televangelist Jerry Falwell.
Pat Robertson's Regent University is the alma mater of Monica
Goodling, the DOJ's White House liaison officer, who recently resigned
rather than testify to Congress about her role in the firing of US
attorneys.
A long line of Patrick Henry graduates have found their way to
internships and permanent positions in the Bush administration,
including some in the office of Karl Rove, the president's chief
political adviser.
Paul Bonicelli, a former Patrick Henry dean, is now the No. 2 official
supervising democracy-promotion programs at the US Agency for
International Development.
But not all Bush appointees have been happy campers. A number have
resigned.
For example, John J. DiIulio Jr., the first director of the White
House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, who quit his
post after only seven months on the job, and
David Kuo, his deputy, who left saying that "there was minimal senior
White House commitment to the faith-based agenda" and that there never
really was great concern over what he called "the 'poor people
stuff'."
DiIulio told Esquire Magazine, "There is no precedent in any modern
White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a
policy apparatus. What you've got is everything - and I mean
everything - being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the
Mayberry Machiavellis." He also decried "a virtual absence as yet of
any policy accomplishments that might, to a fair-minded nonpartisan,
count as the flesh on the bones of so-called compassionate
conservatism."
The invasion of Iraq also triggered the resignations of a number of
officials who disagreed with the Bush administration's war policies.
Among them were career Foreign Service Officers like John Brown, now a
Senior Fellow at the University of Southern California Center on
Public Diplomacy, and Mary A. (Ann) Wright, who now writes about US
foreign policy and lectures at universities.
But the current controversy related to the forced resignations of nine
US attorneys promises to add fuel to the fire caused by what many
administration-watchers describe as the most inept, ideological and
politically driven presidencies in recent US history.
_____________________________________________________
Harry
Wednesday 16 May 2007
Consumer Protection Nominee Rekindles Charges of Cronyism
By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t | Report
The nomination of a long-time manufacturers' lobbyist to head the
nation's consumer safety watchdog agency is not only igniting fierce
opposition from public interest groups, but is sparking a
reexamination of the Bush administration's five-year history of
appointing senior officials many regard as "cronies" who were
inefficient, inexperienced and, in some cases, forced to resign under
pressure or convicted of crimes.
According to a report released by Public Citizen, Michael Baroody,
President Bush's nominee to chair the Consumer Products Safety
Commission, was the top lobbyist for the country's most powerful
industry trade association when the group supported weakening
guidelines for reporting information about dangerous products.
The report charged that the "requirements that the National
Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and its allies sought to weaken had
been responsible for more than 80 percent of the fines issued by the
Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) over the past decade.
NAM's members and its coalition partners were responsible for paying
more than half of those fines."
The CPSC is tasked with protecting the public - and especially
children - from serious injury or death and monitors more than 15,000
types of consumer products. Reports about product hazards are mandated
by the Consumer Product Safety Act, one of the key laws governing the
CPSC's role in protecting consumer safety.
Public Citizen says that, with Baroody serving as its executive
director for lobbying efforts, NAM supported a move to weaken agency
protocols that dictate when companies - including NAM members - must
immediately report information about potentially hazardous product
defects.
The changes NAM successfully pressed for could affect the agency's
ability to issue timely decisions to recall dangerous products.
"As head of the CPSC, Baroody would be in charge of administering the
weakened disclosure guidance his industry association sought,
presenting a serious and unavoidable conflict of interest," said
Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook.
"Under his authority, consumer and public safety would be at risk,
while the companies he represented for years would save millions in
future fines."
Public Citizen's analysis shows that weakening the rules had enormous
financial benefits for NAM and its manufacturer members at the expense
of consumer safety.
Alleged violations of reporting guidelines were responsible for about
$32.9 million of $39.6 million in civil fines collected by the CPSC
since 1997.
NAM members and affiliates accounted for more than half of those
payments, totaling $18 million.
Five of those companies alone paid a combined $10 million for
allegedly violating reporting guidelines.
"While Baroody was at its helm, NAM had a record of unrelenting
hostility to the safety of consumers, including small children," said
Laura MacCleery, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch division.
"Baroody should not be confirmed to lead a safety agency that has such
a vital role in protecting American families."
The Baroody nomination has rekindled charges of serious ethics
breaches, conflicts of interest, inefficiency, cronyism and a number
of criminal convictions among Bush political appointees since the
election of 2000.
The public is by now familiar with the more high-profile cases.
The departure of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The conviction of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter
Libby, for lying to a federal grand jury in connection with the
leaking of a CIA operative's identity.
The conviction of David Safavian, head of all government procurement
at the Office of Management and Budget, for lying to ethics officials
and Senate investigators about his ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The resignation of neoconservative leader Richard Perle, one of the
architects of the Iraq invasion, who stepped down as chairman of the
Pentagon's Defense Policy Board amid conflict-of-interest charges.
The firing of Michael Brown, the FEMA director whose performance
before, during and after Hurricane Katrina became a national scandal.
And, most recently, the resignation of Monica Goodling, the Bush
administration official believed to have played a pivotal role in the
current contretemps over sacked prosecutors, after she invoked her
Fifth Amendment right not to testify to Congress.
Less well-known to the public is the catalog of indictments or guilty
pleas by lower-level Executive Branch political appointees.
Here are some of them, originally compiled by Nick Turse of TPM
Muckraker, and added to by readers.
Steven Griles, deputy secretary at the Interior Department, who
resigned and subsequently pled guilty to lying about his ties to
convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Dusty Foggo, CIA executive director, who was indicted following
accusations of corruption in connection to the Duke Cunningham
scandal.
Claude Allen, assistant to the president for domestic policy,
who pled guilty to shoplifting from Target stores.
Larry Franklin, a DOD intelligence officer, who pled guilty to
passing secrets to Israel.
Roger Stillwell, a desk officer at the Interior Department, who
pled guilty to failing to report receiving Redskins tickets and free
dinners from Jack Abramoff.
Frank Figueroa, a senior official in the Department of Homeland
Security and former head of anti-sex-crime Operation Predator, who
pled no contest to exposing himself to a 16-year-old girl in a Florida
mall.
Darleen Druyun, a senior contracting official for the Air Force,
who pled guilty and was sentenced to nine months in prison for her
role in the Boeing tanker lease scandal.
John Korsmo, chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board, who
pled guilty to lying to the Senate and an inspector general about his
role in a fundraiser for a friend's Congressional campaign.
Korsmo's wife, Michelle Larson Korsmo, deputy chief of staff at
the Department of Labor, who resigned about two weeks before news
broke that she and her husband were targets of a criminal probe.
P. Trey Sunderland III, chief of geriatric psychiatry at the
National Institute of Mental Health, who admitted to a criminal
conflict of interest charge for failing to report $300,000 received
from Pfizer Inc., a pharmaceutical company.
Still others have resigned in the face of pending charges or after
investigations had been completed.
These include:
Carl Truscott, director of the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives Bureau, who resigned after a report by the Justice
Department's inspector general found he wasted tens of thousands of
dollars on luxuries, wasted millions on whimsical management decisions
and violated ethics rules by ordering employees to help his nephew
with a high school video project.
Joseph Schmitz, the Defense Department's inspector general, who
resigned amid charges he personally intervened to protect top
political appointees.
Susan Ralston, a White House assistant, who resigned amidst
revelations she had accepted thousands of dollars in gifts from
lobbyist Abramoff without compensating him, counter to White House
ethics rules.
Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting and a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, who
resigned after the release of an inspector general's report concluding
he had broken laws in spending CPB money to hire politically connected
consultants to search for "bias" without consulting the board. At BBG,
a separate investigation found he was running a "horse racing
operation" out of his office, and continuing to hire politically wired
individuals to do "consulting" work for him.
George Deutsch, a NASA press aide, who resigned amid allegations
he prevented the agency's top climate scientist from speaking publicly
about global warming.
James Roche, secretary of the Air Force, who resigned in the
wake of the Boeing tanker lease scandal, after it was revealed he had
pushed for Boeing to win a $23 billion contract.
Marvin Sambur, the top contracting executive at the Air Force -
Darleen Druyun's boss - who resigned in the wake of the Boeing
scandal, though further investigations cleared him of wrongdoing.
Philip Cooney, chief of staff for the White House Council on
Environmental Quality and a former oil industry lawyer with no
scientific expertise, who resigned after it was revealed he had
watered down reports on global warming.
Thomas Scully, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services, who resigned following an investigation by the HHS
Inspector General found he had pressured the agency's actuary to
underestimate the full cost of the Medicare reform bill by
approximately $100 billion until after Congress passed the bill into
law.
David Smith, deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and
parks at the Interior Department, who resigned after shooting a
buffalo and accepting its remains as an illegal gratuity.
Sean Tunis, Chief Medical Officer at the Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services, who left after the State of Maryland suspended
his medical license because he faked documentation relating to his
medical education.
Julie MacDonald, the Interior Department's assistant secretary
of fish, wildlife and parks, who resigned after an inspector general
investigation concluded that she used her position to squelch
protection of endangered species.
Janet Rehnquist, daughter of the late Chief Justice William
Rehnquist, who resigned as inspector general of the Health and Human
Services Department after Congress began investigating her decision to
delay an audit of Florida's pension fund at the request of Gov. Jeb
Bush's office.
Robert E. Coughlin II, deputy chief of staff for the DOJ's
criminal division, who resigned after coming under scrutiny in the
department's expanding investigation of convicted super-lobbyist Jack
Abramoff.
Lester Crawford, who resigned as a commissioner of the US Food
and Drug Administration and pled guilty to charges of "conflict of
interest and false reporting of information about stocks he owned in
food, beverage and medical device companies he was in charge of
regulating."
Army Secretary Francis Harvey, the Army's top civilian official,
who resigned in the wake of the ongoing controversy about poor
outpatient care of injured soldiers at Walter Reid Army Medical
Center.
The nominations of a number of other Bush loyalists were withdrawn
because of scandal or political opposition.
For example:
Harriet Miers, a longtime Bush friend, whom the president
nominated to be an associate justice on the Supreme Court, but later
was forced to withdraw because of opposition from the religious right.
Bernard Kerik, nominated on the recommendation of former New
York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to head the Department of Homeland
Security, who withdrew his nomination amidst a host of corruption
allegations.
Timothy Flanigan, nominated to be deputy attorney general, who
withdrew his nomination after revelations that he had worked closely
with lobbyist Jack Abramoff when he was general counsel for corporate
and international law at Tyco, an Abramoff client.
Linda Chavez, nominated to become secretary of labor, who
withdrew her nomination because of revelations that an illegal
immigrant lived in her home and worked for her.
A number of other Bush nominees made it through the Senate
confirmation process but remain under scrutiny by Congress because of
lack of experience or ideologically driven views.
One such is Ellen Sauerbrey, now head of the State Department's
Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, the office that
coordinates the American response to migration problems caused by war
and natural disasters and works with international groups on
population and reproductive-health issues. Sauerbrey's resume includes
no experience in any of these areas. She ran Bush's 2000 presidential
campaign in Maryland, and twice ran for governor of that state.
Another is Julie Myers, head of US Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), whose nomination was criticized by several ICE
supervisors and agents who said she was "unqualified" because she
never held a law-enforcement management position. Myers leads the
largest investigative component of the Department of Homeland Security
and the second-largest investigative agency in the federal government,
with more than 15,000 employees and an annual budget of nearly $5
billion. Her uncle is retired Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers,
formerly chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
A third is J. Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defense for
public affairs. Smith, a former ABC News producer and the former media
adviser to Coalition Provisional Authority Ambassador L. Paul Bremer,
was confirmed by the Senate months after President Bush used a recess
appointment to install him in the job. Objections were raised about a
column he wrote for the Wall Street Journal in which he suggested that
US television networks engaged in "collaboration" with terrorists by
airing Arab news reports on al-Qaeda.
Many of the Bush administration's younger appointees were recruited
from right-wing Christian universities, such as Patrick Henry College,
whose mission is "to prepare Christian men and women who will lead our
nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values and
fidelity to the spirit of the American founding."
Others have come from Liberty University, the Christian liberal arts
university founded as Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971 by
televangelist Jerry Falwell.
Pat Robertson's Regent University is the alma mater of Monica
Goodling, the DOJ's White House liaison officer, who recently resigned
rather than testify to Congress about her role in the firing of US
attorneys.
A long line of Patrick Henry graduates have found their way to
internships and permanent positions in the Bush administration,
including some in the office of Karl Rove, the president's chief
political adviser.
Paul Bonicelli, a former Patrick Henry dean, is now the No. 2 official
supervising democracy-promotion programs at the US Agency for
International Development.
But not all Bush appointees have been happy campers. A number have
resigned.
For example, John J. DiIulio Jr., the first director of the White
House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, who quit his
post after only seven months on the job, and
David Kuo, his deputy, who left saying that "there was minimal senior
White House commitment to the faith-based agenda" and that there never
really was great concern over what he called "the 'poor people
stuff'."
DiIulio told Esquire Magazine, "There is no precedent in any modern
White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a
policy apparatus. What you've got is everything - and I mean
everything - being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the
Mayberry Machiavellis." He also decried "a virtual absence as yet of
any policy accomplishments that might, to a fair-minded nonpartisan,
count as the flesh on the bones of so-called compassionate
conservatism."
The invasion of Iraq also triggered the resignations of a number of
officials who disagreed with the Bush administration's war policies.
Among them were career Foreign Service Officers like John Brown, now a
Senior Fellow at the University of Southern California Center on
Public Diplomacy, and Mary A. (Ann) Wright, who now writes about US
foreign policy and lectures at universities.
But the current controversy related to the forced resignations of nine
US attorneys promises to add fuel to the fire caused by what many
administration-watchers describe as the most inept, ideological and
politically driven presidencies in recent US history.
_____________________________________________________
Harry
