AUSTIN,
Texas -- 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."
