Undermining government

The Bush administration has made it clear that it is uninterested in truly governing -- in fact, it is against government on principle. Here is an article that explains how Bush is undermining government from within. You know, I think maybe I'm suffering from outrage fatigue because I just don't have enough outrage left in me to express how vile this is. Just when I think they can't possibly get any worse I learn something else about the administration that is beyond horrible.

The article is by Douglas J. Amy and is entitled, "Bush's strategy to hobble government".

Americans were rightly shocked to learn that Michael Brown, the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was totally unqualified for his job - gaining it because he was the college roommate of the previous director.

And it is certainly appalling that the man in charge of protecting lives and property during natural catastrophes had absolutely no experience in disaster management.

But what Americans should really be appalled about is that this kind of appointment is hardly the exception in the Bush administration. Brown is just one example of an ongoing pattern of inappropriate and disturbing appointments by President Bush - appointments that threaten to undermine the basic functioning of many key government agencies.

This administration's guiding political philosophy is that government is a bad thing and should be cut back to a minimum. It has a particular contempt for the federal bureaucracy, which it sees as the embodiment of "liberal big government." So it is hardly surprising that the administration has not made a great effort to ensure that the best-qualified people are running these agencies.

But the situation is actually much worse than this. It is not simply that Bush put incompetent political hacks like Brown in place. He has also been appointing officials who are actually hostile to the agencies that they run. Many of them have political values and views diametrically opposed to the very missions of these agencies.

Mr. Amy then explains how the strategy works:

An investigative reporter for the Denver Post found that more than 100 of the high-level officials appointed by Bush in his first term alone were overseeing the industries they used to represent as lobbyists, employees or lawyers. The foxes are now guarding the henhouse.

But there is a deeper political agenda at work here. These appointments have been part of the White House strategy to do an end-run around the democratic process. For years, Republicans have wanted to roll back environmental, workplace and consumer protection regulations. But the Republicans in Congress have been reluctant to do so because they fear a backlash from the public.

So the Bush administration has decided to use unelected administrators to sabotage these regulatory programs from within. These anti-regulatory appointees have been cutting their own budgets, purposefully delaying new regulations, discouraging vigorous enforcement of current regulations, firing inspectors and enlarging loopholes to the rules so that more businesses can escape regulation.

If Bush had tried to name a dedicated pacifist as secretary of defense, the public would have been outraged. But he has been doing virtually the same thing in many other agencies by appointing officials who are ideologically dedicated to subverting the purposes of the agencies they have joined.

You know, I rarely use the word "evil" - even in my thoughts - but I'm going to use it here. This strategy to undermine the basic safety of the American public is simply evil. We need a leader to help us rise up and stop it. I hope and pray that leader emerges before it is too late.