More than the three wars (Iraq, Afghanistan and Terror) we’re currently fighting and their attendant damage to life and liberty or anything that John Roberts has done as Chief Justice of The Supreme Court (the jury is still out on him, so to speak) the real, substantial legacy of George W. Bush as President is his gutting of the regulatory agencies. Specifically, but not limited to, the FDA, the EPA and the SEC.
Who cares what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does? No one except lobbyists and, perhaps, Stephanie Smith, the twenty-two year-old children’s dance instructor who appears on the front page of Saturday’s (10/3/09) New York Times. She ate hamburger meat that was tainted in processing by E Coli, a bacterium usually found in feces. According to the article by Michael Moss, “…her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.” The FDA’s job, like most regulatory agencies is fundamentally simple - to keep the industries they oversee from harming people. What’s more, The Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906, so the FDA has a lot of experience and a lot of systems in place, should they want to take their job seriously.
We have a slightly more heightened awareness of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) because we live in the environment and experience pollution every day. At least, the familiar kinds like smog. What about coal ash? On Sunday’s (10/4/09) Sixty Minutes, Lesley Stahl reports about how this waste product is disposed of and re-used. Coal isn’t used much for heating or cooking anymore, but half of the electricity in this country is produced by coal-fired plants and they produce 130 billion tons of waste, most of which is coal ash. Disposing of it is an issue because it is contaminated with mercury, lead and arsenic, three of the most toxic substances known to man. Naturally, you don’t want this kind of stuff to enter the water supply, but that’s what happens when you dispose of it in ponds near power plants as the Tennessee Valley Authority does or use it - without precautions - as the landfill beneath a golf course in Chesapeake, Virginia as Dominion, the state power company, has done or, most dramatically, when a holding pool in Kingston, Tennessee collapses under its own weight, sending a billion gallons of toxic sludge directly into the Emory River. Among the dozens of ways in which coal ash is re-used are carpeting, kitchen counters and agricultural products. None of which are certified to be safe because, as Lisa Jacobs, newly appointed head of the EPA, tells Lesley Stahl, coal ash is not a regulated material. Think of that the next time your children are playing on the carpet as you prepare their vegetables on the kitchen counter.
Finally, there is the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), guardian of our financial markets – unless you’re Bernard Madoff. There were two articles about him in Friday’s (10/2/09) New York Times. One about his two sons, younger brother and his brother’s daughter being charged with involvement in the Ponzi scheme organized by Mr. Madoff. The other a complex tale of suits and counter-suits involving Stanley Chais, the retired money manager alleged to have made over one billion dollars directing clients from the Los Angeles area to Madoff’s phony investment scheme. The consequences, if not the actual details, of Madoff’s criminal enterprise are widely known. Hospitals, universities and charitable institutions as well as wealthy individuals around the world have been swindled out of an estimated $65 billion by Bernard Madoff and his associates. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the affair being that it continued for twenty years without detection. It wasn’t a novel scheme (Charles Ponzi operated in the Twenties) or an especially intricate one (he sent out false profit statements) so a government agency that has seen lots of profane American ingenuity in its time (its first chairman was Joseph P. Kennedy!) should not have been fooled. Yet, by its own admission, it missed every warning sign and failed to investigate every suggestion that something was amiss. Even if you only consider the last eight years while Bush was in office, stopping the geometric progression of the scheme’s growth could have saved billions.
Did George W. Bush intentionally hobble (something Texans know about) the regulatory agencies while he was President? It’s hard to say because very little that he did was intentional. He called it “going with his gut” but a more accurate description might be “A higher negligence.” If the finger is going to be pointed, it should be at his Vice President, Dick Cheney. (You remember, Cheney, the Republican sex doll: two working holes, no heart and an inflated image of himself.) There’s no question that everything he did was intentional or what his intentions were. He’d be insulted if you suggested otherwise. Cheney’s “Pro business/ public be damned” philosophy is as fresh as the day it was minted by Cornelius Vanderbilt. But how do you apply that to a regulatory agency - a large organization with a single, clearly stated, socially beneficial mission? How does you make sure that it achieves nothing without firing everyone or idling them? You can play budget games, but it’s more effective to replace a few key people. If those at the top keep looking away, those in the middle will look out for themselves. It becomes a self-fulfilling bureaucracy, one that looks busy, but is only sustaining itself. Unfortunately for Cheney, he can’t take credit for it. Since, technically, he worked for Bush, any credit (or blame) goes to the Chief Executive.
Is there any way to reverse the damage? Any defense against the dark arts? Yes, it is variously called leadership or management and it’s not easy. Fortunately for us, we seem to have elected a leader - one who appoints good managers, too. I’ve only written about three agencies, though, and three days in October. There are many fresh tragedies ahead. Whenever one happens, consider it George W. Bush’s way of saying hello.
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