Bush Crony Alert

I think we should all be particularly wary of any member of Bushco who has been entrusted with overseeing an agency or department that interacts with an industry or activity that pertains to everyday health and safety issues. I think the living, breathing presence of Mike Brown justifies that attitude.

So when I saw this item today from Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt pertaining to a potential outbreak of Avian Bird Flu (isn’t that redundant, by the way? Just asking…), I became suspicious enough to do a bit of investigating. I quickly found this link to a “10 Questions” investigation into Leavitt by the Center for American Progress (it may take a godawful long time for the information to appear from their site, but it’s worth the wait).

Actually, I have to admit that Leavitt has a tough act to follow coming into the job after Tommy Thompson, who once wondered aloud at a Congressional hearing why al Qaeda had not yet poisoned our food supply. I think he was “put out to pasture” soon after that. This excerpt from a CNN article that I link to later was, shall we say, an “interesting” way to pay tribute to him also.

During his tenure, Thompson has led the department through the discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease; the lethal spread of anthrax-laced letters and this year's shortage of the flu vaccine.

How did Thompson “lead” the department in the case of mad cow, I wonder? By trying to get Congress to pass tougher laws on food safety and provide more money for enforcement of existing regulations (oh, sorry…there I go being a “do gooder” again and slowing down the wheels of profit generation, “the inexorable life blood of corporate America.”). Also, there’s a lot of suspicion about the source of the anthrax-laced letters, with some conspiracy theory buffs thinking it was some gambit by Bushco to keep everyone on edge to try and maintain a hold of paranoia on the “true believers,” so I don’t see how Thompson could get much credit for fixing that made-up crisis (actually, if it was a sick prank, those responsible should have been prosecuted - n'est-ce pas, Bulldog?). Finally, how do you “lead” anyone through a flu vaccine shortage if you’re not actually supplying more of the vaccine (I heard that, by the time Thompson knew that some extra vaccine was available last year, it had to be destroyed because it had expired...Update 10/07: If Thompson had done such a great job, then why did Clinton and Roberts have to introduce the legislation mentioned about halfway down the page in this article?).

Back to Leavitt…As it turns out, he has an interesting background (I say that a bit sheepishly). As nearly as I can determine, he still holds a sizeable investment in Leavitt Group Enterprises, the 27th largest insurance broker in the country, and also has extensive holdings in pharmaceutical companies (all completely legal of course).

Leavitt’s resume starts to get a bit dicey when you look at his tenure as governor of Utah. As American Progress explains:

As governor of Utah, Mike Leavitt sponsored a controversial Medicaid waiver program, which the Bush administration has touted as a way for states to deal with budget shortfalls. But the waiver program is far from an adequate solution to the problem: it works by siphoning benefits from the poorest beneficiaries to pay for an extension of a "narrow benefit package" (for instance, Utah's program doesn't include hospital coverage) to some adults not previously eligible for Medicaid. Families USA Director Ron Pollack said the program was "like robbing Peter and Paul to pay Phil…It will result in many thousands of low-income people being placed at risk of losing their Medicaid lifeline."

This item also caught my eye (when a federal court ruled that Utah "had violated the constitutional rights of every child in custody," but it took the state a decade to comply with the ruling).

There is only one way to describe the condition of Utah's Division of Child and Family Services during Leavitt's tenure as governor: reprehensible. From 1993-1996, ten children who were under DCFS care died. Ultimately, the case came to head when the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland, Calif., filed a class-action lawsuit "on behalf of 17 children who had been horribly abused and neglected in Utah's foster care system." The court eventually ruled that "the state had violated the constitutional rights of every child in custody." Though Leavitt's supporters defend him by saying that he had simply been unfortunate enough to inherit the quagmire, the near decade-long period that it took for the state to fall in line with the court settlement – which demanded an overhaul of foster care and an increase in training and case oversight – fell squarely during Leavitt's time as governor. The state's child protection service continues to be monitored to this day.

So let’s see now; Leavitt under funds Medicaid in Utah and allows its Division of Child and Family Services to deteriorative to the point where a lawsuit had to be filed to force the agency to perform its job properly. With such glowing accomplishments to his “credit,” what job do you think Leavitt would be qualified for next?

Why, the EPA of course (and I found this paragraph in the link to be particularly informative).

It’s interesting that Leavitt’s tenure (at the EPA) has received very little press attention. He is more of a behind-the-scenes operator than was his predecessor Christine Todd Whitman, who was on several occasions embarrassed by White House retractions of her public policy statements.

And, as you can read here, Leavitt was such a sound steward of the environment in North Dakota also.

And from “Clear The Air”…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, August 11, 2003

Statement Of Angela Ledford Director, Clear The Air On EPA Administrator Nominee Gov. Mike Leavitt

"Governor Leavitt's misguided belief in voluntary approaches is music to the ears of big business and a death knell for the thousands of people that die prematurely each year from power plant pollution.

"While it is true that Leavitt helped to develop a multi-state agreement for dealing with regional haze issues due to air pollution, that agreement only came to fruition when federal rules were enacted - the very rules that would be gutted under Bush's Clear Skies initiative.

"The President has chosen someone who sings from the same hymnbook as big energy and will leave the rest of us out of breath.

You would think that, having built such an impressive resume in government service with “such a focus on results” (don’t you love how Dubya says stuff like that without mentioning who benefits from those “results” and who doesn’t?), Leavitt would be tempted, at this point, to rest on his laurels and “call it a career,” deciding to live off the income generated from his stock in pharma companies and the family insurance business and jaunting up to his mountain retreat in the Range Rover when the mood hits him.

Sure, you would think that, but as it turns out, his country needed him to make a muck of another government agency that Dubya, Grover Norquist and the rest of Bushco want to starve of money and ultimately destroy. That, of course, would be the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Leavitt was appointed last December, so now, almost a year later, he is back to warn us that we’re not prepared in this country in the event of an Avian Flu pandemic hitting this country.

OK, so what is your plan? To continue to make these pronouncements from Washington in an attempt to scare us? Do you plan to lobby for additional funding besides the $3 billion Congress has appropriated for production of the vaccine? Do you plan to coordinate with FEMA in the event of a flu outbreak in this country to quarantine and treat those afflicted (of course, that assumes that Dubya puts someone in permanent charge of FEMA who is competent and not a buddy with irrelevant prior experience).

Oh, and it’s SO UNLIKE this administration to SCARE US in an effort to whip people into a frenzy so they will be less inclined to question the unbelievable lunacy of its policies (and did you notice how all of the color-coded warnings mysteriously disappeared after the election)? How can I go on living my life if I don’t know whether or not the threat level is magenta, chartreuse or burnt pineapple?

Unfortunately, I see the same thing coming from Leavitt on the potential for a breakout of avian flu…different degrees of warnings for different days getting shouted all over the place from the dear MSM and the barking head brigade to try to consolidate Bushco’s dwindling support. Of course, since this trick has been pulled already, I don’t know how effective it would be the second time around (and the tragedy would be that this type of a public health disaster would require a quick response from the jaded and frustrated individuals – such as myself, I admit it – who are tired of being subjected to the Pavlovian conditioning of these crooks in “the war against terror”).

So let’s recap: we have a former governor of Utah beholden to the pharma and insurance industries who gutted the state's Medicaid reimbursement program and ignored the state’s Department of Child and Family Services and, while EPA administrator, did nothing to enforce standards against industrial pollution and helped corporations skirt them in the process, and this individual has subsequently been put in charge of this country’s most important health agency that may be in charge of responding to a potential avian flu pandemic hitting this country for which he apparently has no plan involving the coordination of state, local and federal agencies to provide care and treatment other than to say, “You’re not ready, you’re not ready, you’re not ready”…

(ugh…)

Another glorious, shining example of our government working on our behalf, isn’t it?

God help us all.