Thursday, October 28, 2004
More Unitary Executive
When the Reagan administration was preparing to take office in January, 1981, they hired Pendelton James to be the headhunter who would help the administration staff the executive branch agencies with those sympathetic to the Reagan agenda--something that was taken from the Heritage Foundation's book, "Mandate to Govern."
The vetting process essentially asked anyone wanting to work with the administration whether they were Republican, had they voted for the President, had they worked on his campaign, and even had they supported Bush during the primary. All of this was done to insure that bureaucratic oversight was done by those who shared the Reagan vision.
To the victor goes the spoils!
This has been taken one step further by the current Bush administration with potential negative consequences, if not outright breaking the law.
The Bush administration has been vetting the scientific advisory committees with those who are loyal to the Bush agenda. And scientists who sit on these advisory committees have been "pressured to issue opinions which conform to" the Bush ideology, says Congressman Brian Baird and Eddie Bernice Johnson.
Back in the spring, they asked the GAO to look into whether vetting was going on, and the GAO issued a report in April that found that not only was the practice occurring with great regularity, but also that members of industry were sitting on advisory committees that issued opinions that directly benefited their industry
Despite the GAO report concluding that the practice violated several laws, the Bush administration has continued the practice. Baird has written a letter to AG Ashcroft asking for an investigation into the practice, arguing that "The government must wrestle with many technically complex issues. In doing that, we need to gather the best expert advice we can find. When the advisory process is perceived to be dominated by political calculations, scientists and engineers begin to wonder whether it is worth their time and effort to even advise the government."
What do you suppose the outcome of that investigation will be?
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The vetting process essentially asked anyone wanting to work with the administration whether they were Republican, had they voted for the President, had they worked on his campaign, and even had they supported Bush during the primary. All of this was done to insure that bureaucratic oversight was done by those who shared the Reagan vision.
To the victor goes the spoils!
This has been taken one step further by the current Bush administration with potential negative consequences, if not outright breaking the law.
The Bush administration has been vetting the scientific advisory committees with those who are loyal to the Bush agenda. And scientists who sit on these advisory committees have been "pressured to issue opinions which conform to" the Bush ideology, says Congressman Brian Baird and Eddie Bernice Johnson.
Back in the spring, they asked the GAO to look into whether vetting was going on, and the GAO issued a report in April that found that not only was the practice occurring with great regularity, but also that members of industry were sitting on advisory committees that issued opinions that directly benefited their industry
Despite the GAO report concluding that the practice violated several laws, the Bush administration has continued the practice. Baird has written a letter to AG Ashcroft asking for an investigation into the practice, arguing that "The government must wrestle with many technically complex issues. In doing that, we need to gather the best expert advice we can find. When the advisory process is perceived to be dominated by political calculations, scientists and engineers begin to wonder whether it is worth their time and effort to even advise the government."
What do you suppose the outcome of that investigation will be?
