GOP Branch Operatives

Not long ago, in a different context, I asked, "Is there no federal agency that's clean?"

TPM has a list (maybe somebody will put them in list format soon) of agencies that Karl Rove has been manipulating to make them another arm of the GOP, and a question for Gonzo in his hearing today: was the DoJ on Karl's speaking tour?

Chalk Up Another One

Add the nation's drug czar to the list of agency appointees politicking for the Republican Party.

[Drug] czar, John Walters, and his deputies traveled on the taxpayers' dime to 20 events with vulnerable Republican members of Congress in the months prior to the 2006 elections, according to a committee press release. Not only that, but several of the trips were "combined with the announcement of federal grants or actions that benefited the districts of the Republican members." If government officials were using government funds to help elect Republicans, that would be a violation of the Hatch Act.

[House oversight committee chair Henry] Waxman has uncovered emails [...] that show the White House's enthusiasm for using agency heads as political props. Among them is an email that describes a proud Karl Rove boasting after the 2006 election that the drug czar's office and officials from the departments of Commerce, Transportation, and Agriculture had gone "above and beyond the call of duty" in making "surrogate appearances."

  TPM Muckraker

That's why they don't want to release emails and why they hide emails on a GOP server.

I'd say you'd be pretty safe in assuming all federal agencies to which Bush has appointed a director have been/are being used for political purposes. If you assume that, I won't have to keep posting about it, and we'll just call it done.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Update: The House Judiciary issued new subpoenas for emails from the GOP servers last week. Yeah. Like that's gonna do any good.

...but hey...

Further Update 7/24/07: A list of federal agencies put on notice by Karl Rove to serve the GOP is at TPM here.

Endangered

Typical Bush agency action. Fish & Wildlife elsewhere recently in the news.

MIAMI, April 8 -- The Florida manatee, this state's imperiled environmental icon, in 2006 suffered its most dismal year on record.

Of a population of about 3,200, 416 died in 2006, the highest number of deaths recorded in 30 years of statistics. Many died in collisions with boat propellers.

Now, according to an internal memo, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been drafting plans under which the celebrated marine mammals would lose their protection as an endangered species.

  WaPo article

Image source

Nothing Less Than What You Have Come to Expect

We've seen in the past (and one day, when I've finished putting labels on all my posts - oh, in the year 2010 or so, I'll create a single post listing them) how the Bush Administration tends to appoint completely inappropriate people to government positions (often, but not always during Congressional recesses). Cursor lists three new ones.

In recess appointments, President Bush named a Swift Boat funder to be ambassador to Belgium, a "triple threat" as White House regulatory czar, and an advocate of privatizing Social Security to serve as deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration.

And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. discusses this trend as it affects the environment.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Something Fishy

A little more on Julie MacDonald, of the Fish & Wildlife Dept.

MacDonald confirmed that she also sent the Delta Smelt document [the Delta smelt fish is an endangered species] to an on-line game friend through his father's e-mail account. MacDonald said she is acquainted with the on-line friend through internet role-playing games. She said she engages in these games to relieve the stress created by her job; however, she said she has not played while at work.

  TPM Muckraker article

Well, thank God!

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Two in the News

Agencies which had political appointees with little or no experience - here are only two, currently in the news.

Health and Human Services

Bush appointee Eric Keroack has just resigned.

The head of the federal office responsible for providing women with access to contraceptives and counseling to prevent pregnancy resigned unexpectedly Thursday after Medicaid officials took action against him in Massachusetts.

The Health and Human Services Department provided no details about the nature of the Massachusetts action that led to Dr. Eric Keroack's resignation.

Just five months ago, Keroack was chosen by President Bush to oversee HHS' Office of Population Affairs and its $283 million annual budget. [...] Keroack had worked for an organization that opposes contraception.

[...]

Keroack's office oversees family planning services provided through the Title X program. Services include screening for breast and cervical cancer, as well as treatment for sexually transmitted disease.

Keroack told his staff in a letter Thursday that he became aware of action being taken against his private medical practice in Massachusetts. He said he immediately hired an attorney to initiate an appeal. He did not elaborate on why the action was taken.

[...]

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called on the Bush administration to appoint as a successor a "medical professional who actually believes in birth control to lead the nation's family-planning program."

  Raw Story article

There's a laugh.

Now, recall what you read above (if you did read above) about the services this federal office supplies, including breast and cervical cancer screening for poor women. It seems that the Women's Health portion of the budget is about as ephemeral as Bush's AIDS budget.

[T]he FDA has decided to hold $1.2 million of that funding (out of a $4 million total) for use elsewhere in the agency.

The Post continued, "Because the remaining $2.8 million has already been spent or allocated for salaries and started projects, the office must effectively halt further operations for the rest of the year, according to a high-level agency official with knowledge of the budget plan."

[...]

The Office of Women's Health is the lead federal agency on gender differences in medicine. It holds health fairs nationwide informing consumers about the latest scientific information available on how pharmaceuticals, surgery and other treatments affect women and men differently. More important, it oversees a variety of important pharmaceutical and surgical research on osteoporosis, menopause and reproductive health. If the office were to shut down for the rest of the fiscal year (which ends in October) all those efforts would come to a sorry halt, and women consumers (and the men who love them) would be the worse for it.

  Seattle Post Intelligencer article

When the complaints were being voiced about Keroack's appointment, an HHS spokesmodel claimed that, in his private practice, Keroack prescribed contraceptives. Conflicted? (Or maybe he prescribed them for the women in his own family.)

Just for the halibut....I ran across this comment on the Think Progress website discussing Keroack's resignation.

How many problems in our current society (or even just Africa) would be instantly solved if everyone waited until marriage to experience God’s gift of sex?

Comment by Jake — March 29, 2007 @ 10:16 pm

Maybe he was seriously asking for a number. Anybody? But I don't know how to excuse him for that Africa comment. Actually, I'm not even sure why he felt it necessary to throw that in.

Aaaaaaanyway...

Environmental Protection, Bush Style

The Justice Department is far from the only government agency troubled by politicization under the Bush administration. All you have to do is spin the wheel.

So today, it's the Fish and Wildlife Service! And at the center of it is one Julie A. MacDonald, appointed by Bush to be the deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks at the Interior Department. The very ugly details of her malfeasance have been exposed by an inspector general report. (Update: MacDonald, by the way, has a degree is in civil engineering and has no formal educational background in natural sciences.)

[...]

Here's how she works: MacDonald just made stuff up. If scientists recommended a certain action, MacDonald would alter the recommendation or simply ignore it if it threatened industry or landowners in any way.

Some examples of her scientific method:

MacDonald tangled with field personnel over designating habitat for the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird whose range is from Arizona to New Mexico and Southern California. When scientists wrote that the bird had a "nesting range" of 2.1 miles, MacDonald told field personnel to change the number to 1.8 miles. Hall, a wildlife biologist who told the IG he had had a "running battle" with MacDonald, said she did not want the range to extend to California because her husband had a family ranch there.

[...]

The Interior Department's Inspector General has referred the case to Interior's top officials for "potential administrative action." We'll see if she gets a scolding or a pat on the head.

  TPM Muckraker article

Any bets?