Who Is to Blame for Lead Paint in Toys? Bush and You

[NOTE: I also posted this article on www.dailykos.com. If you like it, please go to it here and recommend it, comment on it, etc. Thanks.]

It has been a bad year for Chinese imports. Not for the Chinese, mind you. Through August, China enjoyed a nearly $164 billion trade surplus with the U.S. in 2007, well ahead of last year's figures at that time. No, it was a bad year for Americans with Chinese imports. Highlights included the recall of 1.5 million Chinese-manufactured toys (for starters) when it was discovered they contained dangerous lead paint, and the earlier pet deaths linked to tainted dog food made in China. These incidents shined a light on what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration called "manufacturing control issues" in China.

Beyond the Chinese themselves, over whom we have little control, who is responsible for these blunders? To me, there are two clear culprits: the Bush Administration and You. Yes, You. I'll explain later.

As for the Bush administration, the news of the last few days has focused on efforts by the Democrats in Congress to beef up funding for the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to help address issues related to consumer safety. President Bush, of course, is opposing the measure. He says the Democrats are politicizing the issue. How? By trying to help make the problem better? That's more than Bush is doing, especially since his lack of oversight is partially to blame for this mess in the first place. "The Democrats are playing politics" has become Bush's go-to defense line with any domestic problem, just as "the Democrats are hurting the troops" is his default attack on criticisms of his disastrous Iraq policy. It's so transparent, it's amazing it still works.

It's not the Democrats who are politicizing this issue. Rather, Bush is inserting his businesses-should-be-unregulated-and-allowed-to-run-amok views into the matter, allowing his right-wing ideology (which is not adhered to by the majority of Americans, I'm sure) to interfere with efforts to protect American consumers.

You see, this legislation is just another example of the failure of Bush's policy on government oversight of businesses, which is essentially to appoint a member of an industry, who wants to help the industry make more money and has no interest in protecting Americans, to oversee the regulation of that industry. It is the proverbial coyote guarding the hen house. Bush has done it with energy, pollution and mining, just to name a handful of examples, and it extends to the CPSC.

That's right, the Democrats in Congress are trying to give more money and power to the CPSC to help prevent problems like lead paint ending up in children's toys, and who is opposing it? Believe it or not, the acting chairwoman of the CPSC, Nancy Nord. Yes, Nord is trying to kill the legislation to better fund her own agency. Makes no sense, right? Ah, but it does. It's right in line with the Bush administration's core belief that any government regulation is bad government regulation. Nord's position before coming to the CPSC was as the Director of Federal Affairs for Kodak. The guy Nord replaced at the CPSC, Hal Stratton, before coming to the commission started the Rio Grande Foundation, whose mission statement says it believes in "the importance of individual freedom, limited government, and economic opportunity." It's like asking a master bank robber to write the federal laws on armed robbery. How do you think he would come down on tax breaks to banks for hiring armed guards? Profits trump safety every time for this administration.

Obviously, legislative battles and policy wranglings aren't as sexy as fires in California and South Carolina, so you have to believe too many people will listen to the president's protestations that the Democrats are playing politics and take him at his word. But, that leads us to the second party responsible for the China-imports mess: You.

As you may recall, last year, Time named You as its Person of the Year. Sure, Time meant the selection to reflect the proliferation of the reliance on user-generated online communities like YouTube and MySpace to solve problems, but the empowerment issue is the same. It's up to You to decide what is important to You. In the context of the battle over the new legislation, it's up to You to get the real story, to investigate how the Bush administration has acted to virtually eliminate government oversight of industries by appointing industry-puppets to regulatory posts. And it's up to You to figure out that while Your kids are playing with toys slathered in lead paint, Your executive branch is acting to prevent additional oversight of the parties that put the lead paint into Your children's hands.

But the issue is so much bigger than one policy battle. Why do we have toys and dog food and so many other products coming to us from China in the first place? Because You have decided in the last ten years or so that You want to pay as little as possible for as much as possible, damn the consequences. You want your $49 DVD players and $12 shirts and, yes, $10 toys, but You don't want to think about the consequences for those cheap prices. You have decided that the cheap consumer goods are more important than our economy (all the American manufacturing jobs lost overseas), our security (our consumer needs, including oil, drive our relations with countries who provide us with what we need), and our character (the Wal-Martization of America's small towns and suburbs, and the death of mom-and-pop stores, comes directly from the drive for the cheapest goods possible). You have made a choice. You have decided to prioritize Your values in this way. So, You are living with the results. If You think that the toys and the dog food are the end of this story rather than the beginning, You are wrong.

Sure, Bush's policy on government regulation of industries hurts average Americans. It happens in multiple sectors, and it happens again and again. But, ultimately, he is allowed to do it, because the American people let him get away with it, either through choice or sloth (and neither is any better than the other). It is also the consumer culture the American people have chosen to follow that opens the door for all kinds of problems, the lead paint in toys being the least of it.

If Americans could kick our crack-like addition to oil, the effect on our foreign policy would be momentous. But let's be serious here. Americans have shown that we have no interest in sacrificing for the sake of our country's future. Not by paying more taxes, and not by changing how we live our day-to-day lives, including what we're willing to put up with to keep our access to cheap consumer goods.

As they expression goes, you reap what you sow, and right now, Americans are reaping a lot of garbage, from lead paint in toys, to the Global Warming crisis, to a war in Iraq and its devastating effects, both at home and abroad. The current American crop is as toxic as the toys imported into the country from China. And You are to blame. So, don't You think it's time that You do something about it?

Bush Keeps Appointing Cronies, But Dems Fight Back on CPSC Appointee

He has done nothing wrong.
- President George Bush on Alberto Gonzales, as reported by a Yahoo!/AP article, May 21, 2007

You would think that competence would rise above partisanship. But if you are talking about President Bush, you would be wrong.

Buried at the heart of the disaster that has been the Bush presidency is a fundamental way of doing business that differs from all of Bush's recent predecessors, regardless of party affiliation. It's a no-brainer that a Republican President will appoint conservatives to office, while a Democratic President will look for more liberal candidates. That's fine. But, until this President, both sides looked for candidates that were qualified.

President Bush, on the other hand, puts cronyism ahead of competency. He judges his candidates for appointment not on whether they have the skills and experience to do their jobs, but rather if they will be loyal to the White House, keep their mouths shut, and carry out the administration's policies, regardless of their job descriptions or responsibilities to the American people and the Constitution. That's why cronies score higher than unknowns with skill and experience.

It wasn't always like that.

For example, Robert H. Bork was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Senate did not confirm him. Bork was conservative and an advocate of an "original intent" approach to applying the Constitution, an approach that severely limited the protections afforded by the document. A majority of Senators found his judicial philosophy odious, and Bork was blocked from taking his seat on the nation's highest court.

But, nobody claimed that Bork was not competent. Before he was nominated, he had served as Solicitor General, Acting Attorney General (he was the one during the "Saturday Night Massacre" who finally heeded President Richard Nixon's demand to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox after Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus refused to do so and resigned), and a judge on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He earned his law degree at the prestigious University of Chicago School of Law.

Compare Bork's record to the one sported by one of President Bush's Supreme Court nominees, Harriet Miers. She received her law degree from Southern Methodist University, nothing to be ashamed of, but not an institution noted for Constitutional scholarship. She spent virtually her entire career until she went to work for Bush when he was elected President at a Dallas law firm as a commercial litigator. Again, nothing to be ashamed of, but not the background that would qualify someone to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court where one is expected to have substantial experience with, and knowledge of, Constitutional law issues. However, as part of Bush's crew of loyal Texans, he thought she should be a justice. The way baseball owners hire their kids and buddies to executive positions, Bush acts like he thinks he is still the owner of the Texas Rangers, and government offices are there for his buddies to fill.

Even in a Senate controlled by Republicans, Miers's nomination was so inappropriate she was forced to withdraw herself from consideration when the level of opposition to her appointment became clear.

Miers was far from the only Bush choice of cronyism over competency. Rather, it has been the norm in this White House. The administration is littered with officials who were qualified only because they were from Texas, or they were affiliated with the right religious leader. (An April blog entry of mine discussed the competence issue, specifically regarding Monica Goodling serving as the number three person at the Justice Department without any prosecutorial experience, but she did graduate from Pat Robertson's Messiah College.)

Despite Bush's expression of confidence in Alberto Gonzales, he is one of the few people who think he should remain as Attorney General. Republicans rubber-stamped his appointment by Bush even though Gonzales, too, seemed only to be qualified based on his membership in Bush's Texas cronies club.

And, Bush has not learned. Even after watching the American people hand Congress over to the control of the Democrats, Bush keeps appointing cronies. Today, according to a Yahoo!/AP article, his nominee to run the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Michael Baroody, was forced to withdraw his nomination in the face of protests from Senate Democrats. Why were they upset? It seems that Mr. Baroody, according to a Yahoo!/AP article, is a lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers, pursued anti-consumer policies, and was set to receive a $150,000 payment from the group before he headed off to government service.

So, let's get this straight: Bush appointed a man whose job has been to get around consumer protection rules, and who will be paid a lot of money by the main group who doesn't want consumer protection rules enforced, to enforce consumer protection rules. This is the proverbial wolf guarding the henhouse. Of course, Bush doesn't see it that way, with a White House spokesperson saying in the Yahoo!/AP article, that it's "unfortunate" that the Democratic Senators are judging Baroody "by press reports instead of personal conversations." What could he say? That he wasn't a lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers? That he didn't work against consumer interests? That he wasn't set to receive $150,000? That he's a new man?

What really is irking Bush is that when the Republicans controlled Congress, he was allowed, as a matter of course, to appoint wolves to watch the federal government's henhouses. You know, like having the Vice President put together a task force to determine energy policy, but conveniently leaving out that the energy companies, including Enron, made up the members of the task force. (Sourcewatch.org Article) Or, the way Christine Todd Whitman decided to leave as head of the Environmental Protection Agency after being prevented from actually trying to protect the environment (Here is one of many articles on the topic.)

But now, with the Democrats controlling the Senate, Bush can no longer just slide a crony or an industry tool into office. With all the "bigger" stories out there (the Iraq funding bill, rocketing gas prices, Paris Hilton's impending incarceration), the Baroody story seems to be off the media's radar, save for a quick mention.

To me, the story is important because it stands as a symbolic changing of the guard. The Democrats, who need some positive press after surrendering on the Iraq war funding legislation battle, acted to stop the White House from putting yet another crony into office. Hopefully, they will continue to stand firm and bat incompetent appointees back into the administration's lap. Bush can keep offering as much blind, idiotic support for Alberto Gonzales as he wants. The job of the Democrats is to keep the next Gonzales-like appointment from being confirmed.

One Lesson from Sandy: We Can't Afford to Have a President Who Irrationally Hates Government

[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]

I lived virtually all of my life in the Northeast, mostly in the New York area, and the majority of my friends live there. Hurricane Sandy is more than just a political football to me. It's about as close to personally affecting me as something can be without me and my family actually living through it. So it is only natural that I am going to pay close attention to how President Obama and Mitt Romney handle the storm.

With the election a week away, it's not playing political games to look at the responses of the two candidates to Sandy and what they tell us about the two men who are asking us to entrust them with the executive power of the nation over the next four years.

I think the best way to make the comparison is by looking at two telling quotes, both by Republicans, one from yesterday and one from June 2011.

Quote 1: "The president has been outstanding in this, and so [have] the folks of FEMA."

Republican New Jersey Governor (and ardent Mitt Romney supporter) Chris Christie said this Tuesday about the response to Hurricane Sandy.

I am not making the argument that President Obama has done anything extraordinary here. He did what a president is supposed to do, what, for most of the 20th century, any president, Democrat or Republican, would have done. He competently responded to the storm, as did the agency tasked to intervene in these situations, which is led by someone qualified to do so. It's pretty basic stuff if you don't have a disdain for government that is so irrational and intense that you neglect to even take seriously the basic services expected from the federal government.

Now, you would think that should be the standard position of anyone running for president. Unfortunately, it is not. Because the modern Republican Party has a hatred for government so intense, and takes the responsibility of government to provide basic services so loosely, it is unable to take care of the basic health and safety of Americans in a time of crisis.

Don't believe me? We don't have to go too far back in history to see what the new GOP thinks of its obligations. In August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, FEMA's feeble response was on display for all to see, and people died and suffered as a result. Why was FEMA so incompetent? Because the president, George W. Bush, thought so little of the agency's role (you know, saving lives in a disaster) that he did not appoint someone to head the organization who had experience with these kinds of situations. Instead, he tapped the director of the Arabian Horse Association (a job he was fired from, apparently). In Bush's view, the government is a bad thing (short of its functions of waging unnecessary wars, apparently), so government jobs exist to reward cronies for their support.

Remember, it was under Bush that Nancy Nord, the acting head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, testified to Congress that it should not give her department more money to inspect products after a spate of Chinese exports--from dog food to children's toys--were recalled after doing damage. And Nord was the acting head because Democrats refused to confirm Bush's first choice, Michael Baroody, who as a lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers pursued anti-consumer policies and was about to receive a $150,000 payment from the group before taking his government position.

Reasonable people can differ on the best way to get the economy going. But a president with disdain for the basic protecting functions of government is a threat to the safety of Americans.

Now, you may be asking, how does this pertain to Mitt Romney? Well, that's easy. Let's go to the second quote:

Quote 2: "Absolutely."

The speaker of this one-word quote was Mitt Romney at a Republican presidential primary debate on June 13, 2011. The question? Should FEMA be eliminated. Romney's proposal? Privatize it. That's right, let profit-making corporations be in charge of disaster relief.

Okay, that was over a year ago. What is Romney's position on the FEMA issue now? Silence. He refused to answer questions about the debate statement after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Northeast.

Watch it yourself. Mitt Romney is asking you to vote for him to be the president of the United States, and he believes it's not the federal government's job to provide assistance in times of disaster. This isn't the hysterical ramblings of liberal blogger. It is the words of the man himself.

Romney's politically motivated, photo-op response to Sandy is especially distressing in light of the fact that he is still on the record opposing a federal response to the suffering.

Bush taught us the lesson of putting someone in charge of the executive branch with a disdain for government. It results in damage to the health and safety of Americans, as the government can no longer effectively carry out its basic protecting functions. In light of the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, we can see what a competent, reasonable chief executive means to the lives of those affected (so much so that a Republican governor with eyes on the White House is nevertheless forced to praise the sitting Democratic president).

One last thought: I am sure some of you will be saying, "Well, when Romney said he would shut down FEMA, he was just pretending to be "severely conservative" (his words) to win the nomination." But the facts just don't back up that claim. Romney's lie-fueled (debates 1, 2 and 3) race to the center didn't happen after he sewed up the nomination, nor did it happen at the convention. No, it happened at the first debate, just over a month before the general election, when he was down in the polls and had been left for dead by even some Republicans. Romney's decision to act like a moderate is a desperate campaign maneuver, nothing more.

Actions speak louder than words, and Romney chose Paul Ryan to be his running mate, the author of the far-right House budget that would slash Medicaid and Social Security and essentially destroy Medicare (turning into a voucher program that would leave tens of millions of seniors without insurance), all while giving massive tax cuts to the rich (but raising taxes on the middle class). And Romney didn't just pick Ryan; he endorsed his budget. (I wrote more about the significance of Romney tapping Ryan in this space in August.)

If Romney was just acting severely conservative, he would not have given a huge platform to the poster child for far-right, Tea Party positions.

Sometimes, in the heat of an election, it is easy for voters to forget about the bigger picture. With three debates, endless soundbites, and, if you live in a swing state, a ceaseless barrage of television ads, it is hard for some to remember the context and history of the candidates' claims. It is this hectic environment that allows Romney to, suddenly, turn his back on two years of campaigning (all caught on video) on far-right positions and shake the Etch-a-Sketch and call himself a moderate.

But sometimes, an event happens that shakes the electorate up and forces it to concentrate on who the candidates really are and what they stand for. It happened when the financial crisis hit in September 2008, and it is happening again in 2012 with Hurricane Sandy. The responses of the two candidates are symbolic of where they stand: President Obama's competence forcing a Republican rival to praise him, and Mitt Romney's silence when asked about his declaration that FEMA should be shut down and disaster relief should be privatized.

You just can't put a guy in the White House who hates government so much, he will not even take seriously its basic function to protect the American people. We have seen that scenario before, and it meant pain and suffering for too many of us.

Obama's First 100 Days: Restoring the Good Name of the U.S.

[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]

The media's obsession with grading Barack Obama's first 100 days in office amuses me. Sure, in calmer times, maybe it was reasonable to look at a new administration after a little more than three months and try and figure out what kind of presidency the country was in for. But even George W. Bush waited until August 2001 to severely limit when federal money could be used to fund stem cell research, planting his flag in the ground as a leader who would try and impose his religious beliefs (and lack of respect for science) on the nation.

But given the situation Obama inherited when he took over the Oval Office in January, the 100 days figure is particularly silly. After all, in 100 days you can't make a human being from scratch, play a baseball season, or even choose an American Idol. But after 100 days, the media wants to know if Obama has been able to clean up the laundry list of ills left to him by Bush. It's not a short menu, either: an unnecessary and damaging war that was launched with no plan for a resolution, a second war that was headed in the wrong direction thanks to Bush's obsession with the unnecessary war, the potential of Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of the Taliban, an economy hemorrhaging jobs and creating challenging conditions for a big chunk of Americans, a soaring home foreclosure rate, a plummeting stock market (at the time of Obama's inauguration), a severely damaged financial system that was in danger of bringing the world's economy down, a melting planet, an energy policy (or lack thereof) that threatened the country's economy and national security, and a health-care system that allows tens of millions of Americans to go through life with no medical care, just to hit some highlights.

Oh, and Obama is supposed to solve these problems despite the fact that the Republicans, who have enough votes in the Senate to filibuster legislation, are intellectually bankrupt, with no new ideas to offer beyond "less taxes and less regulation," and who have crafted an identity solely based on opposing whatever Obama says or tries to do. (At this point, with the Republicans acting like bratty children, I am waiting for Obama to make use of the playground anti-mimicking trick of employing reverse psychology and announcing that he is in favor of the Republicans disagreeing with his policies, so that the knee-jerk GOP members will support him, just to be contrary.) And, to be fair, it's not like the members of Congress in his own party have always been supportive, often putting their parochial interests in front of Obama's national agenda (the set of ideas that led the American people to vote him into office by a landslide).

So the task awaiting Obama was massive. And yet, there is a rush to decide how he's doing after 100 days. He doesn't even have all his cabinet members in place yet, after all (partially his fault, but partially thanks to the petty delaying tactics of the Republicans).

Personally, while I can't say I have agreed with each and every decision Obama has made since taking office, on the whole, I think what he has accomplished in the first 100 days is remarkable. He ushered a nearly $1 trillion stimulus plan into law in record time, reversed a flood of reactionary Bush executive orders (including on stem cell research), and, in his budget, made clear that he wants priorities such as health care, green energy and education to be addressed. But despite my support for his work, I refuse on principal to give him a grade. It's just not fair. Donnie Walsh gets two years to revive the Knicks, but the president only gets 100 days to fix the country? (Granted, after Isiah Thomas gets done with an organization, it is a miracle if it still exists at all.)

But there is one area in which Obama has made such a dent in an awful Bush legacy, I will make an exception to my rule and hand out a grade. And it wasn't even an item on my list of debacles Obama inherited from Bush. But, in a way, it encompasses all of these items.

For all of the failures, embarrassments and acts of destruction of the Bush administration, in some ways, none was worse than the damage he did to the American identity. Bush showed utter disregard for the constitution and completely belittled the idea that America stands for justice and due process. And his arrogant attitude toward the world was counterproductive, leaving the United States isolated at a time when it most needed help. Between the invasion of Iraq, the torturing of prisoners, the illegal wiretapping, the outing of a CIA agent, the politicization of the Justice Department, the appointing of incompetent cronies to government positions (like the immortal "Brownie"), the castration of agencies meant to serve the public in an all-encompassing protection of business interests (like the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission testifying to Congress that she opposed funding for more inspectors after it was discovered that toys made in China contained lead paint), and the handing out of government money to businesses in which administration officials had interests (sometimes via no-bid contracts), the Bush administration had tarnished everything that was great about the United States of America. He took a country we could be proud of, a country that strove to meet a higher standard, and tossed us into the gutter. Looking at the pictures from Abu Ghraib or reading the accounts from Guantanamo, it was hard to believe that we were looking at the actions of the U.S. government. That's not the America I was taught about in school.

(As an aside, I am not an end-justifies-the-mean guy, so even if Bush's repugnant policies made us safer, I would object. But we didn't even get that benefit. As we've learned again and again from the men responsible for interrogations, torture doesn't work, and Bush's policies, from the Iraq invasion -- with its human and financial costs -- to Guantanamo, created more terrorists and national security risks than they prevented.)

In his first 100 days, Obama has taken decisive action to show the world that the great side of America, the America that stands for justice and due process, the America that respects the rights of individuals, and the America that has served as an example and destination for people around the world, is trying to come back. Obama's appointments chose competence and expertise over cronyism. He reversed Bush's torture policies and released the completely bogus memos written to justify them. He announced early on that he would close Guantanamo and that we would withdraw from Iraq. He changed the tone of how we speak to our friends and enemies, showing that keeping an open mind is not the same as being weak. He instituted policies that sought to add transparency to government. And, most of all, he showed that he was a smart and competent leader, something that has been absent for the previous eight years.

In the subject area of acting to restore pride in America, I am willing to give Obama a grade: A.

Granted, there have been missteps. He was too slow to embrace the idea of prosecuting those who justified and approved of torture, for example. But when you consider the depths to which Bush had plunged the country in this regard, and the short period of time (the much ballyhooed 100 days) Obama has had to reverse the course of the nation, his achievement in this area has been quick, decisive and productive. He has proven that hope is more than just a poster. Or, as a friend of mine put it, it's nice to know a grown-up is back in charge.

Hopefully when the true final examination comes around in November 2012, and Obama's presidency is evaluated after ample time has gone by for his policies and decisions to be analyzed, he will fare as well. For the sake of the country, I hope he does. But for now, he's off to a pretty good start, even if it is only 100 days.